SmallBusinessNewz

Study: Online Media Essential To Local Shopping

Small business owners who have worked hard to create sites, use social media, and proofread info on services like Google Maps should be pleased to know their effort's likely to pay off.  BIA/Kelsey and ConStat have determined that 97 percent of consumers use online media when shopping locally.

Advertising on Social Networks: Worth it?

Social media is about conversations. That's the line we've been fed time and time again. There's nothing wrong with it. It's the truth. For marketers and businesses looking to utilize the tools and social networks out there, it will probably serve them well to remember that, but it has often been suggested that directly marketing and trying to sell your product through social networks is in bad taste. That is a topic that probably isn't so cut and dry.

Local Business Listings With Bing

When WebProNews headed to SMX West in Santa Clara, they caught up with Mikko Ollila, Senior Product Manager on Bing Local, to discuss a little bit about Bing's experience and intentions in local search.

UK May Regulate Social Media Ads

The UK's Advertising Association and Advertising Standard Authority is poised to sweep away any remaining questions about whether or not social media is a serious business.  The AA has recommended that the ASA be granted more influence over online marketing communications, including those made on social networks.

Optimizing for Media Coverage

Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing recently spoke on a panel at the Online Marketing Summit about the intersection of social, search, and public relations. He talked a bit about this concept with WebProNews in an interview.

Forrester Predicts 10% Growth Rate For Online Retail

There's good news this afternoon for small business owners who sell things online: Forrester Research believes the online retail sector will continue to take off, making the U.S. market alone worth about $250 billion by 2014.

Yelp Responds To Extortion Allegations

Last week, we wrote about a lawsuit that'd been filed against Yelp.  The suit alleged that Yelp representatives would sometimes offer to remove negative reviews if businesses would buy ads.  Now, the CEO of Yelp has fired back (several times, actually), but a second suit's been filed, too.

Mobile is Changing Search, Bringing Businesses More Opportunities

Would you agree that search is one of the most important elements of an online marketing strategy? If you answered yes, you've got to constantly consider where search is headed, because this is an industry that doesn't just sit still. At the Search Marketing Expo in Santa Clara this week, there was an interesting keynote discussion on "the state of the search union". Participants in this panel were a Google employee, a Yahoo employee, and a couple of experts in the industry.

Canada's Business Barometer Continues To Rise

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business's Business Barometer Index has gone up for the second month in a row, and even if it's supposed to take three occurrences to start an official trend, this is a big deal.  The index has achieved a feat and reached a level not seen in a while.

Businesses Can Enable Click-to-Call on Mobile Ads

Google recently revealed the new click-to-call phone numbers for local ads on mobile devices, such as iPhone, Android and Palm Pre, with complete internet browsers.