For the longest time, newspapers have covered local areas by dividing them into beats — crime, schools, transportation, and so on. In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion around newsrooms shifting their beats away from reflecting these kinds of traditional print sensibilities and more toward a reflection of how people live their lives. An example of how this shift would work: instead of having a city politics reporter cover the city council’s plans to build a new dog park, you would have the pets reporter cover it.

A number of newspapers have attempted this kind of reorganization, with varying degrees of success. The problem is still in how local news and information sites are programmed. Most local sites still have the traditional local/news, entertainment, sports, lifestyle, business and opinion sections, and that’s the way that users have become accustomed to navigating our sites. When I was working on the redesign of the Tribune newspaper sites, we had many conversations with our newspapers on the renaming of internal sections — but, in the end, all of them settled back on the standard sections.

What we are failing to do is to give people a good way to follow the topics or interests that they have. I think we need to do two things to help users do this:

1.) Better organization and programming — The idea of programming content for websites is not an easy one. There are so many users all with different interests all visiting at different rates — some once a week, others daily. One of the most interesting ideas I’ve seen lately is what Fast Company has done with some of the topics. They are doing what they call “slow live-blogging.” The idea is to take a topic and continuously update one article as the topic evolves.

While news websites have long had topic pages, these sections failed in that they were just an automatic feed of a named entity. Instead of picking a topic like “Social Media,” Fast Company is picking topics like “How to think like an engineer.” Then as they write more about that topic they add to the top and update the headline. As a result, the magazine has seen much higher engagement with its online content.

Going back to my example of the dog park, one could see a newsroom having a slow blog on “Living with Pets in Orlando” — and only updating the page when there is something new to talk about.

If you look at the strategy of Flipboard,  this is clearly the direction that company is headed in — its aggregator will have magazines on just about any topic imaginable.

2.) Personalization – Having content and having it organized isn’t enough, because discovery still becomes difficult when you can’t place every single topic on a navigation bar. Instead, local news and information websites should focus on personalizing their experience to individual users. This also has long been talked about and tested. There are two types of personalization: one is where the user selects topics they are interested in and their feed or homepage is updated based on those topics. The other is where the site analyzes the type of content the user is reading and continually learns based on that (with some possibility for the user to manually adjust their settings). Some sites have attempted to do this but very few have made this a priority.

It will be key for local sites to not just think of hyperlocal as “more local than a newspaper,” but instead as “local and relevant.” Sometimes that means a user’s neighborhood — but other times it also means the topics and passions they are interested in.

Matt Sokoloff is a 2012-2013 Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow working on a project to help publishers market their membership and subscription products. His background is in building digital products for media organizations. Read more about his current work here and respond in the comments or to sokoloffm@rjionline.org or @MattSokoloff on Twitter.

Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically

Lem Lloyd – FixYa
The largest product questions & answer site in the world FixYa has just announced the appointment of Lem Lloyd as its new chief revenue officer. Lloyd, former VP of sales at Yahoo!, will be responsible for leading all sales and business development activities. During his tenure at Yahoo!, Lloyd led major channel partnerships by developing out their network of resellers. He will be moderating a panel at Street Fight Summit West on June 4th in San Francisco.

Larry Hertz – VendAsta
Some of my favorite Canadian cohorts and leading reputation management platform VendAsta is pleased to welcome Larry Hertz to it’s team.  Larry is the former publisher of The Western Producer, which is Glacier Media Group’s flagship publication. Larry arrives with over 15 years local media experience in the print and radio industries including a 5 year stint at Rawlco Radio.  Make it rain, Larry!

Tim Harper, CTO & Content Director- SpinGo
My friends at the premiere event listing engine SpinGo just brought on a new CTO and director of content. Tim Harper was recently appointed CTO and his past experience includes senior software engineer at Lead Media Partners and software architect at Red Brain Labs. Vince McCullam was also brought on as content director to help power the event engine with the most relevant event content. Vince’s experience includes PR & communications director at Oozle Media.

Village Voice – Mass Layoffs
Popular alt-weekly The Village Voice lost two additional staffers as restaurant critic Tejal Rao resigned along with Nick Pinto – a long time staff writer. The resignations come soon after the editor-in-chief and deputy editor quit rather than fire more staff, which didn’t stop the parent company’s upper management from kicking key employees such as Michael Musto to the curb.

