Marketing Pilgrim Published: “Local Ad Business Heats Up With Yext Tags Offering” plus 2 more

Local Ad Business Heats Up With Yext Tags Offering
Pew Claims 65% Have Purchased Online Content
Newark, NJ Mayor REALLY Uses Twitter To Help People

Local Ad Business Heats Up With Yext Tags Offering

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 07:37 AM PST

Google is committed to its local Internet marketing efforts to lengths like we have not seen the search giant go to in a while. Searching for new revenue streams will do that.

What have they done recently?

-Moved Marissa Mayer to oversee the local search and advertising efforts

-Changed the face of their search results to focus on Google Place Pages

-Pissed off just about every site that has been feeding at the Google local search trough for a long time

It's the last point that makes what Yext has done with its Tags offerings. First of all, it appears to mimicking Google by making their tags look just like the ones that have been rolled out to promote Google Place Pages in the Google SERP's. They are obviously trying to confuse SMB's and get the benefit of the Google push. By looking almost exactly the same SMB's can think they are buying one thing when they are really buying another! Nice. As if the SMB Internet marketing world isn't confusing enough.

What does the Yext system do and what is it providing? According to TechCrunch

They (local search engines) enter into an anti-Google alliance, of course. The company organizing this alliance is Yext, a New York City startup which specializes in pay-per-call advertising for local businesses and dashboards to help them manage their reputations and listings online. On Monday, it will launch a new feature called "Tags" which will let small businesses highlight their names with a little tag and customizable message across about a dozen local listings sites. Launch partners for this "Tag Alliance" will include MapQuest, Citysearch, Yellowbook, Local.com, SuperPages, White Pages, MerchantCircle, and Topix, with more to come.

Yext gives the ability for SMB's to add tags to their listings across several local sites. My question is, as these sites see less and less traffic from Google due to the changes in the SERP's how many people will see these tags?

Yext has a built in 'audience' in the 30,000 small businesses that have signed up for its free reputation monitoring tool. I have not tried this offering so I have no idea how effective it is. Being as close to the industry as I am I know how important it is to try these offerings out before you place any merit on them at all (in other words there is a lot of junk out there). Of course, for now it is free so it is attractive.

The Yext dashboard for this tags service will look like this

So it looks like the battle lines have been drawn. Google is making a push to promote their Place Page offering. This makes sense since it is more information about real search results rather than being pushed to a directory of sorts. The cries of monopoly and manipulation will continue to grow but it is far better for those who have had their food source turned way down (i.e. Citysearch, Local.com, SuperPages etc) to go out and try to make a competing effort. Google still has no obligation to support these other businesses. None, so why everyone is griping is beyond me.

Here's what I want to know. How many searchers are going to these other resources through channels other than Google? How many people go directly to Citysearch to get answers about local businesses? This will be the real information that needs to surface for SMB's to say that this Tags offering is a good option. The pitch used to be that these entities owned the SERP's and drove traffic to local businesses due to their Google success. Now as standalones can they offer enough traffic and value?

I don't know how many times I have heard SMB's cry foul over "Internet marketing" packages offered by Yellow Page providers (regardless of what color or stripe they are). There is already a serious lack of trust between SMB's and these players so why would the SMB want to invest directly in ads on their sites if they have not seen results from promises of the past?

The local space is certainly heating up. Google has made its statement loud and clear that it wants to dominate the vertical. They have the best chance to do so. What will get in their way is their current lack of human interaction and their intense desire to automate everything. Local doesn't work like that. I suspect they think they know better but I am not sure they do.

Pew Claims 65% Have Purchased Online Content

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 06:14 AM PST

When I first saw this report I was pretty surprised. By the title alone I was thinking about content in a content marketing manner. Either I was thinking about paid content in a far too narrow manner (paid subscriptions for newspapers etc etc) or Pew is looking at it too broadly. I think it's a little of both.

In the overview the Pew survey says

Music, software, and apps are the most popular content that internet users have paid to access or download, although the range of paid online content is quite varied and widespread.

Personally, I don't usually include music, software and apps as content. While I am not quite sure what to call them exactly (products?), I still have trouble considering these as content in the way we as Internet marketers usually think about it. When you get to the kinds of content we are familiar with, unfortunately the numbers do get familiar as in they aren’t real good.

Other forms of content perform even worse.

So what is the future of paid content on the web? Do we need to expand the definition to make it look more interesting or do we have to settle in the realization that not many people will currently buy content online and those that are more likely to (higher income earners) narrow the potential field even further?

Your thoughts?

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Newark, NJ Mayor REALLY Uses Twitter To Help People

Posted: 29 Dec 2010 09:39 AM PST

Time and time again we try to figure out just what Twitter is good for. We talk about business applications and other ways it can help people. We hear some nice stories but we also are subject to the kind of online activism that is often much more hollow than actually active.

Well, this past few days of blizzard conditions in the Northeast have provided some interesting political histrionics that have shown the good, the bad and the ugly of the political landscape. It has shown how the best and the worst in people come out in times of crisis. I had to laugh at an article in the New York Daily News telling New Yorkers to stop whining. Being a native of NJ and spending a lot of time in the city that one had me chuckling.

One story is emerging from all of this, however, shows what the combination of Twitter, social media savviness and the desire to help can do. And frankly, it is inspiring. The mayor of Newark, NJ, Cory Booker has been using Twitter to chronicle his street level efforts to help the people he has been voted to govern. He is helping people get help in a true time of need and all the while making a political star shine brighter (a win / win). He has taken this chance to possibly set a bar so high for public officials that it can't be matched (especially because it requires being in shape, being mobile and apparently giving a crap!).

TechDirt reports

He’s been tweeting up a storm, as he travels around Newark helping to plow streets and dig out cars and help people in trouble. As you look down the thread, he’s specifically responding to different people calling out for help — either sending people to help or showing up himself, such as the case of the woman who was stuck in her home and needed diapers, which the mayor brought himself.

The TechDirt write up also talks about how he handled someone who was angry but also not doing the right thing. It’s a classic. Here is an example of his tweet stream still today.

I don't know this guy's politics other than he is a Democrat but what action like this does is actually transcend the artificial barriers we place around people due to ideology and makes people concentrate on the simple word that should be the one we all aspire to in 2011: action.

Was it a publicity stunt? Who cares?! If people were helped then let's have every PR person and political consultant on the planet take classes in this kind of 'stunt'. We need 'stunts' like this. We need people getting social media like this.

It's a pretty cool way to help close out 2011 actually. Rather than concentrate on the people who use Twitter in the most superficial way let's take a look at someone who did something with it that had some real clout. This guy gets it in a way that others need to as well.

I have a soft spot for Newark, NJ. Growing up in NJ it was the big, nasty city that you only went to to get on a plane or have your train speed through it. It always felt like there was unrealized potential. Recently a friend of mine said the following on Facebook

At The Pru Center for Nets v Hawks. Wish I had a zillion bucks, because I’d buy Newark and treat it right. Such a beautiful and sad city.

That made me think. Now, as a result of Mayor Booker's efforts I am thinking some more. I am thinking that maybe it's not a zillion bucks that are needed to help but rather people who care like Cory Booker and a way to truly connect them like Twitter.

Here's to an action filled 2011 and more people truly 'getting it'.