Google+ Local

 

Last week’s announcement of Google+ Local was underwhelming. The review upgrade was impressive but the rest was tepid at best. Essentially the URL for your Place page has changed and the page now shows in the index although it seems to have broken more than it fixed. The announcement last week of Google+ Local was more important for what was left out than what was in it.

We know that Google has been gradually diassembling the Dashboard (pulling out AdWords Express and revamping Offer Coupons) and that its functionality has not been updated in eons (think analytics that only report out pack results NOT blended).

The current move of the business listing from Places to Google+ Local essentially broke the ability of the Dashboard to view the listing and the listings no longer indicates that the business has claimed them or that it is verified.

We also know for sure that the Google +Local page will merge into the G+ Business page in the near future. Clearly Google is focusing its energies on integrating as much as possible into the social backbone of G+.

Over the past year Google bought Zagat but they also bought local online services Punchd (a digital loyalty program) and Talkbin (an SMS based) CRM program. Both programs that have a strong potential appeal in the local market. In the recent rollout we see a glimmering of using the business listing as a local transaction engine with the inclusion of OpenTable.

When you add all of that up you come to the inescapable conclusion that the backend Dashboard is undergoing a massive rework and will likely become a central point for the SMB to interact with all of Google’s products with a special emphasis on Google Plus.

David Mihm has written about a vision of what the Dashboard could and should become. Bing has implemented a blueprint for an integrated marketing portal that might also provide a guide to Google. Whatever it is it will need to be more engaging, more valuable and more integral to local businesses ongoing marketing needs: better analytics, simple integration with G+, CRM, easy opt-in to Google’s paid products, the ability for the business to easily understand and interact with a full range of Google’s local offerings and the ability for Google to plug in more functionality down the road.

Today the Wall Street Journal today essentially confirmed this direction. They note that by early July Google will be rolling out such a product:

The project combines several products and services aimed at small businesses under a single banner. It is based on a mix of internally developed software and recently acquired technologies that the company hopes eventually will bring in billions of dollars a year in new revenue.

Central to the effort is Google+, the company’s social network, which it hopes consumers will use to interact with local businesses that now have special Web pages on the network. Those Google+ pages will draw traffic from the company’s Web-search engine. When shoppers visit these businesses, Google wants them to use their Internet-connected phones like a digital wallet, earning loyalty points and making payments at stores that sign up for Google’s new services.

When this occurs the real Google+ Local will be rolling out, not just a new location for a landing page, but a substantial improvement to the static and marginally functional Dashboard. Let’s hope that it is an integrated marketing solution that is elegant, provides significant on-going value and works properly right out of the gate (oh and is multiuser).

 

Garmin Chicago gives away a Nüvi

It seems like each day more and more of our social lives become location-based. You  can check in here, tag your friends there, or even sign-up for location-based deals. As a company whose products are location-centric, we totally get where you’re coming from (and we like helping you get where you’re going to). So when we heard about theReady to Move You nüvi 2012 line-up, we thought, let’s reward ourFacebook and Twitter friends who love Garmin just as much as they love checking in.

We’re giving away a nüvi in our 2012 advanced series to whichever of you is the foursquare mayor of the Garmin Chicago Store the moment those models hit our shelves! All you have to do is stop by the store on Michigan Avenue, check in – often – and follow @Garmin_Chicago on Twitter for updates.

We can’t say exactly when we’ll get these new models – which feature Guidance 2.0 with 3D Traffic and photoReal Junction View – but we’re pretty sure it’ll be mid-September. So you’ll want to be sure you’re checking in as often as possible. Remember, only one person can be mayor at the time, and whoever that is when the official “in-stock” update goes out over Twitter will win!

Small Business Influencer Awards

 

I was recently honored to have been nominated for the 2011 Small Business Influencer award in the guru category. It is an effort by Smallbiztrends.com to recognize those “organizations and people who have made a significant impact on the North American small business market”.  The awards will identify the Top 100 influencers and are decided 40% by a popular vote and 60% by the judges. In the popular voting you can vote for a candidate once every 24 hours.

Whenever I receive this sort of nomination an internal dialog always takes place that goes something like… “ooh, cool… I would like to win ah but I can’t win, oh this is just a popularity contest but there are others more deserving than I … “. By the time the internal chatter has ceased the contest is over and I place 75th or so.

In this contest, since a voter can vote once a day for a given individual, a contestant needs a very large family, a very involved mother, a great bot network or a very supportive industry. I don’t posses a large family, a living mother nor a bot network but do feel that option four (industry support) holds lots of potential.

And this time I have decided to be more proactive, more assertive and more involved and not let my internal dialog slow me down… so I am suggesting that as an industry we get together and we Vote early, Vote often and Vote for ….. Lisa Barone.

Why pimp for Lisa Barone and not myself you ask? Well besides the fact that she has an Italian last name and HAS to have a larger family and active parents, I really think that she deserves the support of our industry for her tireless reporting of industry events, her relentless and smb focused writing and her voice. An opinionated, funny, off beat voice that is a voice of reason and straight talk in an industry that has its share of the opposite. She has done us all a favor and I think it is time to pay her back.

So Vote early, Vote often and Vote for ….. Lisa Barone. Not once but every day for the next 22…spread the word.