Barry Frey – DPAA
The Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) announced today that Barry Frey has been hired as the organization’s new president and chief executive officer. Frey is a long-time media and marketing visionary with extensive leadership credibility in building interactive, television and other and cross-platform media businesses for marketers. He succeeds Susan Danaher, who resigned from the DPAA to accept a position at Adspace Digital Mall Network.

Plus where to look for jobs now….

Swipely is looking for a sales development representative Apply here.

Word on the street says that WrightIMC is looking for a wordpress developer and a senior SEO, I know you will have fun there! Apply here

Socialmedia.org is in search of a community manager.  Apply here

Can you do development work? Contact NetApp about this unique gig. Apply here

Nifty Marketing seeks skilled account managers & sales reps in Burley, Idaho. Submit Your Details Here

Worldnow is hiring a digital media sales director. Apply here

Thomson is looking to hire a director, chief of staff in London. Apply here

Turner Broadcasting  seeks a publicist. Apply here

Intuit wants to find a senior product manager. Apply here

Twitter is on the prowl for a business operations manager. Apply here.

Plus new talent looking now….

Current  president of online consulting firm, he’s been online since 1999 working with IYP’s & newspapers and eventually moving over to loyalty-based and digital solutions. Willing to relocate from New England.

Past experiences in directing SEO, account management and marketing for agencies and marketing companies since 1996. He is an OG in the industry and I personally vouch for his successes.

Current VP of business development with over 12 years of digital marketing strategy, management, and business development experience in the hospitality and retail verticals. Ready to move in one month, located in the metro DC area.

Current director of development in the Boston metro area, with 6 years of business development, customer acquisition,  partnership building & product development. Available now.

Current VP with 29 years experience in sales management, corporate actions, HR and business development. Located in the Charlotte metro area & ready to move now.

Current PHP developer with 15 years experience, located in the Southeast, ready to move now.

If you are interested in any of these candidates e-mail me for more information.

Kelly Benish is VP of sales and marketing at Search Influence, a national online marketing firm focused on SMBs and white label online marketing for publishers and media partners who serve them. You can follow her on Twitter @Lokellsearch.

Episode 130

Recorded: May 17, 2013
Hosts: Rob Woodbridge & Asif Khan

Show highlights:

A few announcements
- We wrote (part of) a book! The Everything Guide to Mobile Apps and it is available for order now!
- If you’d like to leave a message for us to play on the show, leave it here

Featured Guest
Gary Schwartz, co-founder & CEO of Impact Mobile. (25:25)

Top news of the week

1. Yahoo acquires Loki Studios (9:49)
2. “Geography of Hate” map (14:07)
3. Fourwinds apps – turning Apple devices into signage (18:40)
4. Alibaba invests in AutoNavi (37:25)
5. ANAR Foundation (Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk). Working with their agency, they used lenticular printing (40:18)
6. Nestlé Nespresso boutique in Munich, Germany – testing RFID self checkout (47:30)

Resource of the Week
Future of Google Glass (52:02)

Google Said to Consider Buying Waze (Bloomberg)
Google is considering buying map-software provider Waze, setting up a possible bidding war with Facebook, people familiar with the matter said. Waze is fielding expressions of interest from multiple parties and is seeking more than $1 billion, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. The startup might also remain independent, instead seeking to raise a round of venture capital financing.

On-Demand Delivery Startup Postmates Preparing for NYC Launch (TechCrunch)
Postmates is looking to expand its business and make mobile, on-demand deliveries a widespread thing throughout cities around the country. The company has been operating in San Francisco for a while, and launched in Seattle about three months ago. But where will it land next? All signs point to New York City.

INFOGRAPHIC: How Location Data Is Being Collected And Transforming The Mobile Industry (Business Insider)
With over 770 million GPS-enabled smartphones, location data has begun to permeate the entire mobile space. The possibilities for location-based services on mobile go beyond consumer-facing apps like FourSquare and Shopkick. It’s powering advertisements, and many other services — from weather to travel apps.

The Newsonomics of Value Exchange and Google Surveys (Nieman Lab)
Ken Doctor: Static, smaller-display advertising is increasingly out of favor, with both prices and clickthrough rates moving deeper into the bargain basement. But marketers want to market, readers want to read, and viewers want to watch, so new methods that combine the marketing of brands and offers and the go-button on media consumption are au courant.

