As you may already know, adding content to a blog you create about your area of expertise is what the new wave of personal publishing and reputation-building on the web is all about. Blogging your own short-format discussions about things you know about allows that information to get indexed by search engines offering a resource to others when they search for information on that subject. Do this periodically, and frequently, and you build a "content asset" that is authored by you, and builds your value on the web. The people who have done this for years now are among those recognized as relevant to the knowledge base about their subject on the web. Additionally, creating a track record in posts on a topic can result in you being seen and identified as an expert resource on the topic. Establishing yourself as an expert resource on a topic requires staying engaged, whether it be online or on the phone, as the go-to person in your community, easily found on the web with improving local search both online and mobile.
On MerchantCircle we have a platform for you to write a Blog, it’s easy to do and is the single most powerful thing you can do to improve your listing, your visibility on searches on the subject you write about, and your ranking when searches are done on your business category.
The MerchantCircle platform and network of merchants is designed to give our merchants easy tools to use that improve their posture on the web. By connecting to other merchants and consumers, adding information about their products and services, answering questions in our Q&A system, and writing informative short blog entries, our merchant users create attractive merchant-authored information that qualifies them as a resource to turn to for information about their business category.
Last week, we announced that we are now managing a one of the most popular blog and news reader sites ever called Bloglines. We took over this property because we believe in the future of personal publishing of expertise by people with experience, and have plans to make the Bloglines property one which features the best sources of user-authored content on a wide range of topics. Special attention will be paid to the topics which our merchant businesses address with their products and services. Bloglines is the granddaddy of "RSS Readers" (Really Simple Syndication on a user-defined Reader Page), and has been around since 2003. It makes aking it simple to subscribe to updates from personally selected Blogs and News sites, and have all those latest entries flow into one easy-to-read page. The Bloglines service fits in very nicely with the idea of fostering authoritative blogs and making it easy for users to digest the latest information about a subject. We will want to assemble great blogs on topics ranging from Plumbing to Healthcare Services, and would like our MerchantCircle members to contribute to that collection.
Look for more news in the first quarter of 2011 about how the Bloglines Reader service will be used at MerchantCircle to help you stay on top of your business but for now please enjoy the introduction to a service you will certainly value
Andy Halliday
P.S. You can contribute to the growing library of content discoverable on the web, and get attribution for that work, by answering questions in MerchantCircle's Q&A system, in forums online, and in Q&A sites with multiple categories that are designed to expose knowledge from both experts and the masses. A couple recent examples of the Q&A model of collective knowledge are Formspring and Quora. Quora is getting much on-the-web press and is attracting high quality contributors of content on a wide variety of subjects, though the subjects are currently focused around technology and internet startups given their roots.
--
Andy Halliday
VP GM Local Content
andyh@merchantcircle.com
Blog
Watch the Latest MerchantCircle Ad from San Francisco
Dr. Nancy Lam from Embarcadero Dentistry stars in MerchantCircle’s SF area ads.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
MerchantCircle to Take Over Operations of the Popular Bloglines Platform
We have some exciting news to share today that we think is going to make the experience on MerchantCircle even more valuable for our users. We’ve reached an agreement with Ask.com to assume control of the RSS reader site Bloglines in order to rejuvenate and integrate it with the MerchantCircle experience.
For those of you who may not be immediately familiar with Bloglines, it is the world's most popular free online service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing RSS feeds, blogs and rich web content. Bloglines was a pioneer in bringing RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and rich content to mainstream Internet users. It’s been touted for excellence around the world with many awards and accolades, including Time Magazine's Coolest Websites for 2004 and Search Engine Watch's "Best Blog/Feed Search Engine" award.
Ask.com, which has owned the property for the last few years, had decided to retire the service to focus more on its core offerings. This provided a wonderful opportunity for MerchantCircle to acquire the operations to reinvest in the platform and enhance it for its 2.7 million users.
But what does that mean for you? There are a lot of exciting plans on the horizon, but we can say for now that you will soon see Bloglines integrated for your use on your account dashboards. From there you will have the ability to organize and follow online information about your business, your community and your industry.
