News and Analysis
Street Culture: Sitter.me CEO on Owning Mistakes and Terrible-but-Fun Team Building
“How we view mistakes is you admit it, you learn very quickly, and then turn it around,” says Sitter.me CEO and co-founder Kristen Stiles. After quoting a client a wrong price, Stiles owned up to the error, and the company develop a new procedure to ensure similar stakes would not be made again.
Commentary
SMBs on Mobile: Questions of Analytics and Performance
The proliferation of mobile apps for local continues, with all major local search players maintaining their own apps, and Apple’s App Store currently returning 347 results for the phrase “local search.” With all of this attention, the time is not far away when businesses will begin to get concerned about the presence, accuracy, and effectiveness of their listings on mobile apps. I’d love to see a service that aims at comprehensive analysis of SMB presence across the “app space” for Android and Apple…
‘Tis the Season for Mobile-Motivated Sales
Nothing makes the holidays jolly for retailers like increased foot traffic, elevated sales and full cash registers. Here’s how new hyperlocal mobile ad technologies this year are helping retailers who target some of their marketing efforts at mobile devices significantly increase their odds of achieving the jolliness they’re hoping for…
Deals Plus Ads Equal a Bundle of Conversions
Deals companies that want to remain relevant must diversify their solution sets to include other services for local merchants. At the same time, publishers who are looking to expand digital revenues through deals and offers need to overcome some of the objections raised by merchants. We wondered what would happen if we bundled local deals with other advertising products, like display ads. The result was that publisher sales conversion rates nearly doubled…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: CBS Outdoor Goes Public, Alibaba Invests in Retail
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… CBS Outdoor Shares Rise in First Day of Trading (Wall Street Journal)… Alibaba Invests $692 million in Chinese Department Store Operator (Reuters)… Uber’s Biggest Problem Isn’t Surge Pricing. What If It’s Sexual Harassment by Drivers? (Daily Beast)…
How a Connecticut Network Helps ‘Indie’ News Sites Bridge Revenue Gap
Networks of independent community news sites are growing up and expanding out, and one of the biggest is the three-year-old Independent Media Network, which provides multiple layers of services — in advertising, editorial, business and tech — to more than a hundred community and other news operations in Connecticut…
Street Fight Daily: DailyCandy Shut Down, An Omnichannel Rollup
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… NBCUniversal-Owned DailyCandy and Television Without Pity Will Be Shut Down (Recode)… Nomi Acquires Media Armor To Add Online Marketing Data To Its Offline Marketing Tools (TechCrunch)… GoDaddy Partners With Dwolla On New E-Invoicing Option For Small Businesses (TechCrunch)…
For Local Tech, Fragmentation Is a Problem to Solve — Not Avoid
There’s been a noticeable increase in the number of partnerships, ecosystem-driven startups, and overall coordination among the companies looking to help us buy and sell stuff in the real-world. The shift could have deep implications for existing companies, and may create new opportunities for a number of new startups…
Case Study: Local Bakery Chain Scales With Hyperlocal Tools
At Cako, a mini bakery chain in the midst of expansion, co-owner Albert Chen says it’s difficult to provide the same level of customer service when he can’t be present inside all of his stores on a 24/7 basis. One way that Chen is working to avoid the mistakes that other growing businesses have made is by utilizing hyperlocal tools that provide him with data about what products and flavors his customers are buying…
Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Ads Tap Twitter, Airbnb Courts Cities
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Foursquare’s New Ads Tap Twitter And Require $100K Commitment (AdWeek)… Airbnb Cozies up to Cities (Fortune)… Charting the Years-Long Decline of Local News Reporting (Washington Post)…
The Shifting Line Between Free and Paid Local Marketing Services
The manipulation of organic reach on Facebook is one of many examples of the shifting boundary between free and paid local marketing services. In “pure” local search, that boundary has tended to be relatively clear: look for a local business in your typical IYP and you’ll see sponsored listings at the top of the results page, followed by organic results. But that boundary is likely more clear to those of us who know what to look for than it is to the general user…
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