LoyalBlocks Lands $9 Million Led By General Catalyst To Scale Out Its Mobile-Based Loyalty Program (TechCrunch)
LoyalBlocks, a startup that makes a mobile-focused technology platform for brick-and-mortar businesses looking to encourage customer loyalty, has raised $9 million in new funding.This brings the total investment into LoyalBlocks to $12.2 million.

Foursquare Partners With Gnip to Sell Its Worldwide Real-time Check-in Data (The Next Web)
Foursquare and Gnip on Thursday together announced a partnership that will see the former’s check-in data distributed to the latter’s clients. Foursquare is giving Gnip a real-time feed of the places where its users are checking in, which will naturally be anonymized for privacy purposes.

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For brands, the economic impact of coordinating local marketing efforts at national level comes from two existing inefficiencies, says John Busby, SVP of the Marchex Institute, the call tracking company’s research wing: “When local marketing solutions are sold to [small and medium-sized businesses], the price of the lead has to include the overhead to provide account services for that local biz,” he told Street Fight in an interview. “If a national program takes that [responsibility] from the thousands of local reps, it removes huge amount of overhead and allows the average price of the leads to reduce.”

The other part of the economic argument comes in search advertising. Often, a national brand and their local affiliate will compete with each other over a branded search term, leading to a “significant inflation” of the auction price, according to Busby. By bringing the local and national search efforts under one roof, the brand can substantially reduce the cost-per-lead for both parties.

But centralization isn’t just all about cutting costs — there’s a quality component as well. In digital, the technology, which underpins the local marketing ecosystem is complex, and the platforms and properties through which a consumer engages with a brand locally are fragmented. Since 2007, the average number of media sources that small businesses use to market themselves has grown from 3.0 to 5.8 today.

Fragmentation however, is only part of the problem. Studies show that consumers tend to seek local information more often on a mobile device than via desktop. That means that instead of visiting a company’s website and then navigating to a store locator, mobile consumers will likely engage with their local affiliate either through the phone or a listings site.

In considering a shift toward a centralized approach, however, brands need to plan to build out ancillary services to support a centralized approach, says Busby. That means making sure there’s added corporate staff to help liaise with local businesses or regional management, and ensuring that the necessary technology is in place to manage leads at the local level effectively. For instance, mobile users tend to convert through the phone more often than their desktop counterparts — however, many of those calls are accidental. Parsing out which calls are quality leads and making sure that those leads are indexed and responded to in a short time is not a trivial feat.

The opportunity is massive. Busby believes that the bulk of the marketing spend will come from co-op dollars, which are largely tied up in offline media. And it’s a big chunk of change. Estimates range from $50 billion spent in the U.S. to over $550 billion spent worldwide per year, and less than 1% is invested online. Compare that to the 20% of ad dollars brands are allocating in digital today, and a shift in spend appears imminent.

Steven Jacobs is deputy editor at Street Fight.

To find out how LION and its members are doing in a year of hyperlocal turmoil and shakeups – most of it among the corporate networks against which many “indies” compete – I put these questions to Smith.

LION jump-started into existence about a half-year ago with 75 members that were quickly signed up through a half-price deal supported by the Patterson Foundation. Where are you today in membership, and how long is the half-price deal available?
LION has just under 100 members at the moment. We’d definitely encourage other local indie publishers to sign up before the end of May while they can still get 50 percent off their dues, thanks to the generous support of the Patterson Foundation. In addition, publishers who’ve paid their dues by May 31 will qualify for half-off early bird registration for our conference in Chicago in October.

Are your members small or big sites, mostly for-profit or non-profit, and what kind of communities do they represent, geographically and demographically?
LION publishers are in charge of the entire gamut of local news sites, all across the country. We have a mix of for- and nonprofit sites, covering neighborhoods, small rural towns, metro areas and regions. Just as every community is unique, it takes a different type of news organization to report on each one.

Do you have an idea of how many independent local news sites are out there?
Quantifying the number of indie sites is difficult, because it depends on definition. There are easily a couple hundred professionally run sites that produce a steady stream of news. LION aims to serve those publishers, and assist those who want to launch a site or transition a part-time project into a sustainable business. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of those projects around the country; we’d love to see a LION publisher rebuilding local news in every city and town.

