There seems to be some bad feeling about local review sites like Yelp that don’t let business owners respond to bad reviews.

Here’s something I saw on techcrunch about this.

I think its bad that businesses can’t respond to reviews, don’t you.  Yelp responded to this with a feature to let businesses respond privately to reviewers, but I wonder if that is not just making the problem worse?  Brownbook.net doesn’t prevent business owners from joining the discussion about their business and responding to reviews, in fact we let them do it openly.  A business owner is clearly identified as such, so why not just let them speak.

I’d say its a bit like comments on blogs, the comments/discussion adds value to the whole, it would be dull if responses were all private – we’ve had that for years, its called email.

By: iStockAnalyst   Friday, June 27, 2008 7:00 AM

As the economy falters and operating costs rise, businesses turn to local Internet advertising to increase ROI of their marketing budgets.  A report released by local advertising research company Borrell Associates concludes that local advertisers are moving their marketing funds toward Internet campaigns to the tune of $13.1 billion this year, a 50% increase from 2007.
Read the rest of this entry »

The experts tell us that we listen more to personal recommendations than adverts and marketing when we’re trying to find a new trustworthy supplier. Had you ever noticed that yourself?

We just added a neat new feature to Brownbook.net to help you build great reputation and word of mouth for your’s and your friends’ businesses.

Its called ‘invite reviews’ and you useit to ask people to review any listed business. So, for your own business you might use it to ask your ten most recent customers to give you a testimonial, then tell new customers to check out your reviews at Brownbook.net (or just link to them from your own website). Or, for your friends business, how about a review about their integrity and attention to detail.

Give it a try now, and start to build up your online repuation and word of mouth to win new customers.

So it’s true – businesses think they get more out of online marketing than they do out of yellow pages. That’s according to MerchantCircle, a social network and online directory for businesses in the US.

Apparently 43% of its members think that “the yellow pages” (their words, not ours) are a less than effective way of acquiring customers. Others are dissatisfied with the costs they pay for ads and the fact that more customers search for local businesses, services and products online. Here’s a link to the MerchantCircle story.

And there’s always the chance that a business ad in a hard copy business directory – any hard copy directory – could be printed with a typo or spelling mistake in the copy or, even worse, categorised incorrectly. How’s a customer supposed to find your business ad for a hair salon if, say, it’s stuck under TV repair?

Something to ponder over, business owners. But if you’re listed on Brownbook, you can check, re-check and edit your entry as many times as you like. It won’t cost you anything and you’re safe in the knowledge that you’ve overseen the editing, proofing and submission of the ad yourself.

OpenSearch is a neat technology that lets you perform a search against our database and get the results returned to you as an XML feed.  Visit OpenSearch.org to get the background scoop.

This means you can add your own search to your website and receive a set of results in a feed that you can format to display any way you like, for example to match your website’s look and feel.
Here’s an example of a simple implementation by LocalMouth.  This was done in (literally) a few minutes.  Read their blog here.

You can go even further, say you wanted to restrict your search to just one area, like Colorado, or even more specifically Boulder?  How about to a specific business sector, like for example electricians, or painters?  Well, our OpenSearch interface will allow you to do that too.

It works by firing a specially formatted URL, which contains your specific search terms, at our server.  Our server sends back an atom XML feed that you can chop up to present the data in the format you wish.  You can use entry fields on your webpage, or even a drop down list, to construct the search terms into that URL, so you can make it as specific or as open as you wish for your users.

If you want to start using our OpenSearch API drop us a line, its FREE and you’ll find us very helpful.  You’ll need to give us a credit on your site.

Even if you work out how to use it yourself, let us know how you’re getting on, we’d like to know.

Local information website LocalMouth (www.localmouth.com) is the first website to use Brownbook.net’s OpenSearch API.  See how they’re using it to produce select listings of local companies here - http://www.localmouth.com/go/winchester/businesses

A lot of people (I have found most) seem to use the term “Yellow Pages” when they talk about consumer-facing business directories, I guess its something that my generation grew up with.  But few people realise that the term is, in some countries, a registered trademark.

In the UK Yell Group owns the trademark and they guard it fiercely, indeed The Brownbook received several letters when we started out cautioning us, in no uncertain terms, about the use of the term.

I can’t help but wonder how long the term will remain an enforcable trademark?  How long before it becomes genericised?

Let me ask you this - and before you answer just spend a few minutes with Google News - do today’s up-coming consumer generations assign the same meaning to the term “yellow pages”?  Are Yell’s actions likely to stop people using the term in a generic context?

Well, for companies like us, yes.  One of the common complaints from trademark owners is that of ‘passing off’ - that the alledged infringer will somehow be confused with the TM owner and all us dumb consumers will somehow thing that the upstart is the TM owner.  Well, Brownbook.net is proud NOT to be associated with ‘Yellow Pages’ or the owner of that trademark, maybe I need to make that even clearer, just in case you missed that ;).

We’re moving ahead, creating a new path, clearing out the old and welcoming the new, why would we want to be associated with the stalwarts :).  Come the revolution…

A little bird told me that we got a mention on Wightbay’s blog, www.wightbay.com. Wightbay is a hyper-local site for business and consumers of The Isle of Wight, just off the south coast of the UK. They have around 12,000 registered users, which when you consider the population of the island is around 120,000 is just amazing. Its like the Craigslist of the Isle of Wight, only better looking :).
Wightbay actually got bought by the same bunch that just put some money behind us, so I guess that means we’re related. Anyway, nice site and worth a look (especially if you are on the Isle of Wight. Thanks guys for noticing us and for the mention, we love what you’re doing too.

How much money do you reckon you’d spend on a Yellow Pages ad? £300? £400? That could be the financial commitment some small business owners make, and it’s not a commitment that lasts a month or a quarter. It lasts a whole year.

Of course the biggest drawback of advertising in something like the Yellow Pages is that it’s a pretty stagnant way of marketing your business. For a start, it will be competing with hundreds of ads from your competitors. And it will look the same – most ads in the Yellow Pages are duds because they’re in list form. And here’s the biggie: can you afford to shell out the dosh needed to make your telephone directory ad stand out in such tight economic circumstances? Think about it. It could take a heck of a lot of money to get a half-page ad that will grab the attention of customers. And how many business owners measure the return on investment that an ad like this will bring?

We’re not telling you to cut back on your marketing budget or anything. But it might be time for you to think strategically about your marketing. An entry in Brownbook doesn’t cost the earth. In fact it’s free. And the beauty about our service? You can really use it to appeal to your customers and gain customer feedback. And customer feedback, good or bad, will help you to improve your business and communicate better with your customers. So don’t be a one-line advert in a big thick telephone directory. Add your business to Brownbook and save yourself some money.

An up-and-coming conference will look in depth at how traditional directories like the Yellow Pages can grow and achieve ‘multi-platform’ functionality.  Hmm.

It’s all fine and dandy getting a bunch of execs to discuss how they can turn these publications round and bring them bang-up-to-date with the needs and wants of their customers, but can it really bring any new ideas to the fore? The internet has really opened doors for small firms wanting to promote themselves online, completely free of charge. So are the big business directories just realising this?

Take Brownbook, for example. It’s free and anyone can edit it. Businesses can be found through Brownbook, via major search engines, and all the information a customer needs is right there, on the web.

So although multi-platform functionality is a big deal for the corporates that have got left behind in the world of web and Web 2.0, the small independent shops on the local high street probably won’t be interested in that. They might end up paying a fortune for their details to be listed on multi-platforms.