MerchantCircle Press Coverage

As part of our launch around MerchantCircle Neighbors and Answers, we unveiled a radio ad campaign across four major metropolitan areas: LA, San Francisco, Chicago, and Atlanta, as well as a national online radio campaign.

Please tell us what you think, if you hear it.

Also, thank you to everyone who covered yesterday's launch of Neighbors and Answers, as well as mentioned us in some other way and form. You can read the press release here.

- TechCrunch - Hyperlocal Business Directory MerchantCircle Launches Consumer-Facing Features

"MerhcantCircle’s “Neighbors” creates a mini-social network around the site where consumers can “follow” local businesses for information on promotions, coupons and announcements. In order to access this feed, consumers need to create a profile."

- VentureBeat - MerchantCircle Answers lets small businesses show off their expertise

"MerchantCircle Neighbors, meanwhile, is a way for consumers to create an account and “follow” a businesses, similar to what you’d do on microblogging service Twitter. Then businesses can send out coupons and promotions to those customers. It’s a way for businesses to promote to consumers directly and again, keeps them active on the MerchantCircle site."

- Screenwerk - MerchantCircle Joins the Q&A Club

"Beyond the fact that this type of service is valuable as a general matter MerchantCircle sees it as a tool to “re-engage” merchants via its site. The community can vote for the best answer (as with other systems) and the merchants who participate can gain points to establish themselves as experts.

Consumers categorize their questions and can limit the geographic scope of the response to their area."

- Kelsey Group, Local Onliner - MerchantCircle Tries to Get Stickier with 'Neighbors' and 'Answers'

"Answers is a consumer advice service, similar to ones we’ve seen with Yahoo Answers and vertical sites such as Avvo.com (lawyers) and Trulia (real estate). Merchant Circle’s idea is that small businesses will become more bonded to the service if they regularly communicate with potential customers. It says it has already had excellent response rate in a month of trials."

- BizReport - Merchant Circle adds consumer connection to network

"First, the "Answers" platform. This gives consumers the ability to ask 'experts' - members of MerchantCircle's 910,000 local businesses - a question and receive a solid answer. From the best brand of oil for a Ford truck to questions about invisible fencing for the backyard, merchants are available to answer consumers' questions."

- ClickZ - Get Started in Local Search Without a Web Site

"Many local platforms, including local search powerhouses Google Maps, Bing Local, MerchantCircle, Citysearch, Superpages, and Yahoo Local, allow you to create a local business profile on a page on their sites. Many of the best ones are free, while others charge a monthly fee."

- Dow Jones VentureWire - MerchantCircle, Now Profitable, Goes After Consumers

"Having built out a network of small businesses using its service, newly profitable MerchantCircle Inc. is now going after consumers.

MerchantCircle originally built out a network for small businesses to advertise, promote deals and blog. The company signed up more than 900,000 merchants nationwide and has more than 2% of total merchants in 49 states, and charges a minimum fee of $30 per month for services like placement of search engine advertising to drive traffic. The company, which says it now has more than 20 million monthly unique visitors, uses a self-service system to sign up businesses and has grown without the benefit of a sales force."

Thanks for all your help and support.

Sincerely,
Community Relations

Strengthening Relationships

With our announcement yesterday that will allow us to further grow your MerchantCircle community and increase the number of customers who see your business listings, we wanted to compile a short list of industry journalists and analysts who wrote about the announcement.

Take some time to check them out when you get a chance. Most of it is money hoo hah, but pretty interesting:

• CNN Money
• TechCrunch
• VentureBeat
• The Deal
• Mashable
• Screenwerk
• bub.blicio.us
• Kelsey Group

Enjoy,
Kevin
Community Relations

PayPerPost, ReviewMe and CreamAid.... What the Fuss is All About

Alright, I admit it.... I used PayPerPost recently to advertise MerchantCircle. OK, OK.... I used ReviewMe and CreamAid as well. And while I'm at it, I may have used a Swedish-made "pump" from time to time - but I swear it's not mine.

If you don't know, PayPerPost, ReviewMe and CreamAid are all pay for blog sites. You can check out the controversy on TechCrunch and ValleyWag. I decided to check out these sites on behalf of you, our merchants, who have asked whether paid blogs are a viable avenue in online marketing. We realize as the largest online network of business owners with over 130,000 signed-on in just one year, that we have a huge responsibility to take proactive steps to see what could work and what couldn't work for you in online marketing. It's a responsibility that we take very seriously.

I simply went to each of these sights mentioned and entered a campaign requiring a blogger to include a link to MerchantCircle.com and their favorite businesses in their area. Two of those chosen were Wedding Supplies Unlimited and Small Wonders Imaging. Average cost? About $10 a post.

First of all, let me critique these sites. PayPerPost, while the most popular and written about service, was by far, the most frustrating. I had several of my campaigns rejected because of the regimented nature of creating a campaign. Not only that, some of my queries took two or more days to be answered - some I'm still waiting for. (One e-mail question went like this: "Is anyone there?" - No answer.) The best part about PPP was that you could actually choose the minimum page rank of a blogger, how long the blog had to post for and even an Alexa rank. Of course, all of this raises the minimum suggested price. And believe me, I tried to lowball the heck out of them. Once I got going though, the quality of the blog posts were pretty good and consistent. They had depth and you could tell some research was done.

ReviewMe took a little while to approve my campaign, but the cool thing was you could rate and review the blogger who took you up on the offer. They even made it easy to flag a blogger who didn't follow directions. No word on what actually happens to these bloggers though. Overall, I saw some of the best blogs posts from ReviewMe and some of the worst. Although an e-mail about not having to pay these bad bloggers was quickly answered. One drawback, I get the feeling that ReviewMe does not have a large stable of bloggers since they took the longest to reach the maximum number of posts.

CreamAid was one of the easiest to get started. I don't even remember having to be approved - my campaign started almost immediately. And CreamAid had my number one favorite feature by far - you chose whether or not to purchase a blog after reading it! (How great would that be for dating? "Um, I don't think this is going to work out. I'm not paying for this dinner.") This feature was extremely relevant for this site though, a number of blogger were just flat-out awful. Broken English, grammatical errors, and sometimes a complete copy of another offered blog. I would say 70% of the bloggers on this site don't reside in the U.S. But hey, you don't have to pay them if it's not what you're looking for.

My results were inconclusive. I didn't see an immediate change in the businesses that bloggers chose to write about. Many of the MerchantCircle business pages they chose were already well-placed on search engines. I didn't ask the bloggers to write favorably about businesses, but almost all of them did - at least proving that customer service is not a lost art. Now if only those Swedes would take a cue or two and allow international returns.

Sincerely,
Kevin
Community Relations

P.S. This blog post was paid for by ValleyWag - with fierce competition from TechCrunch who ultimately refused to meet my $3 demands.