What services are you providing right now to members? What’s your feedback from members on those services?
We’ve negotiated preferred rates on media liability and D&O insurance, and are working on member discounts with a number of different technology vendors. Our primary focus is on providing a platform for member communication — LIONs privately discuss a variety of business, tech and editorial questions daily, and freely offer up solutions to challenges. We’ve been very pleased by the number of publishers who participate every day, helping out their colleagues with quality advice.

Any permanent staff?
LION is an all-volunteer organization; our informal motto is “publishers helping publishers.” We draw on the individual expertise of our members, who serve on the LION Board of Directors and various committees as well as consistently lending a helping hand to fellow members. We haven’t yet seen that having paid staff would make us more effective in our goal of helping indie publishers work efficiently and effectively through leveraging the diverse talents of our members.

You’re planning an October conference. What will it do?
The LION summit will see our members actively share their expertise on specific topics, as well as provide an opportunity to meet with experts from business and academia, along with vendors who are filling the needs of local publishers.

Is there a proven model for producing hyperlocal news that generates an engaged usership that would be attractive to advertisers?
Local doesn’t scale. We’ve seen it again and again; giant chains trying to templatize the production of news. That’s not a tactic that worked in print for Gannett and others, and it certainly won’t work online. The troubles of large-scale attempts at covering local news are only relevant to LION publishers in that they show the contrast between the operations of local businesses and chains.

There’s no “proven model” other than the precept that local news works when it is just that. Every community is different; attempting to cover every town and city by ticking a few boxes in a top-down plan is foolhardy at best, and insulting to local readers at worst – as well as being a great way to lose millions of dollars.

We regularly see LION members announcing that their readership and revenues are reaching new heights, that they’re hiring new staffers and deepening their coverage. We don’t yet see many getting over-the-top wealthy publishing local news, but they’re not burning through tens or  hundreds of millions, either.

Local news is successful when it truly *is* local. Local news organizations must be *of* their communities, not just *in* them to ship profits out of town. Local news must respect readers: know what they want to know, know what they need to know, and provide it quickly, accurately and comprehensively. Cookie-cutter editorial priorities mandated on a national level are the complete opposite of that.

There’s continuing criticism and confusion about the metrics to measure audience. Unique-visitor and page-view numbers don’t really measure actual audience, critics say. Is LION doing anything to help bring better analytics to measuring audience at the hyperlocal level?
At the local level, small businesses are concerned about one thing: Does their cash register ring? Supporting a local news site helps them connect with the local readers who are passionate about their communities and motivated to support their local economies. It’s easy to drive page views with titillating fluff and nonsense placed on pages calculated to garner endless clicks on “next,” but time-on-page metrics and thoughtful, relevant comments show what readers truly engage with.

What do you and your board of directors see at the No. 1 issue for indies as this near midyear mark?
There are many LION sites that have developed into businesses that are sustainable over the long term. Fostering growth in the local segment of the industry by spreading that knowledge around is our primary goal. LION gives local news entrepreneurs the ability to call upon the widespread experience of those who’ve already faced down similar challenges.

While there’s certainly no single recipe for success, our members are willing to share with one another, and learn what’s behind our achievements. Just as with any new small business, launching a local news site is certainly not for the faint of heart. It’s a venture that demands skill and perseverance, but it’s always encouraging to know that the other members of LION Publishers are at your back.

Tom Grubisich authors The New News column for Street Fight. He is editorial director of LocalAmerica, which is partnering with InstantAtlas to develop sites that will present how communities rate in livability. Local America is featured on the Reynolds Journalism Institute’s Pivot Point site.

Merchant:

Most restaurants with loyalty programs offer customer rewards like free appetizers and discounts on specialty items. At Vino Vidi Vici, an Italian restaurant in Massena, N.Y., owner Crista Makdouli wanted to offer something extra to help her program stand out. “For 50 [purchases] you can get your name engraved on one of our tables, so you’ll have your own table,” said Makdouli. “For a million [purchases], we will deliver a free Ferrari with a large pizza.”

Makdouli has partnered with SpotOn to power her loyalty program, incentivizing repeat visits with major prizes (like free cars and engraved tables) as well as smaller rewards, like free glasses of wine, appetizers, and specialty pizzas. Of course, those basic prizes don’t generate nearly as much publicity as her big ticket rewards. “It’s something that nobody is ever going to reach; it’s just funny, and it gets that reaction. It’s like heart equity,” said Makdouli.

