One CityVoter name One CityVoter password

This is a big day for CityVoters. All* of our websites across all of our cities will now recognize anyone with a CityVoter username and password (*except for Seattle, SF, Dallas, and Spokane). This means if you voted in Detroit, you could use the same account to vote on WEYI mid-Michigan. More importantly, you can pop over to CityVoter.com and create your own "best of" list or answer ask a question about Detroit. You are now a CityVoter citizen free to travel from one best of city to the next and be heard. Enjoy.

Media partners this is a big deal for you too. This means the time has come when we can start making all that fun stuff on CityVoter.com available to your audience on your website. We haven't ironed this out entirely yet, but you know it's been in the works. Soon a broadcast network of Q&A will be a reality and your locals will be creating and sharing their favorite places all year round with personal lists and guides.

Thanks Alex and Nathan. This is huge.

A Great Way To Get Out The Vote

See the image of Famous Dave's website above?

Famous Dave is competing to be named the best bbq restaurant in Denver. Famous Dave is using a free promotional graphic from CityVoter to make sure its customers know to vote for them (I circled it in red). Be like Famous Dave!

This kind of graphic is available to all business owners who compete in a CityVoter contest. To get yours, log into the "business center" and click on "reach existing customers". It's one of the helpful tools we give you to get out the vote.

Go get yours today. You can do a lot of fun things with this. For inspiration, here is another example from Philadelphia!

What is "Positive" Engagement?

There are many ways we use websites. For simplicity, I lump our behaviors into three buckets.

1) Passive. This characterizes the way most of us use most websites. We browse for information on a site, and we search for something we're looking for.

2) Engaged. When a website engages us, we will upload photos, write reviews, respond to an article, print content, send information to our phones, and even email information to friends.

3) Positively engaged. This is when we feel passionate about something in a positive way. We want to be part of the community, share helpful tips and recommendations, and establish connections with other people.

We work hard to create "positive engagement" across the CityVoter network. We promote local businesses for free, and we ask consumers to share recommendations on the best places in their city. Sometimes, this works so well, we get a nice email:

"I just wanted to say thank you. I think this is a great way to showcase the wonderful businesses in Denver. A lot of us are struggling with our advertising budgets and this is very helpful. Once again thank you, John"

Thanks for the note, John. You made our Tuesday morning!

Why advertisers want the web to look like newspapers

I studied a bit of English in college, but I never really understood the meaning of the word irony (I'm thick like that) -- so I apologize in advance if this ad (to the left) which is being displayed on the web in a way to look like a newspaper clipping is not truly ironic. I think it is, and I actually think it works well.

For me, this display ad had more credibility and is more eye catching than other web display ads and should give newspaper guys something to think about. Why? Because the ad looks like a clipping from a medium I have learned to trust: newspapers. Sure, we could debate the demise of journalism and newspapers, but that wouldn't change the fact that I had an instinctual "oh, I wonder who wrote that" reaction when I saw this ad. Yes, I'm sure the younger generation doesn't feel this way, but the ad is targeted at us older folk...so it works.

Polling CityVoters - Which credit card is best?

Over the past few months, we have been testing a new polling window on our different websites to see if we could get people who were voting for their favorite local businesses to vote for their favorite products and brands. Kind of a fun way to extend the CityVoter concept. Ultimately, we want to be able to say "Denver's favorite soda is X" and "Chicago's favorite credit card is Y".

We don't use the same fraud detection on the polls as we do for our "best of" contests, so we won't be claiming poll results are scientific or representative. We will be having fun with them though. See if we can stoke some competitive fires among our passionate website visitors. Right now, we have about a dozen polls running on topics that span soda to pet food to detergent.

It's almost time to rotate a new crop of polls into the mix. We would love to get additional suggestions for polls if you have any. So please let us know.

By the way, Visa is currently crushing the competition.

Making your own business video

To the left is a picture of a Flip camera. I recently bought one for my mom to take videos of her new grandson. It's by far one of the easiest devices I've ever used, and she loves it.

Below, we talk about the Office Depot contest where Office Depot is awarding prizes to small businesses who create their own video and uploaded it to their contest website. If you're interested in doing this, may I strongly recommend you look into buying a Flip camera. It is point and shoot and the video quality is awesome. It is designed to plug right into your computer so you can easily share videos with friends, family, and customers.

If you want to order one online, go to Amazon or eBay. I've found prices for less than $100. You don't need the storage of the bigger camera if you're just getting started.

Let us help you join the Office Depot contest

Every once in a while, we get whiff of an opportunity for business owners that we get excited about and want to share. Here's one to take advantage of.

Office Depot will be awarding small business owners more than $1,000,000 worth of prizes. We want you to win.

Here's what you need to do to enter:
1) Shoot a clever video that meets their requirements
2) Upload it to the contest site

We want one of our business owners to win! If you need help, contact us by clicking here. We'll walk you through the entry process.

Hurry, the contest ends July 31.

Don't do the fake review it can cost you

A lot is being made about a recent lawsuit where a company paid $300,000 to settle a case where they were discovered posting fake positive reviews about their own business. You can read the NY Times article, and you should if you've ever asked yourself, what's the big deal?

This settlement slaps a pretty hefty fine and sends a very strong message that reviews are forms of marketing and are subject to the same standards as TV, print and other advertisements. If you post fake reviews, you are obviously using the web to manipulate consumers and now there is a legal precedent for how you can be punished.

