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Small Business Saturday goes to South Minneapolis neighborhoods

November 24th, 2012

It’s Small Business Saturday, a great way to support small and local businesses during the holiday shopping season. This is the fourth year for me. In 2009, I started this concept in Delano. In 2010, Buffalo. Last year, Northfield. This year, I decided that instead of one small town, I would head to local businesses in different South Minneapolis neighborhoods.

The first place to visit was the nicest little deco market called the Cottage House on the border of the Regina and Northrop neighborhoods.

Shopping here is an honest engagement. Regular shoppers enjoy conversations with the employees and owners. Free fresh popcorn and cookies are provided at the door. In fact, I overheard a conversation to where the folks at Cottage House were planning to bake 90 dozen of their infamous sugar cookies for sale for upcoming holiday shoppers.

They have just a couple of mixed reviews on Google+ Local and plenty of positive reviews on Yelp. Mom’s gift, done.

Also see the Cottage House on:

Facebook

The next visit was to Creative Kidstuff in the Linden Hills neighborhood. The only Google+ Local review I saw was from myself years back and they also have a few reviews on Yelp.

Not knowing what my almost-seven-year-old grand-niece would like, I took a picture of a shelved product and depended on a 30-second mobile Facebook chat with her Mom:

Sold. Included in this purchase is free gift wrapping. Alana’s gift, done. Side note, Alana is awesome.

Also see Creative Kidstuff on:

Before visiting my last destination, I headed to South Lyndale Liquors and spotted Gamle Ode Dill Aquavit on the shelf. It’s great to see a respected store like this supporting a local brand.

On the third year of drawing names, I only need to gift for three people. So, for the last gift I drew Bob, my brother-in-law and CEO of Office Super Savers, a discount office supplies wholesaler/retailer. He’s an online shopper advocate and wishes for this trimmer directly from Amazon.

It’s difficult to shop from Amazon while supporting Small Business Saturday at the same time. So, I went to Cause Spirits and Soundbar in the Lyn-Lake neighborhood in Uptown Minneapolis, checked into Foursquare, made a purchase and ordered Bob’s trimmer online. Here are some reviews from Yelp for Cause.

Cause is well-known for its local, independent music, art and food. I highly recommend giving them a visit.

They also happen to provide free wi-fi. Bob’s gift, done.

Also see Cause at:

Facebook

Overall, the Small Business Saturday idea is a great way to support local businesses during the holiday shopping season. It’s an even better idea to support these businesses all year round.

Let us know your Small Business Saturday story. We’d love to hear it!

Tags: cause spirits, cottage house, creative kidstuff, office super savers, small business saturday
Posted in Local Search, Minnesota Business, Small Business Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

Localmn and Snap Communications Search and Social Seminars – Coming to You in 2012

December 20th, 2011

Jan 3 Update: We have a potential initial event venue at the Minneapolis Marriott West. We’ll also be contacting a few trusted people if case you want to side-volunteer with the return of promoting your niche local web/social business. If you receive a humble Twitter mention from us, that’s why. More on this below and the event date(s) are TBD.

————————————————————————-

Not new news, but over the past few years local and social search has made an overdue mainstream surge for local businesses. With that said, there’s still a void. At the very basic level we see lots of this:

And not always a lot of this:

Notice the difference?

Claiming your Google Places page is just one, free, tiny example of what local companies can do to boost their visibility and it’s also arguably the first things recommended.

So, in 2012 Barb from Snap Communications and myself will be offering local search seminars in the Minneapolis-St. Paul areas for interested companies, groups and industries.

We’re not just talking about Google Places. The seminars will include both local strategies and tactics for the following:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
Local Listings (Google Places, etc.)
Web Analytics (Google Analytics)
Social Aspects (Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.)
Online Reputation Management

We intend for these seminars to be fairly similar to the wonderful and low-cost LocalU local search format, meaning they’re more for educational purposes and less about sales pitches. We also intend to customize these seminars to audience industry.

These could be anything from attorneys to restaurant owners to specific professional groups or associations. We’re seasoned (old) and have seen it all.

Interested? Great! Just contact us per the phone number up top or at pjahn @ localmn.com.

OK, back to the good stuff.

One thing we will be doing for each seminar is pre-selecting an attendee to come on up live to fill out and claim their full Google Places profile. It’s one thing to talk about how important this is, but showing and going through the exact process and hiccups (yep, there are a few) is something we really hope resonates with attendees.