There’s so much potential and we are excited about the next steps. For now, please see our press release and news story on TechCrunch about the changing hands of Bloglines.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Results of the Q3 2010 Merchant Circle MCI Survey are in!
Below are the results of our quarterly Merchant Confidence Index (MCI) survey for Q3 of 2010. The survey is designed to track trends in local business sentiment over time and was presented to a random sample of MerchantCircle members between October4th and 8th, 2010. 9,635 completed responses came in during this period and there were no incentives offered to complete the survey.
You can read the full press release on the findings here and take a look at all the data broken out below.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
MerchantCircle In Your Living Room for the First Time
For the first time in the five year history of MerchantCircle, we are running TV commercials! As traditional with our strategy we've decided to take a very local approach with the first ones airing over the last three weeks in just San Francisco proper on CNN, ESPN, Bloomberg and other popular cable channels. We also took advantage of a big local sports interest and aired our ads on Comcast Bay Area during the last month of the San Francisco Giants baseball season which culminated in a NL Western Division title. We decided to extend that to TBS during games 1 and 3 of their divisional playoff series last week. That proved to be a good move as very fortunately for us, the games broadcast on TBS were two of the top thre highest rated programs that have aired on cable tv in the Bay Area in the past six years for Adults 25-54
Our commercials featured three of our favorite local merchants in San Francisco: Dr. Nancy Lam of Embarcadero Dentistry, Keith Wilson from The Boardroom in North Beach and Dr. Mike Le of Le Chiropractic in the Sunset District. It was definitely exciting to get them in the studio and hear them talk about the advantages of being a MerchantCircle member on camera. We were also excited to help them promote their businesses because, after all, that is what MerchantCircle is all about. We hope to expand this program across the country soon, so you may hear from us to be featured in our next installments!
The ads will continue over the next 10 weeks and considering we are airing over 90 commercials per week, hopefully you'll see one of them soon (at least, if you live in San Francisco :). Big thanks to our friends at Comcast Spotlight who helped produce and air these spots for us.
We've received lots of great feedback from merchants, friends and family. If you'd like to see the three commercials in their entirety, you may do so below. Let us know what you think about them in the comments.
Thanks for watching!
Chris Brubaker
Director of Marketing
Our commercials featured three of our favorite local merchants in San Francisco: Dr. Nancy Lam of Embarcadero Dentistry, Keith Wilson from The Boardroom in North Beach and Dr. Mike Le of Le Chiropractic in the Sunset District. It was definitely exciting to get them in the studio and hear them talk about the advantages of being a MerchantCircle member on camera. We were also excited to help them promote their businesses because, after all, that is what MerchantCircle is all about. We hope to expand this program across the country soon, so you may hear from us to be featured in our next installments!
The ads will continue over the next 10 weeks and considering we are airing over 90 commercials per week, hopefully you'll see one of them soon (at least, if you live in San Francisco :). Big thanks to our friends at Comcast Spotlight who helped produce and air these spots for us.
We've received lots of great feedback from merchants, friends and family. If you'd like to see the three commercials in their entirety, you may do so below. Let us know what you think about them in the comments.
Thanks for watching!
Chris Brubaker
Director of Marketing
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Greeting from new MerchantCircle CTO Yori Nelken
Hello MerchantCircle Community,
I wanted to send out a note to you all to introduce myself and let you know how excited I am to be on board with such an amazing company. You probably read that MerchantCircle recently announced they had acquired my company, TimeBridge, and I have decided to stay aboard with MerchantCircle assuming the role of Chief Technology Officer. This will allow me to keep TimeBridge running smoothly for the 600,000 plus existing users as well as engineer the integration with MerchantCircle.
A few years ago, I founded TimeBridge while an entrepreneur in residence at Mayfield, a venture capital firm, determined to help make the lives of busy professionals better by streamlining their scheduling process. At that time, the world was almost completely on Microsoft Outlook. Google Calendar hadn't been launched. Macs still ran on PowerPC processors-- no Windows software ran on them. There were no iPhones nor Androids. Seems like decades ago right?