Customers earn points based on the number of visits, rather than the amount they’ve spent. “It doesn’t matter what you buy. For coming in, you get a ‘spot.’ It’s not a value-based program, it’s a relationship-based program” said Makdouli.

Not only does this relationship-based program help Makdouli incentivize repeat visits, but it also serves as a tool for customer acquisition. “It links through Facebook. It says ‘So and so is a big shot’ … something that’s really funny and cool,” said Makdouli. “It catches people’s attention when it comes up and [their] friends see, ‘John Doe is a big shot at Vidi.’” Customers can earn extra points for “auto-bragging” their reward activity on Facebook, and sharing links to the restaurant’s website with their friends.

Focusing on social
Promoting social sharing on Facebook is a major component of Makdouli’s marketing strategy at Vino Vidi Vici. “We focus a lot on social media and just developing relationships with customers [and] making sure their experience is always top notch once they’re in the door. To get them in the door, we focus a lot on social media and online marketing. We have a billboard, which has been great, but we put our time and money into Facebook.”

Although Makdouli favors free marketing platforms whenever possible, she isn’t afraid to spend money on paid promotions when necessary. She uses Facebook’s tools to manage her restaurant’s fan page for free, but pays to expand the reach of certain posts from time to time. “You’ve got to be really creative,” said Makdouli. “My goal in our marketing is to make people laugh.”

Adding online menus
Another way Makdouli has beefed up her restaurant’s presence on Facebook is by adding a menu component, powered by MustHaveMenus. She uses the platform to design professional looking menus, and seamlessly posts those menus on her website and social media pages.

“Online presence is so important. It really is,” said Makdouli. “We don’t do print advertising. We don’t do radio advertising. The local media [in our area] are very frustrated with us because they look at our place and they’re like, ‘Wow, that’s a thousand dollar a month account.’ But we focus on publicity and online social media marketing.”

She says the key to marketing is to never lose sight of what customers want. “Everybody loves the hook up, [like] you’re a VIP. You want to want to walk into a place and feel like you’re treated specially,” said Makdouli. “Not only do you get points and rewards [with our loyalty program] … but it gives you that feeling of a true VIP experience.”

The Takeaway
When most merchants think about the pros and cons of hyperlocal marketing, they focus on ROI. What Makdouli has discovered is that it can be hard to quantify all the benefits of a loyalty program, since it’s not always easy to convert brand loyalty metrics into numbers that can be charted on a spreadsheet. Instead, she’s decided to focus on improving the customer experience, under the assumption that happy customers are more likely to come back themselves and refer their friends.

One way that Makdouli has been able to hedge her bets is by linking her loyalty program to Facebook and encouraging customers to share their experiences on the social networking platform. Over-the-top rewards — like the promise of a free Ferrari after one million visits — spur interest in the program, and make it more likely that customers will want to participate for the chance to win (however remote the possibility of winning may be).

Stephanie Miles is an associate editor at Street Fight.

Click here to read more Street Fight case studies.

Yelp Fires Back at Small Business Extortion Claims, Says It’s Not, and ‘Never has Been’, True (TheNextWeb)
Yelp and its review service have once again come under fire, this time over stories where business owners claim that reviews are “too self-centered and not trustworthy” and that it hides reviews. In a blog post, Yelp’s Vice President of Communications & Public Affair Vince Sollitto, offered up what he says is evidence that contradicts the claims reported to the media.

LION President: ‘Indie’ Readership, Revenues ‘Reaching New Heights’ (Street Fight)
“There’s no ‘proven model’ other than the precept that local news works when it is just that,” said LION president Dylan Smith. “Every community is different; attempting to cover every town and city by ticking a few boxes in a top-down plan is foolhardy at best, and insulting to local readers at worst – as well as being a great way to lose millions of dollars.”

Walmart Exec: Mobile Can Revive Personal Touch for Shoppers (CNet)
Where e-commerce brought the store to the Web, smartphones are bringing the Web to physical stores, with each consumer able to access data from their phones, according to Gibu Thomas, head of mobile for Walmart. Thomas believes that mobile-influenced sales in stores will soar to nearly $700 billion, double the market opportunity for e-commerce.

