In January I wrote about Google’s Local Business Center. Today I want to say a few words about some of the other local business listing sites that should prove beneficial to Kitchen and Bath Showrooms (as well as other businesses).
Bing: The Bing Local Listing Center (http://www.bing.com/local) allows you to add or edit your profile, including categories, specialties, products carried, a description of your business, your positioning line, hours of operation, and more. The listing is verified by actual humans, and you are sent your PIN verification via snail mail – so this is not an instantaneous listing. Be patient. It’s worth being correctly represented on Bing.
Yahoo!: You will want to go to the “add a new business” page (http://listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php) and follow the instructions. As with Bing and Google, you have the opportunity to include a lot of information and photos. Yahoo! appears to be reviewed by humans, as well. As of this writing, I am not sure how long that takes…. When I find out (if I remember), I’ll add that info as a comment.
Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/ I am new to this, so if you have experience and can add to the discussion, please do! Yelp appears to be a hybrid of “traditional” social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace and Search Engine Maps (business listings). Your showroom can have a local listing and you can connect with friends, customers and others (local to you) to discuss the best places to eat, shop or get your kitchen remodeled. Search for your showroom, as you likely already have a listing that will only require tweaking.
Try to keep up… I dare you! Here is a great site to help you in those efforts- http://mashable.com/
The Kitchen & Bath Channel – Smart Phone Mobile App
Book: A is for Advertising… B is for Branding…
Hi Phil,
I am in complete agreement that local business listings are the way to go for any local business dependent upon the local consumer for their revenue. This is a good point in time in which the Internet is a good local marketing tool to be found on web searches and mobile searches.
What I am most concerned about are small and local businesses having to contend with multiple websites when it comes to their local listing. What I’m really talking about are “time resources”.
Afterall, there are over 60 websites in four different categories specifically geared towards local listings. How can a local or small business have the time resources to cover this space.
Even if you made a conscious decision to not manage all 60, there are well more than Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask. The space goes to Local.com (they went public), Yelp, Merchant Circle, and many others.
Consumers will be the ones deciding which of these local listing websites they will go and post their experience through consumer reviews. This adds to the burden that no one single local listing website will do the trick.
Something we recently read at KillerStartUps are companies that are offering a low cost service to update then manage these listings for companies. You can read about this at KillerStartUps here:
http://www.killerstartups.com/Search/smartfindslocallisting-com-be-found-online
It is a changing world and the local business will benefit. There will be some adjustment to this space needed with early adoption of new marketing tools.
Good information from your post and hopefully varying opinions help give perspective.