Just don't do it. Encourage your customers to speak on your behalf. The happy ones love sharing praise. We've collected more than 1 million positive recommendations in 3 years. That's a lot of happy chatty customers.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

[One e-mail message, discovered by the attorney general’s office, told employees to “devote the day to doing more postings on the Web as a satisfied client.”

The company will pay $300,000 in penalties and costs to the state. It has also agreed to stop publishing anonymous reviews on Web sites in the voices of satisfied customers and to identify any content created by employees, the statement said.

Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s attorney general, said in a statement that Lifestyle Lift’s “attempt to generate business by duping consumers was cynical, manipulative and illegal.”]

Replacing that billboard

Local media companies are in a fight to stay relevant to consumers and therefore advertisers. This is not new news. People get their news and information from lots of different places now. So what is a local media company to do? It's not a simple answer, but a couple of things are universally accepted. Local media companies must:
1) Create programming, articles, and personalities that are uniquely local so locals feel a connection
2) Show growth in audience so their ad space is seen as the must-have for scarce regional and national ad dollars
3) Find ways to do this without spending a lot money

Not fun or easy.

But the question is this: How can they do things differently?

Here's one example. You know that billboard on the highway? It probably looks something like this:
Not picking on ABC15. After all, in Boston, our highways are littered with similar signage. In major metros, costs for media like this is roughly $5000/month or $60,000/year. To see if this is helping the local media companies in Boston, we bugged a few cars on route 93. Here are some quotes from people who have seen the local media advertisement billboards in Boston:
"Hey honey, can you pass me my water."
"Jake, give that back to your sister."
"Are they ever going to complete this construction."

I'd be subtle, but I've found that doesn't work so good. I'm a strongly suggesting that you take your billboard dollars and use them to run the CityVoter program. Wow, that's a self-serving argument, huh? Yes, but for a fraction of the costs of this promotion, CityVoter can drive hundreds of thousands of people to your website where you can control the branding, the conversation, and establish deep connections with your audience. These are real quotes from consumers and advertisers we've helped our partners receive:

"I would like to thank you for creating the MyFoxLA HOT LIST. I think this an excellent way to promote businesses in Los Angeles. The exposure and recognition of small business is so important." Faces European Skin Care -- Los Angeles, CA

"Thank you CityVoter & Fox 8 for teaming up to create the HOT LIST. This was a wonderful opportunity to get our little store on the map in people's minds. The promotion has been fabulous."Logos Bookstore -- Cleveland, OH

We also have placards, business cards, t-shirts, email newsletters, and other fun ways to build your brand. This is about lasting relationships with the community. Growing a connection with potential advertisers and your audience. The metrics we have show engagement. Engagement is what media companies need to survive and dare I say grow. It's not just reach -- and it's certainly not the reach achieved on the side of a highway.

What's the difference?

This is a picture of the Yellow Pages (source amplify.com).

The Yellow Pages are an exhaustive list of all the businesses in an area. That's why they're so thick.

Consumers pick up the Yellow Pages when they're looking for something. Most people don't put a yellow page book on the coffee table or in their office's waiting room. Consumers don't tend to talk about the yellow pages with friends or co-workers around the water cooler. And I don't know anyone who would carry one of these things into the bathroom for a little light reading.

As a business owner, you pay to have yourself listed and you can pay a little extra to make your listing bold or even include a coupon or ad. You don't have a lot space to be creative, and you have little control over how good your ad looks (it's on yellow paper after all).

A lot of internet companies are trying to replicate the usefulness of the Yellow Pages. They buy business listings and they make websites that list as many businesses as possible so that search engines like Google and Yahoo will turn to them first when consumers search online. These are called "directories". A couple good examples of Internet directories are OpenList, MojoPages, Local.com and Yellowpages.com.






This is a picture of a monthly city magazine (source Portland Monthly).




A city magazine has paid journalists who know their city really well, some could say are experts, writing about the best things in the city. They review restaurants, shops, gyms, museum exhibits, live music.

Consumers love these "best of" editions because they provide great ideas for ways to enjoy city life more. These editions are resources people refer to all year long because they love lists of the best places. They talk about who won this year and they debate whether or not the magazine got it right.

Businesses can pay to advertise on full-page sections of the magazine with beautiful glossy photos and compelling ads that help their businesses stand out. These tend to be expensive ads so it's not the same kind of advertiser that uses the yellow pages. You see more banks, franchisees, and jewelers.

This is what CityVoter is doing nationwide on the Internet. We're building best of lists and helping consumers debate what they love about where they live. We're creating premium advertising space for brands that want to target specific cities. Because we determine the best businesses in more than 100 categories and because we offer coupons to local business owners, we start to look like a directory. We are not. We'll leave that to the other guys.

What's with all the fireworks?

This fourth of July marked the end of several of our contests and the beginning of several more. Dallas ended with more than 60,000 votes in its first year. The Jersey Shore enthusiasts logged more than 10,000 votes in the second year...and year 3 voting in Detroit and Indianapolis is unbelievable.

The response in Dallas was fantastic. More than half of the people who voted left a recommendation for their favorite business. In just a few short weeks, we collected more than 30,000 recommendations on where to eat, shop and play in the Big D. All next week, we'll be announcing the winners.

What's next? San Diego, Philadelphia, and Omaha. Business owners should order their t-shirts and print materials now. Get out the vote.