Skyhook’s Morgan: Leveraging the ‘Plumbing’ Behind Hyperlocal
With all of the focus on location-aware devices these days, the companies whose technology powers those locating systems have become even more important. Skyhook uses WiFi access points, cellular phone towers and GPS satellites to locate mobile devices with 10- to 20-meter accuracy. It then plots your position on a map that services like Foursquare and Facebook Places can translate to a place with a name, like the bar you’re in or near.
Realtor Reaches Clients Through SEO Marketing, Hyperlocal Blogs
Realtor Karen Benvin Ransom’s listings have moved far beyond the newspaper classifieds. With a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a personal Web site, and a series of articles she’s written about her local community online, Ransom has honed in on the exact sites and search terms that her clients at Houlihan Lawrence are using to shop for homes in Westchester County, N.Y.
Eversave’s Doyle: Creating Deals That Aren’t ‘One-and-Done’
Eversave, the third-largest online daily deals company in the U.S. (behind Groupon and LivingSocial), can trace its online deals business back over a decade, when its parent, Prospectiv, launched a service offering printable online coupons. The company’s daily deals service, which launched last year, runs offers in 17 different cities around the country, mixing local-specific deals with discounts on larger national brands aimed specifically at women…
B-Town Blog’s Schaefer: Hyperlocal Means Being ‘On the Ground’
Scott Schaefer is the founder, publisher and editor of B-Town Blog, in Burien, Wash., which was named the best hyperlocal news Web site by the Society of Professional Journalists Pacific Northwest Chapter. B-Town Blog, one of six hyperlocal content sites operated by Schaefer’s LOL Dudez, aims to “report news from a ‘location-based’ perspective.” Schaefer recently spoke to Street Fight about how that “location-based” principle guides everything the site does.
Roost’s DIY Social Media for Small Businesses
As more and more companies vie for marketing dollars from small business owners, many businesses find the growing options confusing. They barely have time to keep up with the demands of online marketing on sites like Facebook and Twitter — and it’s unclear whether it’s best for them to place an ad on a hyperlocal site or offer a daily deal where they lose 75% of the sale…
WSB’s Tracy Record: You Can’t Do Hyperlocal on a Template
When West Seattle Blog launched, the site didn’t carry any ads — not even Google Adsense ads which co-founder Tracy Record thought were “ugly and cluttery.” At the time, the site was more of a passion project than a business. But when they finally got advertising two years later, Record says it didn’t take very long before she and her partner were turning a profit: “It was rather rapid in terms of people embracing us and we were in the black in the first year.” …
Deals Get Personal With Tenka’s DIY Platform
Self-service hyperlocal advertising platform Tenka was founded when Google vets Nhon Ma and Tim Zhou, who had previously focused on display advertising, saw a “huge opportunity” in leveraging data to enhance the value of daily deals. The idea was to make Groupon-like offers more relevant, more personalized — and more local — by empowering merchants to create their own offers and distributing those offers via location-based services and social media platforms…
Main Street Connect’s Tucker: Hyperlocal Needs Scale
A veteran in the community news business, Carll Tucker founded the community news company Trader Publications in 1981, built it up, and sold out to Gannett in 1999. Then, two years ago, he came to the conclusion that the community news model he’d been so successful at offline hadn’t really been replicated on the Web. And so he founded Main Street Connect, a small-but-growing collection of community sites that began in Connecticut and soon will expand into Westchester (N.Y.), and beyond…
Geomentum’s Lisa Bradner: Thinking Differently About ‘Scale’
When she joined the hyperlocal marketing firm Geomentum in the summer of 2010, Lisa Bradner had worked for two decades in consumer marketing, most recently as an analyst for Forrester Research. With the hyperlocal advertising market expanding rapidly, the move put her in a great position to explore the ways that micro-targeted location-based ads can create more relevant consumer engagement…
Hyperlocal Video Isn’t Ready for “Take-Out”
If you want to know where broadcast content is headed on location-aware devices, Scott Lindenbaum, co-founder and president of Broadcastr, suggests you look no further than your car dashboard: “There’s a reason car televisions never replaced car radios,” he said. “Video in motion is impractical and rather dangerous.” Audio worked because it worked on the go, in motion, allowing the user to remain focused on the present reality (the road) augmented by the content delivered over the radio…
Austin Bakeshop’s Groupons Reward Existing Customers, Entice Newbies
When newspaper and magazine ads failed to deliver the customers she’d hoped for, Olivia O’Neal turned to the web. As the co-owner of Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop, O’Neal has used group coupons and positive online reviews on sites like Yelp to help turn her from-scratch bakery into a dessert destination for foodies in Austin.
Empowering Local Restaurants Online
In 2011, pretty much every restauranteur knows that their business needs some sort of Web presence. They may just need a functional way to let people know their address and menu, or they may want a more sophisticated marketing outreach, but online is certainly part of the equation. The problem is that most restaurateurs aren’t versed in Web design, and many don’t know exactly what they should be doing online and why…
Atlanta Chef Reaches Diners on as Many Platforms as Possible
When he’s not in the kitchen at one of Atlanta’s top steakhouses, McKendrick’s Steakhouse executive chef Thomas Minchella is busy managing his restaurant’s Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare accounts, along with his personal social media accounts and a company blog. He aims to keep his messages authentic and can’t stand it when celebrity chefs hire outside companies to do their tweeting for them…
Salon Owner Courts a Niche Market of Eco-Friendly Customers
Aurora Marks isn’t a fan of mass-market coupon sites. As the co-owner of Salon Botanique Eco-Chic, an organic hair salon and spa in Morristown, New Jersey, she says she focuses on reaching customers who care more about getting the best quality hair and skin products than about getting a bargain basement price.
CityGrid’s Herratti: Local Is Becoming More and More Fragmented
Jay Herratti has been working in the local advertising space for decades. Previously the CEO of IAC-owned destination guide CitySearch, he currently serves as CEO of CityGrid Media, a “location-aware” advertising network that aggregates local advertisers and extends them across a network of 300+ publishers, including Urban Spoon, Insider Pages, and many others. Street Fight caught up with Herratti recently to talk about the fragmented nature of the local online advertising marketplace and why the Groupon phenomenon is an example of the kind of “closed-loop” advertising model that small businesses love.
The Batavian’s Owens: Start Selling Ads the Day You Launch
The veteran newsman says hyperlocal networks like Patch are at “a disadvantage” when it comes to selling local ads, because there is “a certain barrier of trust that must be overcome” in order to get local businesses on board as advertisers. He also weighs in on the long-term viability of advertising as a business model for local online content.
Phoenix Restaurateur Prefers Social Media Over Coupons
Chef Justin Beckett is one the proprietors behind Beckett’s Table, a go-to restaurant for foodies in Phoenix, Arizona. Since the restaurant opened last year, Beckett has developed a community on Twitter and encouraged check-ins on Foursquare by seeking out diners and introducing himself personally...