Well, the landscape changed a lot since then and we changed with it. We chucked our investment in the product we launched at Web 2.0--- a thick Outlook client. We redesigned it to rely less on Outlook (which is tricky) and capitalize on an increasingly complex calendaring environment and a more web oriented world. So we hunkered down and built a new version of our application that tapped into Google Calendar and the increasing use of Macs in the workplace. That confluence was a natural extension of our service--- and one that held great promise for growth. We built a product, technology and a business that I'm very proud of, but as with many things in life we found need to evolve further. Enter MerchantCircle.
Ben Smith and I have been friends for many years and I’ve long admired the incredible network he has built for small business owners and the tools that have helped enable those merchants to spread their message. One of the key components that MerchantCircle had not made available to its network yet was scheduling. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of running any business, organizing your customer’s appointments or even better, providing your customers an online mechanism for them to schedule themselves. And that’s the vision for our unification, to build that interface that both merchant and consumer can use to book their hair appointments, tire service or house cleanings, all through your MerchantCircle listing.
We have a new opportunity to take what we've built as a calendar assistance to professionals, to a broader audience and extend our platform in brand new ways. The MerchantCircle team has taken on a bold vision to power local merchants' business--- acquiring TimeBridge is part of that. I’m excited to be part of the MerchantCircle team and know that together my vision for TimeBridge will now come to fruition but with an exciting added twist helping to power an even greater community.
Best Regards,
Yori Nelken
Chief Technology Officer
MerchantCircle
I wanted to send out a note to you all to introduce myself and let you know how excited I am to be on board with such an amazing company. You probably read that MerchantCircle recently announced they had acquired my company, TimeBridge, and I have decided to stay aboard with MerchantCircle assuming the role of Chief Technology Officer. This will allow me to keep TimeBridge running smoothly for the 600,000 plus existing users as well as engineer the integration with MerchantCircle.
A few years ago, I founded TimeBridge while an entrepreneur in residence at Mayfield, a venture capital firm, determined to help make the lives of busy professionals better by streamlining their scheduling process. At that time, the world was almost completely on Microsoft Outlook. Google Calendar hadn't been launched. Macs still ran on PowerPC processors-- no Windows software ran on them. There were no iPhones nor Androids. Seems like decades ago right?
Well, the landscape changed a lot since then and we changed with it. We chucked our investment in the product we launched at Web 2.0--- a thick Outlook client. We redesigned it to rely less on Outlook (which is tricky) and capitalize on an increasingly complex calendaring environment and a more web oriented world. So we hunkered down and built a new version of our application that tapped into Google Calendar and the increasing use of Macs in the workplace. That confluence was a natural extension of our service--- and one that held great promise for growth. We built a product, technology and a business that I'm very proud of, but as with many things in life we found need to evolve further. Enter MerchantCircle.
Ben Smith and I have been friends for many years and I’ve long admired the incredible network he has built for small business owners and the tools that have helped enable those merchants to spread their message. One of the key components that MerchantCircle had not made available to its network yet was scheduling. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of running any business, organizing your customer’s appointments or even better, providing your customers an online mechanism for them to schedule themselves. And that’s the vision for our unification, to build that interface that both merchant and consumer can use to book their hair appointments, tire service or house cleanings, all through your MerchantCircle listing.
We have a new opportunity to take what we've built as a calendar assistance to professionals, to a broader audience and extend our platform in brand new ways. The MerchantCircle team has taken on a bold vision to power local merchants' business--- acquiring TimeBridge is part of that. I’m excited to be part of the MerchantCircle team and know that together my vision for TimeBridge will now come to fruition but with an exciting added twist helping to power an even greater community.
Best Regards,
Yori Nelken
Chief Technology Officer
MerchantCircle
Saturday, August 28, 2010
MerchantCircle VP and GM Andy Halliday discusses the new Local Content Studio
In late May we launched a new content production system called Local Content Studio at MerchantCircle that adds targeted information to specific pages and pays the producer of the content via Paypal. We formally announced this program on Thursday to the public and I'd like to elaborate some more for our members here today.
Our first effort was focused on adding descriptions with links and photos to each of the 30,000 U.S. city pages on MerchantCircle. Our growing team of paid freelance writers built production to over 5,000 city descriptions a week and in just a couple of days from now we will have completed all of those city descriptions. The best writers developed routines to research, compose, and add hyperlinks to their own personal format for a city description, and were paid $2 for each one approved. The top producer, Rebecca from Council Bluffs, IA, delivered over 350 quality city descriptions in one week! Editors return submissions for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and factual errors, and writers are calibrated by their approval rate, putting a premium on proofreading before submission. You can see an example of this work here.
