Local Businesses Online

CptSternn

I thought I would share this here, as hopefully someone who is guilty of this might change their ways to benefit the rest of us sure!

I won't use any names here, but I heard about a new business here in Ennis and wanted to check them out. I couldn't find them in the phone book online. I figured they may not have a landline as many businesses don't these days, or maybe they do but it is so new they just haven't been listed yet.

Either way I turned to Google to find out more. I was chuffed when I found they were on Facebook. Thats where my excitement ended. They did what many businesses here in Ennis and across Ireland have done, something that is a personal pet peeve of mine, they setup their business on Facebook as a person.

Why does this irk me? Because even though I found them online it doesn't help me at all as because they are setup as a person and you can't see their address, phone number, or any other pertinent details. It makes listing your business on Facebook pretty much useless. Even if they open up all of their security settings to allow this to be displayed, they still have to add you first meaning anyone who is looking for these details has to wait to have a friend request accepted before they can get the most basic of information, like the address, from the business.

The worst part is, I had a friend who setup his business the other day. He started doing the same thing, setting it up as a person. These days Facebook sees this and at least three times during the initial process it stopped and warned him he was setting up the profile incorrectly as a person and not a business. That means many businesses see this and are still clicking through the warnings and doing themselves no favours!

But seriously, how exactly does it help to be on Facebook or any other site if your customers can't see any of your details or interact with you when they need to? Seems a bit of a waste.

I could go into all the great things you get when you setup a business page properly (analytics, impression tracking, etc.), but I'll save that for another post sure!

</end rant>

CptSternn

With all the local businesses suffering and closing, I must say, it is no wonder.

Aside from the external factors, businesses don't seem to care about their online presence what-so-ever. This lackadaisical attitude towards the virtual world is an obvious reflection of the business attitudes that have been adopted by the brick and mortar business itself.

I mean, if I were to put out a flyer or advert in todays world, I would have a customised link in which customers could see and in turn use to visit my website to get more details about whatever it is I am advertising for. I say 'custom' as I would create a custom URL so I can track how effective my ad campaign is and thereby be able to gauge not only it's effectiveness, but also the return on my investment (i.e. €200 for an advert returns 50 potential customers who are interested).

Facebook even has the same features setup on their PAGES. If you are a business setup as a person, you have no access to this information. You can't tell who are real people who live in Clare and who are random people who live in east Guam who have just added you for the craíc. By not having access to these statistics, how exactly can a business tell how well they are doing with their customers and their marketing?

If they think posting a status update on Facebook is helping them reach their target audience when 90% of their 'friends' are people living outside the country who just added them because they liked the business name or visited once when on holiday, they are diluting themselves. Not being able to tell how many potential customers you have and wasting time posting on Facebook, their own website, Yelp, or other sites when they have no way to track analytical data which is made freely available is just bad business sense.

The fact so many businesses in Clare have gotten this wrong and are doing nothing about it to correct the issue shows the real attitudes here. If a business doesn't have enough cop-on to figure out you need to know this stuff, then they obviously don't care enough to keep their business viable in the first place. In todays economy, they won't be around long enough to figure out why this stuff is important. Darwin's law, as applied to the business world is in full effect.

So as more businesses here in Co. Clare fall by the wayside, and I search Facebook and Google and see their leftover legacy of apathy, it is no wonder many businesses find themselves where they are now. The traces of their failure will live on in Internet searches for years to come, reminding them of the decisions they should have made when they had the opportunity.

buck65

what about my town .ie?
http://www.mytown.ie/town40,ennis.html

CptSternn

buck65 wrote: »

what about my town .ie?
http://www.mytown.ie/town40,ennis.html

What about it? It's a small site that no one visits and adds absolutely no value to anyones business online.

Seriously that site is in itself a failed attempt at doing something other companies have already done better. The market is flooded with similar sites, all of which have already been passed over for larger, more interactive sites.

Their news feeds are RSS feed taken directly from local area papers. Their news feed for Ennis is taken from The Clare People, who stopped publishing their news months ago yet this crowd has yet to even figure that out yet.

Their listings are incomplete, without a feedback/rating system for users, offer no interactive options for users like check-ins and group deals), and they have no listings outside of Ireland, meaning people traveling from other countries are not going to know about this site unless someone tells them. These days having a business name and phone number is not enough. You can get that from a phone book. You need a comprehensive database for a business that people can easily find if you want to stay relevant.

It reminds me of 'mylocal', 'localpages', 'localbusinesspages' and a few other sites out there that want to be something they aren't and will never be as they are jumping into an already crowded pool where large companies like Facebook, Microsoft, and Google are already doing what they want to do and doing it right.

Microsoft is linking Bing to Yelp as is Google. Google is going father and starting their own ratings system as well and starting their own local business listings. Why would you use a site like that when there are so many better alternatives that give you all of those options and more? Lets also not forget you are going to have to do some searching to even find that site, and in the meantime Google is going to show you the other big boys first along with their own results.

This is a bit off-topic though. Being listed on some obscure Irish website that not even many people in Ireland have heard of and even less use does nothing to help your business either.

dr.fuzzenstein

buck65 wrote: »

what about my town .ie?
http://www.mytown.ie/town40,ennis.html

I clicked on a few stories and got FORBIDDEN, anyone else had that?
Clicked on the Icarus story and Ryanair.

CptSternn

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

I clicked on a few stories and got FORBIDDEN, anyone else had that?
Clicked on the Icarus story and Ryanair.

Did you not read my post above? Their feed is from The Clare People. The Clare People went private months ago and killed the feed. That means that website has had the error for months and no one has even looked into it. It also means no one has probably reported it because no one is going there to begin with.

buck65

Arra chill the beans Capt.