News and Analysis

How a Small South Texas Daily Is Building a Profitable Digital Future

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The family-owned paper, which serves a nine-county South Texas market of 250,000, has stepped boldly with both boots onto the digital landscape. Publisher Dan Easton tells Street Fight how digital readership and revenue keep the Advocate editorially and financially vibrant.

Street Fight Daily: Brands Use Data to Power Email Engagement, Amazon’s Brands Catch Fire

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Brands Are Using Data to Power Email Engagement… Some of Amazon’s Own Brands Are Becoming Super Popular Online… How Google Could Fire Up Its Smart Home Play…

SMB Index: Local Stocks Up 5.4% in May

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The SCP SMB Index climbed 5.4% in May. The Nasdaq was up 2.6%, while the S&P 500 was up 1%, and Dow Jones was flat, gaining 0.2%. Four of the top five constituents in the index continued to experience stock price gains after April, which saw all five companies gain in value.

Latest Posts

Case Study: MomentFeed Sifts Cinnabon Data to Up Customer Engagement

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MomentFeed worked with Cinnabon to merge duplicate venues, adjust inaccurate geo-codes, and update venues with correct addresses and consistent branding. The result? Cinnabon corporate communications manager Rachel Hadley says the company has seen a nearly 700% increase in customer engagement on Foursquare, Facebook, and Twitter over the past eight months…

ReachLocal President: SMBs Aren’t Buying Ads ‘Where the Eyeballs Are’

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Nathan Hanks talks with Street Fight about what works and doesn’t for online marketing, how small businesses are “misappropriating” the money they spend on media, and why integration is the key to rich digital experiences.

Street Fight Daily: LivingSocial Delivers, Facebook Check-ins

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...

LivingSocial Launches Takeout and Delivery Service (Wall Street Journal)…

Facebook Is Redefining Checkin Numbers for Pages (Mashable)…

Groupon Scheduler a Foot in the Door for Other SMB Services (ScreenWerk)…

How Hyperlocals Can Build Community and Source Stories With Meal Meetups

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Having watched the successful construction of communities brick-by-brick in politics, in meals, and in high-tech around topics of interest, I know that the power of simply sitting down with a small group to learn their views can result in powerful changes and truly viral sharing of genuine user generated content of the highest quality…

With an Inherently Local Ad Base, Publishers Can Take the Mobile Lead

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Local businesses already recognize the need to follow the eyeballs from traditional media to mobile, but they are looking for partners to facilitate the move. Publishers are that partner. They already have the relationships with local advertisers. They already are a trusted guide, their publications a reliable channel, and they’ve already bought into the value of mobile…

Rick Blair Joins Street Fight as Adviser and Columnist

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When you want to know how to make money in hyperlocal publishing, you can’t go wrong by turning to Rick Blair. The former CEO of Examiner.com led that business’s innovative, and occasionally controversial, push into a new revenue model for publishing. Under his leadership, the network grew to to 1.5 billion page views, more than 1 million articles and regularly ranked among the top 10 most trafficked news sites.

Street Fight Daily: Google Offers Goes for Loyalty, Groupon Hiring Engineers

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...

Google Closing the Loop With New ‘Offer Rewards’ Program (Marketing Land)…

Groupon Is Hiring an Army of Engineers in Silicon Valley (Business Insider)…

Behind the Slowdown in Local Advertising (Media Life)…

How Patch Plans to Win the 2012 Election

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Two things drive traffic to Patch: natural disasters and elections. No one can control the former, but the latter occur on a predictable schedule, and the AOL property is aiming to capitalize on the 2012 campaigns. Street Fight spoke with Patch Elections head John Ness recently about traffic surges, keeping people coming back, and why he’s not worried about user fatigue…

6 Lead-Generation Tools for Small Businesses

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Hyperlocal platforms aimed at fulfilling consumer service requests are becoming increasingly attractive to these small business owners, since these platforms generally involve a minimal investment of time or money on the part of the local merchant. Rather than paying upfront for advertisements that may or may not generate actual leads, business owners can sit back and wait for leads to come to them…

Street Fight Daily: Twitter’s SMB Self-Serve, DudaMobile Funding

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal media, technology, advertising and startups...

Twitter Launches Self-Service Ads for Small Businesses (Twitter Advertising Blog)…

Check-In Needs To Work, But How Can We Fix It? (TechCrunch)…

Daily Deals: Do Consumers Still Care? (Ad Age)…