Case Study: Promoting Loyalty With Outrageous Rewards (Street Fight)
At Vino Vidi Vici, an Italian restaurant in Massena, N.Y., owner Crista Makdouli wanted to offer something extra to help her program stand out. “For 50 [purchases] you can get your name engraved on one of our tables, so you’ll have your own table,” said Makdouli. “For a million [purchases], we will deliver a free Ferrari with a large pizza.”

Square Arrives in Japan, Its First Market Outside North America (Verge)
At a press event in Tokyo today, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey announced the long-awaited Japanese debut of Square, the smartphone credit card processing service with the iconic white dongle. It’s a big deal for Dorsey’s four-year-old company — its first expansion outside of North America, and in the third-largest economy in the world.

Bill Gross’ UberMedia Launches UberAds, Using Social and Location Data to Better Target on Mobile (PandoDaily)
Bill Gross, one of the forefathers of intent-based digital advertising, is looking to create the same kind of disruption with a new mobile advertising platform called UberAds that utilizes social signals and location data for ad targeting. While not making it all the way to intent, UberAds offers one of the more compelling mobile targeting solutions and has seen click through rate increases that validate its approach.

Is Hyperlocal Reporting Over? (TheDailyMeal)
Companies in the once-locally dominated food media are now dropping hyperlocal coverage in favor of national coverage. Just as Grub Street is shying away from hyperlocality, other news media sources are shying away from food-focused blogs.

Foursquare Introduces ‘Super-Specific’ Search And Filter Options For iOS And Android To Help You Find New Venues (TechCrunch)
Foursquare updated its iOS and Android apps with an advanced search option that lets you control how the service seeks out new venues for you. This is a search performed based on all of the data that Foursquare has collected over the years, but its first move into a more conversational search experience.

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The findings of the study, which was conducted by Nielsen, contradict the anecdotal “showrooming” trend (in which consumers research on a mobile device then buy online or in another store) that has led some retailers to match prices found online and others to cut access to wi-fi in the store. The study found that 77% of smartphone users who make a purchase after looking up retail-related information on their device buy in-store — compared to only 20% who do so online.

“People are using the smartphone in the store as a compliment to what they’re doing,” says Bill Dinan, president of Telmetrics, the call tracking company that co-sponsored the survey. “When you start to view the smartphone as a complement to the purchase cycle, and as retailers understand that, that number will only increase.”

The mistake, says Dinan, is to think of the smartphone as a “last mile” device, only used to compare product or prices in-store. The report found that half (54%) of all retail-related activity on smartphones occurs at the beginning of the purchase cycle, well before the consumer walks into the store. That’s compared to 11% of shoppers who said they use their device at the end of their research process.

Nonetheless, those mobile consumers end up purchasing at an astounding rate. The report found that 56% of all mobile retail users went on to make a purchase. That’s in-line with a recent Google survey, which found that more than half of all mobile searches result in a phone call, store visit, or purchase.

Underlining findings in other reports, the study also found that location matters for mobile users. One quarter of users said they considered the proximity of the retail business was the most important factor when looking for information on a mobile device. And 57% of respondents said they expected locations to be within five miles of their location.

The bottom line is that mobile usage continues to evolve as the hardware and software improves. Certain tentpoles of mobile behavior like immediacy and proximity remain constant, but others like showrooming vary based on the applications and services available in the market.

Steven Jacobs is Street Fight’s deputy editor.

If you’re a TV station, for example, why limit your potential market to roughly just 11 percent of the overall online ad market? That’s what all the TV stations together tend to get from the average market, according to Borrell Associates. TV is king of the mountain in the world of offline advertising dollars, but that doesn’t (and won’t) translate to the Web.

Half of the money spent in the typical market goes to outside pure-play web companies, such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo. Think about that for a minute. They pull that off without, in the vast majority of cases, a single pair of feet on the street who have the contacts, local knowledge, and insight into the unique needs of the community. In order to appear competitive, most local media companies have formed digital divisions that offer services for local businesses that are available only through deals with these same pure-play companies, which guarantees that a certain portion of the business we generate will always end up in their hands. There simply has to be a better way.

