SkyBlox, Citysearch & Yelp Holding Town Hall Meetings

July 13th, 2009 by Michael

Ever since we started SkyBlox in late 2007, we’ve been thrust into the local online media scene and become de facto experts in the process. Always looking to support local businesses we teamed up with our friends over at Citysearch and Yelp in the past few months to conduct social media town hall meetings at local chambers of commerce and business associations.

The main theme of the sessions is how local businesses/neighborhoods should best wade their way through the wild west that is social online media. Many businesses are participating, but not efficiently in most cases. Simply participating at a basic level doesn’t guarantee positive results. It has to be done right. And we think we have some helpful ideas. The ideas and thoughts have been well received by the neighborhood businesses so we put together a primer. Here’s a summary.

#1 Your website is fine, but it is becoming less useful. Aggregation websites (e.g. Citysearch) and new technology (e.g. text messages) are more relevant to your target customers. Your customers are rarely going to your individual website. Google yourself and see what websites come up in the top three: it’s often not your website, rather Yelp or Citysearch.

#2 Setup a Twitter account. Twitter is the fastest growing online tool right now and it’s 100% free. Setting-up an account only takes a few minutes. Once you do, search for people in your neighborhood (or interested in your neighborhood) and follow them.

#3 Use the free tools offered by Yelp. Go to www.yelp.com/business to set up your free account and claim your business’ page. Upload pictures of your business, check to make sure your address, website, and store hours are correct. Send private messages or post publicly in response to your reviewers.

#4 Setup a free SkyBlox account. Whatever you broadcast will be seen in their 100+ hotspots around Atlanta. And if you offer Wi-Fi, you might want to consider their Wi-Fi marketing. Besides being able to advertise in real-time to your Wi-Fi users, SkyBlox Wi-Fi allows you to gather email addresses from your Wi-Fi users (e.g. iPhones) for your email newsletter.

#5 Facebook can be great for invites to events. It takes just a few clicks to set up an event, then invite everyone you are friends with to come, which then gives you yes-no-maybe boxes like an evite.

#6 With all of these online tools, the content should be relevant to your customers and you should be having fun putting it out. If not, it’s unlikely that your customers will care about it.

And the most basic, but effective tool…

#7 If you don’t already have one, email newsletters are very popular and effective and there are lots of programs (e.g. Constant Contact) that make them very easy to produce. Even if your newsletter is a monthly sent to your basic friends and family, this still gets the word out in one quick note.

Posted in Advertising, Michael, neighborhoods, thoughts, twitter | 1 Comment »

RIP Local Paper

February 2nd, 2009 by Michael

Everyone knows the newspaper industry is having a rough time lately.  Between the economic climate, advertisers drying up and content increasingly going online, it’s getting more and more difficult for a local paper to sustain itself.  Covering the expensive costs of writing, printing and delivering paper editions has put a few papers out of business.  A site called Newspaper Death Watch is even “chronicling the decline of newspapers”.  We got wind this week that Denver residents are taking a stand for the local paper holding a candlelight vigil for the Rocky Mountain News, the city’s 150-year-old paper.

Newspapers will survive in one form or another. Recently we ran across a very unique approach from The Printed Blog. But regardless of what emerges, neighborhood businesses and local residents are increasingly moving their “voice” online.

Only a few years ago, the local paper was the only place you could find hyper-local happenings.  What everyone who loves neighborhoods agrees on is that those business and residents need a platform – to communicate and to stay in the loop.

We believe that the future isn’t one monolithic media source. It will be many, smaller sources. Do you own a restaurant? You better participate in Yelp. A live music venue? MySpace. You want to offer Wi-Fi? SkyBlox. Instead of one ad for $500 per month in one local paper, local businesses will increasingly pay smaller amounts across a number of platforms. Or use their free offerings.

These methods are the best ways to reach the mobile, higher-demographic customers that every business desires.

We’ll miss the weekend paper and cup of coffee as much as anyone.

Posted in Advertising, Michael, neighborhoods | 4 Comments »

How To Weather The Rough Economy

December 1st, 2008 by dave

We recently ran across Scott Trubey’s Atlanta Business Chronicle article on how restaurants are using creative deals & specials to weather the current downturn.

Now that we are officially in a recession, we believe more and more local businesses will have to be creative. Just last week we met with a local salon owner that told us that he has completely cut all citywide advertising. He is only using two tactics this month…SkyBlox and the Agnes Scott newspaper (a nearby college).

We hear the same things more-and-more around town…”inexpensive,” “targeted advertising,” “potential customers within a few miles of my business.”

For the same price as one small weekly placement in Creative Loafing you can receive an entire year of SkyBlox Wi-Fi Marketing! There is nothing more local, targeted and cost-effective.

Or create an account and post for free! Why would anyone turn down free advertising in this economy?

Posted in Advertising, Atlanta Business Chronicle, Dave, General, thoughts | No Comments »

Introducing BloxTops…The City’s Best Deals

November 17th, 2008 by Michael

Every day Atlanta businesses post their specials and happenings on SkyBlox. It’s free, easy and reaches tens of thousands of monthly Wi-Fi users. How could you turn that down in an economy like this?

Since we launched last April, users have been telling us that they’d love to see these deals in their email box. Now with the help of a trusted third party we’ll send the seven best daily Atlanta deals to your email box every Wednesday.

Neighborhood businesses have a hard time getting the word out. With SkyBlox not only will our 100,000 monthly users (many nearby already) see their specials & events, but now thousands of neighbors will see their specials and events in their email box or Twitter feed – http://www.twitter.com/skyblox.

Quick side note. If you run a website and you want to have your largest one-day traffic spike ever. Send the best deals in the city to a whole bunch of folks!

Sign up to get on the BloxTops email list.

Posted in Advertising, Atlanta Business Chronicle, Michael, twitter | 1 Comment »

Local Print Advertising

October 2nd, 2008 by dave

Earlier this week Creative Loafing filed for bankruptcy. This caused the SkyBlox team to pull out all of the data we have collected on local print advertising. Having talked with hundreds of neighborhood businesses around Atlanta, we figured we knew at least a thing or two worth passing along.

In Atlanta the two most popular local providers are Creative Loafing and Savvy Shopper.

Creative Loafing recently charged one of our customers $289 per week and required them to sign-up for a thirteen week commitment. So for the low, low price of $3,757 this neighborhood coffee shop was able to put a business card-sized coupon in the back of Creative Loafing for thirteen weeks. During this period one coupon was redeemed.

On a more positive note, Savvy Shopper recently charged one of our customers $400 for a half-page ad (consisting of four coupons) in one of their editions. This placement was more successful – four coupons were redeemed.

We realize that local print advertising does more than drive customers in measurable ways. Much of it is about driving awareness and planting a seed for consumers to return multiple times. And most local businesses have a modest monthly advertising budget that needs to be used.

The problem is that our current economic situation is causing two major shifts in the local landscape. First, small businesses are having to find cheaper and more targeted ways to advertise. And second, the gas situation and bad economy are causing consumers to increasingly work from home (or from their neighborhood business) and seek-out deals near their homes.

At SkyBlox we don’t stack piles & piles of weekly newspapers on sidewalks. And we don’t send out tens of thousands of mailers across Atlanta each month. We are more targeted, like advertising in an airplane or an elevator. We might not touch as many people across the city as these organizations, but we touch the ones that are most likely to buy from neighborhood businesses. And for $35 there’s no better, more targeted advertising available anywhere.

Posted in Advertising, thoughts | 2 Comments »