News and Analysis

Yelp Analysis Finds Bright Spots for Business Growth

Share this:

A new economic outlook report released by Yelp this morning finds ample opportunity for growth for small businesses throughout the country, and particularly those located in Southeastern states. “The markets we often think of as being on the forefront of trends in food, retail and other sectors can also be the toughest for small-business success,” explains data editor Carl Bialik.

Cultural Shifts Underlines Google’s Local Enterprise Play

Share this:

“Google at one time talked about a suite of GMB products called the Business Builder but it got left on the cutting room floor of the forced march to Google Plus and the subsequent ugly separation,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm. “It’s refreshing to see a similar strategy finally coming to fruition. I think we are seeing them being slowly tied together.”

Street Fight Daily: Brands Make Best of AR, Facebook Boosts Brand Intelligence

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Brands Are Using AR to Engage Consumers and Measure Results… Facebook Lets Brands Dive Into People’s Posts… Yext for Food Makes Menus Visible in Searches on Google, Facebook, Bing…

Latest Posts

Mom-and-Pops That Don’t Invest in Social Will Miss Out

Share this:

According to an article by Julie Brooks published last week on Street Fight, demand for social media management among small business owners has “dropped off a cliff.” But social media is about taking word-of-mouth online, and now that the prominent social media websites are making it easier than ever to capitalize on these moments, local businesses have everything to gain…

Street Fight Daily: Groupon Surges, Square Avoids Sales Hires

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Groupon Surges on Expected E-Commerce Expansion (Bloomberg)… Square Is Avoiding Hiring Salespeople (Business Insider)… QuickBooks Online For iPad Isn’t A Boring Accounting App – It’s A Simple CRM (TechCrunch)…

How to Create a Great Vertical Directory

Share this:

It’s tough for a start-up to break into the top echelon of local search players and become a one-size-fits-all solution like Google or YP. The great opportunity that exists in the space lies in serving special interests or special use cases better than anyone has before. Foursquare and Yelp are highly visible examples of this, but other very successful, vertically oriented directories exist, flying mostly under our radar…

Mobile Coupons Gain Traction, But QR Codes Are Fading

Share this:

The future of mobile coupons is nearly here and it looks bright, according to a recent study conducted by RadiumOne, which found that nearly half of women ages 35 to 54 would like to receive mobile coupons via SMS. Meanwhile, other methods of coupon delivery are rising in popularity as well…

Street Fight Daily: NextDoor Funding, Yahoo Looks to Local Discovery

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Neighborhood Network Nextdoor Raises $21.6 Million (Reuters)… With New Alike Mobile App Acquisition, Yahoo Pushes Into Local Discovery (AllThingsD)… Verve Mobile Raises $14M, Invests In Location-Based Tech (Media Post)…

What Do Google’s Enhanced Campaigns Mean for SMBs?

Share this:

To wildly mixed reactions, Google last week announced a major redesign to its pervasive AdWords SEM platform. Known as Enhanced Campaigns, the redesign will force advertisers to run a single, converged — though conditionally governed — campaign across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices…

5 Business Intelligence Platforms for Hyperlocals

Share this:

One of the fastest ways for hyperlocal marketers and sales teams to improve their success rates when pitching to SMBs is by identifying businesses most likely to be receptive to their offerings. A number of recently introduced business intelligence platforms can make that process a little bit easier and help marketers leverage online data to pinpoint businesses that are new and thriving…

Street Fight Daily: Groupon Acquires MashLogic, EveryBlock Could Be Sold

Share this:

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Groupon Acqui-Hires MashLogic, Will Shutter Britely Plugin This weekend (PandoDaily)… EveryBlock Could Still Be Sold, Says Schiller, After Abrupt Closing of Hyperlocal Pioneer (Poynter)… After Acquiring 15 Groupon Clones, CrowdSavings Finds a Buyer for Itself (AllThingsD)…

Tagwhat Expands to Aggregate Offers by Location

Share this:

Tagwhat, the maker of an app that focuses on location-based content (from articles to video and audio about a given place), recently announced its entry into the business end of location services with new features that help users find offers from nearby merchants. The service now will pull time- and place-sensitive deals directly from Facebook (and other social networks), displaying them next to to the place-related content already provided users…

How to Scale Local and Stay Entrepreneurial

Share this:

The Alternative Press, which quickly grew to 15 sites in suburban New Jersey (three wholly owned and the rest licensees), is now hoping to replicate that success by growing into a network of 100-plus sites. That’s almost twice as big as the footprint of corporate pure play Daily Voice and in the same league as networks operated by the Chicago Tribune (TribLocal) and Denver Post (YourHub)…