Here’s just a partial image of the Localmn Google Places page:

Regarding the seminars, we highly encourage attendees to bring a laptop and/or tablet. We want you to take notes for things you can do on your own. Smartphones are also encouraged as we’ll be having Twitter hashtags, plus we encourage attendees to take pictures of slides or anything else they see interesting.

Another thing we’ll be doing is showing real-life examples of how local companies are using social media to help boost their brands, and eventually, sales.

The half-day seminars would include our 2-ish hour seminar of local online marketing concepts you can do on your own. For the next two hours, we’re planning for us and other niche consultants to hang around to help your online presence on-the-spot. Niche consultants could provide information about:

Foursquare
Websites built on WordPress
Responsive web design
More to come

We have a few people in mind for the above niches and will be contacting them soon. With that said, if you’re a expert in a particular niche and would like to volunteer, just let us know.

There will be nominal attendance prices TBD as we plan to keep these more educational oriented and less of sales pitches. We will be giving our awesome niche volunteers subtle pitches as they would be helping out of the goodness of their own hearts.

Are you part of an industry that would like to learn more about all of the above? Just let us know.

Are you a local venue that would like us to pay you money to host these events? Just let us know. If you have free wifi and enough AC outlets or extension cords for attendees to bring their laptops to plug in, especially let us know!

We haven’t come up with a creative Twitter hashtag for these events yet. Have one for us? Again, just let us know. We’ll give you all the credit in the world.

More to come and locally yours,

Barb and Paul

Tags: "barb prindle" "paul jahn"
Posted in Local Search, Minnesota Business, Search Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

2011 Small Business Saturday Goes to Northfield

November 26th, 2011

Small Business Saturday is the time of year where holiday shoppers are urged to forego Black Friday and Cyber Monday to shop locally to help support small businesses. Two years ago, I took this concept to Delano. Last year, it was Buffalo. In 2011, it’s Northfield, one of my favorite Minnesota cities.

First, this post has nothing to do with the American Express Small Business Saturday promotion. I have nothing against them. To me, their promo looks less about caring for local, small businesses and more about getting people to register for a CITI card that they may not want or need.

What I did get to do was shop locally, learn more about Northfield, and view how both people and local businesses use local search portals like Google Places and social media outlets like Foursquare and others.

I arrived in downtown Northfield on Division Street and wanted to say Hello. No one responded which is fine. Every place I visited simply made me feel at home.

The first business I visited was Antiques of Northfield. From the link you may notice there isn’t much of a Google Places presence. They didn’t show up in Foursquare when I attempted to check in as well. One may think it’s probably no big deal as an average antique shopper may not often use the Internet. Today, there were plenty of shoppers inside and the average age may have been 30. There’s certainly potential.

The next place to visit was the Monkey Read book store. From the link you may notice that (as of this writing) their Google Places page has not been claimed, although there are photos listed. This is one example of not just claiming your page, but filling out every detail is a must.

In this example, Google has algorithmically associated images from their own website to their Google Places page which may not be relevant. Yours truly has been on the losing end of this.

On the lighter side, I did receive a ‘nerd alert’ once checking in on Foursquare.

So, I did leave a nice tip about this place.

I did then learn something interesting about downtown Northfield. Most of the older brick buildings were built so sturdy that it’s often hard to receive cell phone reception.

Why do I know this?

I asked the owner if there were any restaurants nearby that had wifi. He then mentioned that the HideAway Cafe two doors down had excellent wifi to the point that he actually gets wifi access through them even though he rarely gets cell phone reception.

He was right about the wifi.

Why was I at the HideAway CoffeeHouse and Wine Bar?

Each year siblings, in-laws and parents draw names for gifts. I drew my brother-in-law who lives and grew up in Iowa City, die-hard Hawkeyes territory, thus Hawkeye-related gifts. Nearby Champion Sports is a really nice place but they’re obviously going to have gear instead from the two Northfield Colleges, Carleton and St. Olaf.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t buy his gift in true Small Business Saturday fashion so I went to the HideAway a couple stores down, made a coffee (Powerade, actually) purchase and used their wifi to buy his gift online.

With that said, notice anything about the above HideAway and Champion Sports text links? They both go to respective unclaimed Google Places pages. Also, just like the Monkey Read store, The HideAway Google Places page algorithmically includes outdated images from their own website/blog.