Take a look at your own local city page, which you can find by searching on the city name and state without any text in the first search box….or you can simply click on the city name in the “breadcrumb” in the space below the search box on any listing page--which looks like this: Top > MO > Saint Louis.
While we quickly produced basic information for each of tens of thousands of cities, the longer-term objective is to call upon the local expertise of our merchant members to provide unique local perspective on their towns, their community, the businesses and the recreation facilities that are part of that community. Today merchants can edit the city descriptions to add information that is missing or to add perspective that only local insiders would know. Here is a great example of a city description done by a local merchant: http://www.merchantcircle.com/directory/MO-Saint-Louis.
In the coming months, we are going to build several new content modules that will invite contribution from our network of local merchants, and give them an opportunity to share their knowledge about their town and their profession. It’s a win-win for merchants, who will get exposure for their business whenever their expert content is viewed, and they can be compensated for certain types of content, like specialty articles on their chosen profession.
The grand purpose behind this new content effort is to assemble the best local information online, in order to improve the quality of the search experience for anyone looking for information about our towns and cities and the businesses in them. Who better to do this than the merchants who host the retail and service offerings for a community, and who are locals themselves with unique views on the town? When MerchantCircle.com community members build out information about their businesses and professions, and contribute to collected “insider” knowledge about their community, the rich pages that result will bring more search traffic to these pages and expose more web visitors to the circle of merchants who make up that location’s commercial network.
MerchantCircle has merchant members in each of 25,000 cities and small towns across America with more than 200 residents. So this approach to collecting local insight onto MerchantCircle pages on the web can reach to what we call the “Long Tail” of local information. We don’t just concentrate on the major cities that are of interest to all advertisers because of the concentration of people in those places, rather we can reach out to collect information across the great spectrum of places in the U.S., from neighborhoods in the largest metropolitan areas all the way down to small town America where a few businesspeople serve a small community, like Talkeetna, AK: .
Look for more expanded information about every city and town in the U.S. and around the world coming from the new Local Content Studio. Be sure to take advantage of the opportunity to sign up yourself and become a contributor to this important “crowd-sourced” collection. Visit this link to get started: http://www.merchantcircle.com/contentwriter/signup
Thanks for reading,
Andy Halliday
VP, GM for MerchantCircle Local Content Studio
Our first effort was focused on adding descriptions with links and photos to each of the 30,000 U.S. city pages on MerchantCircle. Our growing team of paid freelance writers built production to over 5,000 city descriptions a week and in just a couple of days from now we will have completed all of those city descriptions. The best writers developed routines to research, compose, and add hyperlinks to their own personal format for a city description, and were paid $2 for each one approved. The top producer, Rebecca from Council Bluffs, IA, delivered over 350 quality city descriptions in one week! Editors return submissions for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and factual errors, and writers are calibrated by their approval rate, putting a premium on proofreading before submission. You can see an example of this work here.
Take a look at your own local city page, which you can find by searching on the city name and state without any text in the first search box….or you can simply click on the city name in the “breadcrumb” in the space below the search box on any listing page--which looks like this: Top > MO > Saint Louis.
While we quickly produced basic information for each of tens of thousands of cities, the longer-term objective is to call upon the local expertise of our merchant members to provide unique local perspective on their towns, their community, the businesses and the recreation facilities that are part of that community. Today merchants can edit the city descriptions to add information that is missing or to add perspective that only local insiders would know. Here is a great example of a city description done by a local merchant: http://www.merchantcircle.com/directory/MO-Saint-Louis.
In the coming months, we are going to build several new content modules that will invite contribution from our network of local merchants, and give them an opportunity to share their knowledge about their town and their profession. It’s a win-win for merchants, who will get exposure for their business whenever their expert content is viewed, and they can be compensated for certain types of content, like specialty articles on their chosen profession.
