Patch: Here’s Ten Things We’re Doing RIGHT

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Anyone paying attention to this column knows I’ve dedicated plenty of thought to AOL’s efforts in local, primarily via its Patch effort. Some at Patch/AOL were unhappy. Others mailed me with even more colorful complaints, or “can-you-believe-this” vignettes. So I wanted to turn the tables on myself a bit and challenge Patch to sell us on what is going right…

Local Companies Reluctant to Add New Jobs

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Just a couple of years ago, local companies like Groupon and LivingSocial (and many others) were expanding rapidly and staffing up — eager to put hundreds of salespeople on the street as quickly as possible and grab share of their new market. But in 2013 those boom times have faded a bit, as local companies have adjusted to a period of economic uncertainty and are reluctant to add new positions to their cost structure…

What SMBs Need to Know About Facebook’s News Feed Redesign

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In the hopes of creating a better user experience (and ultimately more monetization opportunities), Facebook recently overhauled the design and functionality of its news feed — aiming to become the “personalized newspaper” of the digital age. The redesigned layout will include bigger photos, maps and news articles and users can now sort through feeds based on interests — so SMBs currently managing a page should definitely adjust the way they approach their Facebook marketing and creative strategy…

Village Soup Shows ‘Native’ Ads Can Work on Local News Sites

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With the recent push toward “native” advertising, we’ve learned (if we hadn’t known already) that ads can be “news.” In terms of local information value, ads-as-news may never trump the apartment-house fire that leaves several families homeless — but it has become clear that there’s room for both, especially in the local digital space…

Why Local Online Publishers Should Also Be Designing Merchants’ Sites

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One of the most sustainable sources of income for local digital publishers ought to be web design and hosting for their local customers. Web design and hosting has counted for 20% of my company’s total annual revenue for the last five years. It’s a natural fit for publishers in so many ways, and yet I see very few who offer it. They’re missing out big time…

Defining the Local Coefficient: A Conversation with Yelp

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A growing chunk of physical purchases are influenced online. And the path to purchase increasingly weaves between different screens. But for conversions, it’s all about offline. The question is how long this will remain to be the case. Out of sheer curiosity, Yelp VP Mike Ghaffary ventured to quantify this…

Deep Cuts Brought Daily Voice Back From the Brink

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Faced with uneasy investors and a cash burn of $500,000 a month, the company’s founder Carll Tucker wondered last weekend: “Is this it?” But after 48 hours of number crunching, Tucker finally came up with a one-page document that he was convinced would be Daily Voice’s passport to a secure future…

Banjo Founder: ‘Emotional Connection’ Is Key for Mobile

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In less than a year, social discovery app Banjo has jumped from fewer than a million users to over four million. The mobile service allows users to discover real-time data across social networks and learn more about places, and it recently launched a tablet app. Street Fight caught up with Banjo founder and CEO Damien Patton to chat about the future of mobile, making money, and the value of data…

Limits on Behavioral Ads Could Bring Higher CPMs for Publishers

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On an Internet without online behavioral advertising, publishers with a premium audience will be in higher demand, and this will result over time in increased CPMs and increased revenue. It will be a step back in time to where premium publishers and ad networks (not exchanges) were handling most of the media buys.

Legal Battles Erupt Over Hyperlocal Data Mining

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On the one hand, pure facts, such as the address and telephone number of a business posted in a public area on the Internet, are not entitled to legal protection. On the other hand, the way such facts are expressed and organized may deserve copyright protection…

With NJ News Co-op, Prof. Deb Galant Keeps to Her Hyperlocal Roots

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In July 2012, the Baristanet founder decamped for the nearby groves of academe – to the new Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University. Not surprisingly, Galant stayed true to her entrepreneurial spirit, launching the center’s NJ News Commons, which brings together news organizations from around the state to share stories and resources. Street Fight caught up with Galant recently to find out more about the news co-op, and why the project is important for hyperlocals…

How to Ensure That Your Geofence Is Sized Correctly

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Location-based push campaigns have a lot of upside, from satisfied customers to higher ROI. But it can be a thin line that separates a successful campaign from one that leaves mobile users extremely annoyed — so really homing in on how to deliver the right geofence to optimize your campaign is crucial…

PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — Talkbits, Moves

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In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan look at Talkbits — this generation’s version of the CB radio. Meanwhile, Weve wastes no time and starts working with Virgin Records; big quick-serve restaurants Olive Garden and Applebee’s get into the location marketing game; Yahoo! destroys (er, acqui-hires) Alike; and a glimpse of the future of the insurance industry from Spain. Plus, Sampo Karjalainen, founder of Moves stops by, and our resource of the week shows the power of big data…

Hyperlocal Crowdfunding May Become a Reality — Here’s How to Prepare

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Despite a recently missed deadline that would have given hyperlocal businesses an ability to raise capital through crowdfunding, backers of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) are optimistic that equity crowdfunding could become a reality by the end of the year. What can hyperlocal ventures do right now to get ready for equity crowdfunding?

Mapping Apps Making an Impact on Mobile Purchase Intent

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Apps like Mapquest and Waze are used with a direct intention as part of “lower funnel” purchase considerations.But map users also demonstrate high engagement with visible advertisers served to them as a complement to their core navigation needs…

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

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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…

How to Create a Great Vertical Directory

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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…

What Do Google’s Enhanced Campaigns Mean for SMBs?

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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…

After Boom and Bust, How Will the Discount Economy Evolve?

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The discount industry experienced 2012 as a major turning point. In the past 12 months, the deal provider landscape shook out even more, with the consolidation of many deals sites and the decline of some industry giants. Given the changed landscape, here are a few predictions about where the local offer and voucher space is heading…

EveryBlock Was Experiment in Data Journalism That Fell Short

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When it was launched in 2007 by digital wunderkind Adrian Holovaty, EveryBlock was hailed as one sure part of hyperlocal’s future. As a result of Holovaty’s coding, the site was able to tease out for publication petabytes of government-collected data that otherwise might not ever see the light of day. EveryBlock was a pioneer in collecting, sorting, and filtering data. But it hadn’t progressed to turning its digital buckets of information into knowledge. Its vaunted coding, which located every overturned garbage can, couldn’t do that…