Since we draw names, my gifting was now done. Off to try a beer and appetizer at J. Grundy’s Rueb ‘n’ Stein down the street. From that link you may again notice that (as of this writing) their listing is unclaimed. This place is decent, has a few reviews, so I put out a quick Foursquare tip. Sorry for the small font.

Rueb ‘n’ Stein is also the place where I heard more than one group of people talk about Small Business Saturday with hopes people come to shop in Northfield.

Strangely, Rueb ‘n’ Stein has been socially engaged on Google Picasa as early as 2004. It looks like they’ve stopped it a couple years ago and it would be neat to see them start it up again.

All of the above examples could go right to Google Places to gain additional business exposure for free. I highly encourage this for any Northfield business owner, manager or employee. For more info, check out the source itself on the Google Places blog.

In all, thank you Northfield for welcoming me into your city. I always enjoy it whether it’s for particular destinations or even if I’m just driving through. Family members will indirectly be thanking you as well when they open up their gifts.

Other notes:

I did make a really small Flickr set for the day
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak made clever use of the #rtlocallist hashtag on Twitter
Barb Prindle who contributes so much to Localmn graduated from Carleton College
Northfield has a really nice Patch presence. I’m a fan of Patch
I saw some overall social media presence from businesses, yet was surprised to not see more considering all the college students who make Northfield home

Did you have any fun Small Business Saturday experiences? If so, let us know as we’d love to hear about it.

Tags: antiques of northfield, champion sports, monkey read, northfield, rueb 'n' stein, small business saturday, the hideaway
Posted in Local Search, Minnesota Business | 2 Comments »

Google Places is Getting Social – “Descriptive Terms” Now Showing in Local Results

June 14th, 2011

Last week, quite a few Minnesotans went out to Seattle’s SMX Advanced conference and I had a message for two of them:

The biggest thing everyone came back with was to really engage, be social and be transparent. They all stressed that search engines are going to be using social more in their data and factors – not huge news and there’s a lot more, but not for this post.

So, Google is indeed partially doing this. Yesterday, their Places team announced they are now using descriptive terms in local search results. I really like the hyper-local potential. More on that below.

This means they are now including terms that appear to be words others use to describe businesses on different local and social sites.

Here’s a Google Places screenshot for the standard “pizza” keyword. The area was for north downtown/St. Anthony Main/UofM in Minneapolis.

Here’s the hyper-local and conversion potential that I love. If you’re in the area, you already know that Pizza Nea uses unique ingredients like sea salt and prosciutto, Mesa Pizza has popular vegetarian and mac and cheese options and Punch is known for their wood fired ovens and basil for their Margherita pies.

Visitors to the area can now see this before they get there. and this is hyper-local at its finest.

There are many more examples. This one is for the phrase “music school” near downtown Minneapolis.

If you’re in music education, you know that Suzuki is a method of musical training for kids as young as preschool age. If someone is specifically looking for this, this is a great chance for a conversion.

Loosely related, here’s an example of what shows up for a south Minneapolis search for “piano lessons”.

Guess what type of music classes they specialize in? Early childhood.

How about a bike rental in Minneapolis?

It’s well-known that for a couple years, Minneapolis has had a slick public bicycle rental system that you can use with a credit card. Bixi is the bicycle solution behind the system. Visitors can now know this.

How about a diner? There’s a well-known one in St. Paul.

Mickey’s Diner happens to be known for their Mulligan Stew and Potatoes O’Brien. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 and was used in scenes from the movie “Mighty Ducks”.

Here’s a diner in Rochester and it’s my favorite example.

See the “hole in the wall” description? This place is indeed a hole in the wall and in the very best way possible. Locals already know this and visitors can read their ratings and reviews. This place is really hard to beat!

These descriptive terms aren’t always as relevant as the above. Here’s one for a St. Paul attorney.

Gonzaga University? Seems like an irrelevant descriptive term. Although, according to Avvo he graduated from the Gonzaga University School of Law in 1978.

Side note, Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA is pretty.

I tried a slightly longer search in “personal injury lawyer”. It didn’t show any descriptive terms. It did show the category of “personal injury attorney”. Note, your category and descriptive terms can both show. It just doesn’t in this example and many long-tail searches.

This new feature is brand new and I really hope it stays. I’ve read a couple posts that have showed flaws in these descriptions. I hope these are the extreme exceptions. Google has something really good here.

Enough about my thoughts. What are yours? Are you a local business owner or manager? If so, Google your company name and see how accurate these descriptions are for you. Let us know what you think.

