News and Analysis

What 1-800-Flowers’ Search Dominance Means for Local Florists

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With more consumers researching purchases online than ever before, and major e-commerce retailers like 1-800-Flowers and ProFlowers flooding the playing field with paid search ads, there’s a looming question of what will happen to local florists.

Street Fight Daily: Yelp Tests Offline Attribution, Gannett Bets on Local Businesses

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yelp Tests Offline Attribution Using Guest WiFi and Email Matching… Gannett Leans Into Local to Grow Its Share of National Ad Pie… Walmart Fights a Bloody Battle Against Amazon…

6 Vendors Using AI to Facilitate Live Events

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Leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, vendors are finding ways to streamline some of the most complex operations—such as estimating the number of attendees and anticipating how many products each attendee will need—in live event organizing.

Commentary

History’s 3 Hints for the Future of Daily Deals

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The CEO of Tippr thinks Groupon’s success will legitimize the daily industry, encourage other players to stay in the game, and open an opportunity for a top deal commerce technology provider to take the market lead…

What Publishing History Tells Us About Sustainable Hyperlocal News

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The consistent market opportunity to provide relevant information at a community level dates back thousands of years, and it grows with each technological innovation. Yes, the tools have changed, but with each level of innovation a feasible business opportunity exists…

The Environmental Upside of Hyperlocal E-Commerce

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Operators of hyperlocal e-commerce platforms provide small businesses an online distribution channel so consumers can shop locally and reduce the carbon footprint of what they consume…

Latest Posts

ARLnow Expands to Third Community in Metro D.C. – Reston, Va.

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Independent hyperlocal publisher Scott Brodbeck has launched a third digital news publication in the suburbs of metro Washington, D.C. His new RestonNow serves a thriving, nationally recognized planned community that was built from scratch on farmland in Northern Virginia’s Fairfax County…

6 Tools SMBs Can Use to Monitor Customer Sentiment

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As many as 80% of SMB mobile advertisers now perform some type of online sentiment monitoring as a way to get a better understanding of what customers are really feeling about their business. Sentiment analysis, which is loosely defined as “detecting and understanding how the audience is reacting to a brand, either positively or negatively,” has an important role in the small business owner’s marketing playbook. Here are six tools that SMBs can use for this exact purpose…

Street Fight Daily: The War For Delivery, Facebook and Small Businesses

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyIn War for Same-Day Delivery, Racing Madly to Go Last Mile (New York Times)… The Future of Facebook Ad Revenue: Small Businesses (Mashable)… Nordstrom Will Use Pinterest To Decide What Merchandise To Display In Stores (Business Insider)…

Study Finds That Facebook Ads May Bolster Paid Search Performance

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A new study from Kenshoo finds that advertising on Facebook may bolster the performance of existing paid search marketing campaigns. The research, funded partly by Facebook, found that users who saw an ad on Facebook and then made a purchase via a paid search link spent nearly a quarter more than those who were not exposed to the same ad…

iInside CEO: Those Who Don’t Adapt to In-Store Tech Will Be Left Behind

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The company has created a set of hardware solutions to help businesses track and analyze consumers as they move within a store or a high traffic environment. By providing insights to retailers about what shoppers are doing and where they are spending time in a store, the company believes it’s helping brick-and-mortar businesses address issues such as showrooming, as well as the ability to test different approaches to marketing…

New Hires and Openings at Neuhoff Media, Google, Stephens Media, Foursquare and Clinkle

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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, new hires and jobs at Red Wing Publishing, Ballantine Communications, VendaAsta, Leaf, and Yelp.

LBMA Podcast: Sportsbee, Google, Coca-Cola and Patrick Reynolds From Triton Digital

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On the show: Google Outside in London; Google Ingress coming to LAX & JFK; Free subway tickets in Moscow; Coca-Cola inspires you to take the stairs in Brazil; Proximiti uses location based notifications to help OCBC bank branches in Singapore; Free electricity at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Plus, a new feature called “Our Take” on Snapchat’s decision to walk away from $3B from Facebook..

Street Fight Daily: Intuit’s Next Steps, Bing Integrates TripAdvisor Tools

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyIntuit CEO Talks Plan To Grow Company (ZDNet)… Bing Integrates TripAdvisor Tools, Content Into Search Results (SearchEngineLand)… How Life360 Overcame Creepiness To Replace The Most Common Text Message You Send (PandoDaily)…

The Changing Economics of Dialing for Local Data

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Matrix partners, the Sand Hill Road firm that invested in startups like Hubspot and Care.com, has made a $4.2 million bet on Locality (formerly Centzy), a local search startup that uses a combination of technology and manpower to amass pricing and product information for local service businesses. The startup relies on an army of contractors to call up businesses across the U.S. and find out everything from hours of operation to product lineups and price structures…

Wonder Women Show Might at ‘Indie’ Hyperlocal Sites

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Like old media, new media has its glass ceilings. But women are consistently shattering barriers to their advancement in the digital community news space. Of the 12 top revenue-producing community news sites, eight have a female editor-publisher-owner. So what do women bring to the community news space to produce so many winners?