News and Analysis
Whole Foods Comes Out a Brand Winner on Super Bowl Sunday
Eagles fans weren’t the only ones cheering about Super Bowl LII on Sunday. Upscale grocery chains like Whole Foods saw increases in foot traffic in the hours before kickoff, even while multi-purpose stores like Walmart saw fewer shoppers than normal, according to newly released data from Simpli.fi.
Commentary
Check-Check-Check-Check-Check-Check in Everywhere
That terrible choice you had to make every time you wanted to check in (which service do I use?? Brightkite? Foursquare?) has been tackled by a few different players of late, including Footfeed and Check.in. No longer do you have to pick your favorite child – a nanny-app will log you into all at once. But Footfeed will help you get proper credit for those checkins – hey, become mayor/king/sultan/boss of your fave coffee shop all at once…
P-U! (That’s PatchU to You, Kid)
When we started our journalism career in the late 1980s we slugged it out with other hungry coeds for the few slots open at the local paper. A better time was never had – headlong into the Romantic World of Newspapering, we were. Assigned lightweight stories, we tried to turn into much more than they were in hopes of getting attention and even a Page 1 position. (We should also mention this was when we first used a modem to transmit text of the college paper to the print shop – a sort of magical event in those days). FF a couple decades and the print side of the news business is the same: filling holes around ever-fewer ads. And they are still looking for free(ish), energetic college kids to not only pick up the scraps but also learn to create a better future of journalism. Enter stage center in a puff of magic smoke: PatchU from Patch.com…
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Google Wallet Comes To iOS, Groupon’s Monster Rally
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Google Wallet Finally Comes to the iPhone (With a Big Asterisk) (AllThingsD)… Three Reasons Groupon’s Monster Rally Will Continue (Wall Street Journal)… Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman Ignored Advice From Elon Musk and Peter Thiel And Succeeded Anyway (CNNMoney)…
Community News Revenues: How the Networks Compare to the ‘Indies’
I was surprised — shocked, actually — to discover that the regional community news network Daily Voice has average ad sales of only $38,000 annually on a current basis at each of its 41 sites in suburban Connecticut and New York. Is this the new normal for ad revenue at community news sites? I went to four other community news publishers-owners, all independents, to get their reaction…
Case Study: Lowe’s Builds On Mobile Strategy With In-Store Item Locators
As consumers get savvier in the way they use mobile technology while shopping at brick-and-mortar stores, retailers are beginning to provide their own tools to combat the showrooming effect. For Lowe’s, that means offering mobile tools that shoppers can use to locate items in-store, scan barcodes, read product reviews, check out image galleries, and manage their own loyalty program accounts…
Street Fight Daily: Groupon Bolsters Events, nCrowd’s Acquisition Spree Continues
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Groupon Bolsters its Offerings With SideTour Deal (Wall Street Journal)… Still Clinging To The Daily Deals Dream? One (Very Active) Buyer Temains (PandoDaily)… Why Consumer Reports Says You Can’t Trust Angie’s List (Forbes)…
Calculating the ROI of Local Search Campaigns
How can we calculate just how much return a given business can expect on the investment of time, money, or both into a local search campaign? For many business owners, it’s that type of dollars and cents calculation that will drive them to decide whether or not to move forward with a campaign. Other metrics are important but ultimately secondary to the bottom line…
Marketing to the ‘Happy’ Majority of SMBs
The local search industry needs to offer more responsive solutions for the average small business owner. The industry can’t simply drive more leads — it has to drive more, better-qualified, and better-paying leads at profit margins that incentivize buy-in from a business consumer that demands all or nothing. Only by catering to the “disconnected and contented majority” can the industry push itself to the highest standard of usability and convenience…
Street Fight Daily: Google Wallet Expands, Square IPO ‘Eventual’
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… Google Expands Digital Wallet Offering (Wall Street Journal)… Jack Dorsey: Square IPO Will Happen ‘Eventually’ (Mashable)… With Webvan’s Implosion as Cautionary Tale, Instacart Slowly Begins to Expand, Starting With Chicago (AllThingsD))…
8 Strategies for Selling Cloud-Based POS Systems to SMBs
Cloud-based point-of-sale systems are an easy sell for vendors working with small businesses without existing mechanisms in place for handling transactions, but getting an established merchant who has already invested thousands of dollars in a legacy POS system to consider making the switch to mobile is a trickier proposition. So what is the secret to onboarding more merchants, including those who already have hardware POS systems in place? To find out, we spoke with several experts from the mPOS industry…
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