Tags: "descriptive terms" "hyper local" "hyperlocal" "ward tongen" "thinksem"
Posted in Google, Local Search, Minnesota Business, Social Media, User-Generated Media | No Comments »

Giving Away Powerball Love

March 17th, 2010

OK, it’s time for a giveaway. I have ten $10 coupons to redeem for Powerball tickets. Here they are – all $100 worth.

Powerball Coupons

These will be given away to a Minnesotan as the coupon specifically says they can be redeemed wherever Minnesota State Lottery tickets are sold.

I don’t know how the giveaway will be done yet but updates will mostly be given through Twitter and this blog. You do not have to follow me on Twitter to win. I really only want followers who are truly interested in my updates. You will however need to know the Twitter hashtag which will be mentioned here TBD.

How did I get these and why am I giving these away? I was at a Wild game on Singles Awareness Day (Feb. 14). The announcer called our row, and everyone in it won the same prize. Plus, I just want to do something nice for a random local.

So far I’ve received a couple of good recommendations. @JasonDouglas on Twitter suggested a Twitter auction. That does sound like fun and proceeds could go to the winner’s favorite charity.

@JasonDouglas Suggestion

@PGSCarol brought some humor and suggested I just give them all away at the office.

@PGSCarol Suggestion

How about you? Any suggestions you think would work well for a giveaway?

The initial thought I had was actually the reason I joined Twitter 3 years ago. Basically, it was for a human scavenger hunt. Here’s more about that:

Twitter user @ldg has a site called the Least Dangerous Game. The site’s stagnant right now, but he would hide somewhere in the Twin Cities area, give out Twitter Clues to his whereabouts and would give a small prize to the first person who found him. It was a lot of fun actually and I remember learning some cool things about the area I previously didn’t.

Again, that was my initial thought, other suggestions are great and more are indeed welcome! What do you think would be a good idea for a giveaway?

If you’re a local business, would you be interested in teaming up? That would be wonderful and hopefully provide fun exposure.

Tags: powerball
Posted in Minnesota Business, Social Media | 3 Comments »

Delano, MN – Spirit of Community and City of Social Media

December 19th, 2009

Yesterday, a good friend both on and offline @AaronWeiche politely suggested that I blog a little more. As a good gesture, I decided to write a post all for him!… and/or the city of Delano.

Quick background, Aaron is the VP of Five Technology, Web design and Internet marketing firm based in the heart of Delano, Minnesota and his company is designing their new city website. He also grew up in nearby Buffalo (MN) where he again lives with his wife and three young daughters.

Regarding Delano, it’a a really nice smaller town about 15 minutes west of the Twin Cities suburbs. They pride on being The Spirit of Community. They are now also a City of Social Media. To quote:

The city of Delano uses social media to provide two-way communication with the public and the City. The City of Delano communicates via Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

This comes from a PDF document on their city social media guidelines for sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. It includes no vulgar language, personal attacks, spam, illegal activity and more. In the social media world, this means use common sense and I think the City of Delano gets this perfectly, especially when I see the words two-way communication as quoted above.

They have an active Twitter account which mentions their social media guidelines as well as other new and relevant things in the community. They also mention the award for their new Highway 12 bridge (opens PDF file).
Their Facebook Page is pretty active with 847 fans (as of this writing) and more relevant news and events that the community can find interesting.
They don’t have much of a YouTube presence, but here’s a quick vid on why to shop locally (not a big surprise that I’m a big fan of that).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NXDoxSi_3c]

Once following Delano on Twitter, I did get a Direct Message back thanking me for following them and their Spirit of Community. In the social media expert/guru/wizard/ninja/master world, this is a no-no. In this case, I think it’s absolutely appropriate as they’re welcoming me into their community. Thank you, Delano.

Anyway, I decided to take the advice given in their YouTube video and purchase items from them locally. Aaron recommended going to Three Crows Cafe and Coffee House for some java. It was so cool to sit, sip and watch a group of musicians chat and play some old songs. There were 3 guitars, a violin and a mandolin. I did check in on Foursquare but immediately put the iThing away to relax and just watch the musicians.

Three Crows

Next I purchased some bacon and summer sausage down the street at Rieder Meat Market. This place was actually recommended to me this morning while visiting a wedding photographer in Minneapolis who’s getting absolutely screwed by a local search company based out of Newark, New Jersey by hijacking his Google Maps listing and map-spamming it with fake addresses to “enhance” his rankings. Dudes, give the guy control over his listing and please quit making the Interwebz cry.

