News and Analysis
#SFSNYC: The Growing Power of SMB OS
Until recently, brick-and-mortar shopping relied on the digital world for advertising functions and not much else. But now, local retail has a new digital arena—the full-service operating system. Three leaders in this expanding set of technological solutions for SMBs laid out the state of the field, known as SMB OS, at Street Fight Summit in New York Wednesday.
#SFSNYC: Making Conversational Interfaces the Frontline for Customer Interaction
The development of conversational language to interact with chatbots, digital assistants, smart devices, and other machines is changing the ways consumers make use of such platforms to find the information and services they want—and this change is only going to get more important for brands and local businesses to address.
Commentary
Customization Failure: Why Hyperlocal Hasn’t Scaled (Yet)
Most customization that attempts to deliver hyperlocal, or even just local results, falls short. The problem is that they (and we) don’t have much more or better local content and advertising to output than we did in the days before social media and smartphones. A tool is built to operate on a national scale, but the landscape of finding the local information is messy and chaotic, lacking structured data, or consistent geographic coverage…
Local Media Companies Need to Evolve — And Do It Fast
Local media’s traditional big-man-on-campus chest-thumping doesn’t mean the same thing in digital that it does in the analog world. In fact, it’s downright laughable. So what do we do when we hit the wall, when we regularly miss revenue targets, when long term projections keep slipping more and more? So what do we do when we keep hiring more ad reps, only to discover that our revenue-per-rep begins to fall, when the evidence is undeniable that we’ve hit that wall? Here are five recommendations.
Why SMB Marketing Services Won’t Save Newspapers’ Bottom Line
Most newspapers aren’t building new and innovative tools to provide SMB services. Instead they are white labeling offerings from other providers or are connecting their audiences to an existing service. Over time, SMB tools are going to become a commodity. When someone who is still in high school can offer exactly what you are offering, you’re in trouble. With the high cost structures and overhead that newspapers have, being in a commodity business (where margins get pushed lower and lower) won’t prove lucrative in the end…
Latest Posts
How the Former CEO of Digg Plans to Win in Local
Earlier this year, Matt Williams, the former CEO of Digg and an Amazon vet, hooked up with a few other former Amazonians to found Pro.com, a local services marketplace that raised $3.5 million from investors that include their former boss Jeff Bezos. Street Fight caught up with him recently to talk about what local can learn from the early days of ecommerce…
Street Fight Daily: Gannett to Buy Rest of Cars.com, Square Adds Food Delivery
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Gannett Said Near Deal to Buy Rest of Cars.com for $1.8 Billion (New York Times)… As Competitors Close In, Square Moves Beyond the Credit Card (Wired)… Picking Through Google’s Pigeon Droppings (SearchEngineLand)…
Mobile Local Apps: To Bundle or Not to Bundle
Facebook last week made the contentious move to force its iPhone and Android app users to “fast switch” to the Messenger app for all future messaging. The outcome will be worth watching for anyone developing mobile apps. Local media players are increasingly faced with decisions about app functionality. That includes whether to unbundle features to specialized apps (think gas prices), or to federate within one…
From Ad Biz to Hyperlocal: Duo Takes Flyer in Fayetteville, Profitably
Today’s digital community news publisher-editors are increasingly likely not to have had experience working for traditional journalism outlets. But that hasn’t prevented them from making their mark — even when they’re competing against platforms that have strong print resources. That’s the case for Todd Gill and Dustin Bartholomew, co-founders of the seven-year-old independent Fayetteville (Ark.) Flyer. In this Q & A, Gill tells how he and Bartholomew achieved success in a market with a major print and digital daily newspaper…
Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s Ad Strategy, Square Eyes Caviar
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Facebook Sold You Krill Oil (New York Times)… Square Said to Be in Talks to Buy Food Delivery Start-Up Caviar (Street Fight)… OpenTable Takes Out Its Wallet for Restaurant Sales Analytics Startup Copilot (VentureBeat)…
Openings and New Hires at xAd, Reply!, AddThis and Newscycle
Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s edition, moves and new openings at Hubspot, Colony Logic, Local SEO Guide,AdMax Local, PlaceIQ and Signpost…
Case Study: Tampa Restaurant Boosts Business With Mobile Waitlist
By integrating mobile waitlist management platforms into their business operations, restaurants may be able to increase the length of time that guests are willing to wait for tables. This makes it possible to get more customers seated in the average day or night, and ultimately boosts the bottom line for restaurants…
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Taps Expertise, SEOs Weigh ‘Pigeon’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Foursquare’s Redesign Will Make Expertise the New Gamification (Pando)… Experts Weigh In On Google’s “Pigeon” Update Aimed At Improving Local Search Results (SearchEngineLand)… San Francisco Airport Tests Beacon Sensors to Guide Blind Travelers (Mashable)…
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