David Weinberger

One of the most important writers of the early 21st Century is David Weinberger, the Harvard Philosopher and Berkman Fellow whose expertise in the area of knowledge has given us enlightening books such as The Cluetrain Manifesto, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, Everything is Miscellaneous, and Too Big To Know. David is also the author of many wonderful and thought-provoking quotes about the network. My favorite is that filtering information “on the way out” always beats filtering information “on the way in.” It’s why search (filtered outbound) dominates any portal with an “inbound” navigation system.

“(W)here there’s an abundance of access to an abundance of resources, filtering on the way in decreases the value of that abundance by ruling out items that might be of great value to a few people. Filtering on the way out, on the other hand, increases the value of the abundance by locating what’s of value to a particular person at a particular moment.”

These two sentences demonstrate an understanding that life in the network bears no resemblance to life in the analog world. This includes business opportunities for those with eyes to see, and there’s one in particular that deserves discussion — defining the Local Web and enabling commerce within.

Many years ago, a private media business owner (both television and newspapers) scoffed at my suggestion that it might be smart for “local” business to compete with Google. “Google?” he responded with raised eyebrow, “Impossible!” I’m sorry, but it’s absolutely possible and mostly because a “local” media business has what Google wishes it had: real people who live, breathe, and have roots within the community. This is a substantial competitive advantage in an effort to create a better, more accurate database than Google can create at the local level.

The ability to search a local database begins with the database, and my strong recommendation for local media companies — even if it means working together — is to create such a database. Here are five reasons why:

1. We must create new value for our companies, for our old value won’t sustain us in the network. The number one use of the Web is and will always be search. That’s because every node in the network is simply one node away from anything within the network. It is a network of abundance, and as Weinberger says, filtering on the way out “increases the value of the abundance by locating what’s of value to a particular person at a particular moment.”
2. Communities aren’t franchises; each has its own identity. Despite the homogenization of suburban America through the franchise model, the truth is that the roots of every community tap unique waters, and even though the most successful online businesses have a global reach, their use is primarily local. This begs the not-so-little question of how a business in Silicon Valley supports the needs of, for example, Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The answer is it doesn’t, and every year that the local business community ignores this, it puts another bullet hole its own foot.
3. A “Local Web” database business employs local people, pays local taxes, and supports the local community chest. The power brokers in your community, with its business leadership, public sector, and business development groups have no idea how much money is leaving your market via outside pureplay companies like Google, Facebook and legions of others. Get your local spending numbers from Borrell and do the math. You’ll be shocked. Spread that number throughout the community and see how long before it’s recognized as a serious local problem.
4. Person-to-person contact produces a richer, deeper and more accurate data set. The real weakness of a top-down approach to fetchable information is accuracy. For all the sophisticated targeting software used by the ad industry — and it is impressive — it produces mixed results, because the data sold to these companies is simply inaccurate. It’s getting better, though, and so is the overall search business. We can do as well or better at the local level.
5. Local media companies — especially television — can promote it many ways and without enormous marketing expenses. Google would kill for this advantage, to say nothing about feet on-the-street for sales. The competitive advantage we have over Bing or Google is that as long as we have local mass media muscle, we can actually drive people to a local online experience. This dramatically accelerates the process of ramping up the new online value we so desperately need.

The technology to do all this already exists. In fact, I was able to build Nashville411.com for WKRN-TV in 2005 by borrowing a simple directory software. Within weeks, we were averaging between 2-3,000 searches a day, but this was before the ability to store that data for subsequent use in advertising. In a very small way, this was the precursor to a functioning local web search. One thing we did learn is that it didn’t take long before our results began showing up in Google results, so Google was forced by its own technology to work for us or on our behalf (NOTE: the site no longer exists in its original form).

We look at this and say, “That’s a lot of work.” Indeed, but that’s why it would be so valuable — and most of the work is upfront anyway. We also look at it and say, “Cough-cough, but that’s not our business.” Well, it really is, for local media companies aren’t in the content business (as we think); we’re in the advertising business, and advertising is changing. There’s the old saw about how the railroad companies would’ve owned the airlines, if they had only understood what business they were really in. Same here, and the local marketplace is just waiting to be tapped by someone with local interests.

Why not us?

Terry Heaton is President of Reinvent21, a consulting company specializing in business reinvention for the 21st Century. He’s an internationally-recognized creative expert on all things web-related, especially as they relate to local media.