Anyway, Rieder’s summer sausage is really good. Haven’t tried the bacon yet.

My last purchase was at Delano Floral and Gifts. It’s your standard gift store and I had really nice help picking out a few last minute Christmas gifts. Don’t mind the website’s over-SEO. If you’re in the area, check the place out.

Delano Floral and Gifts

Thanks to Aaron from Five Technology for nudging me to do a post. I had a really nice time visiting a new town.

Five Technology Headquarters in Delano

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Tags: delano, Social Media
Posted in Minnesota Business, Social Media | 5 Comments »

Bro-Sis Collaboration Update – Getting Ready for First Meeting

August 9th, 2008

A week and a half ago, I mentioned that my sis and I are starting a new collaborative project regarding photography and traditional marketing, along with search marketing, local search, and social media.

In short, this project is to offer both customized private consulting to professional photographers along with numerous public speaking engagements.

We’re welcoming people to view or progress in various formats – good, bad, and ugly. More sites to come, but currently, they are…

This Blog
My Facebook Profile
My Twitter

Heather’s Blog
Heather’s Facebook Profile
Heather’s Tin Shed Studio Facebook Page

Our first meeting is this Monday at our ‘rents place in Reads Landing, MN and we’ve got about five hours to brainstorm. The first hour will be confirming our overall strategy. Our Dad reads this blog occasionally, and if you read this Dad, get your pontoon ready. The first hour is on the Mississippi.

My sis is new to social marketing, and I already think she “gets it” more than I do. It’s going to be fun collaborating with each other.

More to come… much more.

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Tags: Local Search, photography, Search Marketing, Social Media
Posted in Bro-Sis Project, Local Search, Minnesota Business, Search Marketing, Social Media | 2 Comments »

Favorite Local News of the Week – Bridge Reflections, St. Paul Inline Marathon, and Good Question from DeRusha

August 1st, 2008

We all remember the I35 bridge tragedy last year. WCCO put together a special bridge retrospective with perspectives from survivors, responders, officials, and more. I can’t believe it’s been a year.

I was on the phone wishing my mom a happy birthday at the time. I live pretty close by and remembered seeing some smoke, then hearing some sirens. I didn’t know what it was so I closed the windows so we could hear our conversation.

Tonight I walked toward the Stone Arch bridge just before 6:00pm to call her again for happy birthday wishes. She really appreciated it as I was explaining the scene and the moment of silence nearby. It certainly makes you appreciates life.

———-

The Woodbury Bulletin put out a nice article regarding a high school junior skating her 6th inline marathon, which is this Sunday’s St. Paul Inline Marathon. It’s a great story, although I admit to being a little frustrated that major news outlets don’t cover this event. Last year I remember seeing one of the major’s putting a blurb about it, but it was only because of closed roads during the event.

If you’re an indie, small, or major local news outlet, this marathon is the 2nd largest in the country with approximately 2,000 skaters, both local and international with a huge amount of fans with cowbells and shout-outs rooting people on. I imagine readers would find this event very interesting.

Side note – barring storms, my nickel is on Ed Kohler finishing very close or even beating the 1h 30m mark. I will not and will be at 2+ hours. Nonetheless, we’ll both be hanging at the pre-race expo tomorrow geekin’ with gadgets.

———-

I always enjoy the Good Question segments from Jason DeRusha, and a recent Good Question is regarding hedging. Some beeping came at the Carlson School of Management’s entrance and they provided some humorous banter. Jason never disappoints.

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Tags: good question, jason derusha, minneapolis bridge, st paul inline marathon
Posted in Minnesota Business | 6 Comments »

Sneak Peak at Some Local Palore Data

June 25th, 2008

A few of us got a sneak peak today and more info will be on Palore in probably 12 hours, but they have some decent info regarding restaurant reviews across the US.

Regarding the email from Palore I received today…

Compiling this nationwide report, we took the total number of restaurants we found in each state and checked how many of them have at least one user review on at least one site.

It looks like Minnesota does fairly well as between 15 and 20% of local restaurants have received at least one online review.

More to come in a soon-to-be Search Engine Guide article.

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Tags: Local Search, palore
Posted in Local Search, Minnesota Business | 1 Comment »

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2011 Small Business Saturday Goes to Northfield

Favorite Local News of the Week – Bridge Reflections, St. Paul Inline Marathon, and Good Question from DeRusha

Sneak Peak at Some Local Palore Data

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