Commentary
BxB Recap: Is This the Future of Local News?
The passion with the group at Block by Block isn’t just about great journalism — it’s about turning online journalism into a business; it’s about leveraging existing tools and creating new ones; and most importantly it’s about working to collaboratively across these businesses to make an impact…
What Do SMBs Really Need From Digital Platforms?
Amidst the fog of buzzwords and the scramble for investment dollars, are locally targeted startups solving problems that are worth the effort? Within that industry we all generally have a conviction that our products and services matter, but we do spend a lot of our time within a circle of people who don’t need convincing. If our ultimate constituency is the business owner, the question we should ask is: “What really matters to SMBs?”
How Can Local Search Better Serve Service-Oriented Businesses?
Local search isn’t just about brick and mortar. In fact, a very large number of the local businesses we interact with on a frequent basis are service-area oriented. And yet service-oriented businesses make something of a poor fit in a local search model that is oriented toward my physical location and the proximity of nearby businesses on a map…
Latest Posts
How One Community News Project Grew From One Blog to 30 Sites
When Kerry Anne Ducey started blogging in her suburban community of Ridgefield, CT. in 2009, what happened within the several square miles of this 300-year-old community of about 25,000 people was the center of her journalistic universe. Today her HamletHub is a partnership of 30 community websites in the Connecticut-New York suburbs, which she says will soon grow to 45 sites…
7 Ways to Use Weather Data for Hyperlocal Marketing
Hyperlocal vendors are making it possible for business owners like Stromberg to overlay weather data on top of daily sales figures to make better decisions, but many local merchants are still unsure of how to utilize the insights they glean from this information. Here are seven strategies for local businesses to use weather information to better target their hyperlocal messaging…
Street Fight Daily: Square Buys Scheduling Startup, Uber’s Latest Snafu
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.…Square Acquires BookFresh To Add Booking Services For Merchants (TechCrunch)… Uber Kept New Drivers Off the Road to Encourage Surge Pricing and Increase Fares (Verge)… The Payments Challenge for Mobile Carriers (New York Times)…
Street Fight Daily: Apple Rolls Out iBeacon Program, Square Picks Up In-Store
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… Apple Starts iBeacon Product Certification Under ‘Made for iPhone’ Program (Apple Insider)… Square is Testing a New App for Ordering Food: Square Pickup (Priceonomics)… Ford to Drop Microsoft From Car Systems (New York Times)…
Why Data May Kill Content as the Key to Local Relevancy
During a keynote at Street Fight’s Local Data Summit in Denver Tuesday, Carol Davidsen, chief executive at Cir.cl and a former Obama for America staffer, spoke about the way the campaign used data to avoid pricey local news buys, and how those learnings are shaping the way companies in the private market buy media…
Inventory Data Could Help Turn The Tide for Brick-and-Mortar Retailers
The rapid growth of Amazon, and the high-profile decline of brick-and-mortar retailers like Borders, masks a surprising statistic: e-commerce makes up only 5-10% of total retail sales in the country. During a panel at Street Fight’s Local Data Summit in Denver Tuesday, panelist argued that bringing inventory data online could provide small, brick-and-mortar stores with an advantage over their online-only competitors…
Charting Consumer Behavior In the Real World
At Street Fight’s Local Data Summit on Tuesday, LocalSEOGuide proprietor Andrew Shotland started off a morning panel discussion on charting consumer behavior in the real world by asking panelists how close the local data industry is to being able to collect and aggregate the location of consumers, and then sell that information directly to marketers…
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