The grand purpose behind this new content effort is to assemble the best local information online, in order to improve the quality of the search experience for anyone looking for information about our towns and cities and the businesses in them. Who better to do this than the merchants who host the retail and service offerings for a community, and who are locals themselves with unique views on the town? When MerchantCircle.com community members build out information about their businesses and professions, and contribute to collected “insider” knowledge about their community, the rich pages that result will bring more search traffic to these pages and expose more web visitors to the circle of merchants who make up that location’s commercial network.
MerchantCircle has merchant members in each of 25,000 cities and small towns across America with more than 200 residents. So this approach to collecting local insight onto MerchantCircle pages on the web can reach to what we call the “Long Tail” of local information. We don’t just concentrate on the major cities that are of interest to all advertisers because of the concentration of people in those places, rather we can reach out to collect information across the great spectrum of places in the U.S., from neighborhoods in the largest metropolitan areas all the way down to small town America where a few businesspeople serve a small community, like Talkeetna, AK: .
Look for more expanded information about every city and town in the U.S. and around the world coming from the new Local Content Studio. Be sure to take advantage of the opportunity to sign up yourself and become a contributor to this important “crowd-sourced” collection. Visit this link to get started: http://www.merchantcircle.com/contentwriter/signup
Thanks for reading,
Andy Halliday
VP, GM for MerchantCircle Local Content Studio
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Continuing Coast-to-Coast: MerchantCircle Customer Appreciation and Networking Events!
After a successful trip to the Twin Cities, the MerchantCircle gang took their nationwide Customer Appreciation and Networking Events tour to the home of Yale, the oldest newspaper in the country and MerchantCircle Community Leader, Gino! The August destination was of course, New Haven, Connecticut!
This week we're heading south to the glitz and glam of LA-LA Land. So Cal, get ready for another Merchant Appreciation Night of Networking at World Café in downtown Santa Monica!
But first, I'll share the scoop on our Ivy League experience…
After landing in Hartford, we shook off the shock of Connecticut humidity and our red-eye grogginess, picked up our sweet economy-class rental, and hit the most densely tree-lined freeway I've ever seen. We battled some rain but managed to have a wonderful (and insightful) Indian dinner with Gino!
The following day, about 40 local merchants joined us at Kitchen Zinc for our networking event. In between glasses of wine and bites of gourmet pizza and salad, I shared some of Mark Munroe's famous tips on how to get the most out of MerchantCircle, followed by Gino's wonderful presentation on developing your MC listing AND network.
CEO Ben Smith was also on hand for some Q&A with our guests. (And they didn't hold back!) Everyone snacked on Cookie Central's tasty treats as prizes were passed out in our MerchantCircle raffle. Winners received MerchantCircle gear, a flip cam, and prizes donated my MC members Cupertino Soap Company, Kitchen Zinc, St Anthony's Book + gift shop, EZ Campaigns, and HipPurse.com.
Connecticut will be hard to top, but our LA based merchants are showing up strong with over 150 RSVP! Stay posted for more news on these events!
This week we're heading south to the glitz and glam of LA-LA Land. So Cal, get ready for another Merchant Appreciation Night of Networking at World Café in downtown Santa Monica!
But first, I'll share the scoop on our Ivy League experience…
After landing in Hartford, we shook off the shock of Connecticut humidity and our red-eye grogginess, picked up our sweet economy-class rental, and hit the most densely tree-lined freeway I've ever seen. We battled some rain but managed to have a wonderful (and insightful) Indian dinner with Gino!
The following day, about 40 local merchants joined us at Kitchen Zinc for our networking event. In between glasses of wine and bites of gourmet pizza and salad, I shared some of Mark Munroe's famous tips on how to get the most out of MerchantCircle, followed by Gino's wonderful presentation on developing your MC listing AND network.
CEO Ben Smith was also on hand for some Q&A with our guests. (And they didn't hold back!) Everyone snacked on Cookie Central's tasty treats as prizes were passed out in our MerchantCircle raffle. Winners received MerchantCircle gear, a flip cam, and prizes donated my MC members Cupertino Soap Company, Kitchen Zinc, St Anthony's Book + gift shop, EZ Campaigns, and HipPurse.com.
Connecticut will be hard to top, but our LA based merchants are showing up strong with over 150 RSVP! Stay posted for more news on these events!
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