The minute you hear the scampering of paws across the  CitySquares’ office floor and the sound of excited panting, you know that the CitySquares canine entertainment is about to begin.

Elmer is CitySquares’ co-founder Ben Saren’s 15-month old dog and of course an essential part of the CitySquares’ team – he comes to work every day and keeps us all entertained with his tail-chasing, begging for food, and random excitability.

Because Elmer is always around the office, we thought it would be great to put his adorable mug at the forefront of a new weekly blog entry titled “Elmer’s Weekly Small Business Tip.” These ideas will give neighborhood businesses insight into what they can do to promote and market their businesses every day.

We also want our readers to get to know the CitySquares team and its dynamics. How better to start doing so than by introducing Elmer, the office dog?

Elmer’s Weekly Small Business Tip

Nov 19, 2009

Include a CitySquares Badge on your website so your website visitors can see that you’re on CitySquares and can check out your reviews and other information that might not be on your website. Also, when you add a badge that links to your profile on CitySquares.com, you’re helping your overall search engine optimization. Search engines love links – and links to and from your website and to/from your CitySquares profile is good for your online presence.

Just copy and paste the following HTML code into your website site and remember to personalize both the business name and city within the code.

Small Badge HTML Code

The code below, underneath the images, is what you want to copy and paste into your website’s HTML. The red text is the code you want to customize with the URL of your page on CitySquares and with your city.

<!– Begin CitySquares.com Membership Badge –><br />

<a href=”[URL of your CitySquares profile, including http://]” target=”_blank”><br />

<img src=”http://badges.citysquares.com/smbadge.gif” alt=”[your business name, City] on CitySquares” border=”0″ /><br />

</a><br />

Large Badge HTML Code

The code below, underneath the large badge, is what you want to copy and paste into your website’s HTML. The red text is the code you want to customize with the URL of your page on CitySquares and with your city.

<!– Begin CitySquares.com Membership Badge –><br />

<a href=”[URL of your CitySquares profile, including http://]target=”_blank”><br />

<img src=”http://badges.citysquares.com/badge.gif” alt=“[your business name, City] on CitySquares” border=”0″ /><br />

</a><br />

And that’s it! Once you do that you’ll have a fancy shmancy new badge on your website that links to your profile on CitySquares, and watch the search engines pick that up and give both your own website and your CitySquares profile higher ranking.

If you have any questions about this, just give Elmer a call at 877-61-LOCAL!

]]> http://blog.citysquares.com/2009/11/19/elmers-local-business-tips-nov-19-2009/feed/ 1 http://blog.citysquares.com/2009/11/12/the-beginning-of-the-citysquares-community-scrapbook/ http://blog.citysquares.com/2009/11/12/the-beginning-of-the-citysquares-community-scrapbook/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:45:11 +0000 Marissa Green http://blog.citysquares.com/?p=859

Everyday, the CitySquares team recognizes each local business’ and website user’s contribution to the overall CitySquares community.

We are working to create an online CitySquares Community Scrapbook where we will highlight one local business per week on our Facebook Fan Page. These are businesses that people have recently shown interest in and wrote positive reviews on the specific company’s profile.

We want to help spread the word about local businesses that are helping their neighborhoods by providing the services and products they do and creating an enjoyable experience for their customers and the people in their communities.

Included in the scrapbook is a link to the company’s profile, how the company views their impact on their community and a picture showing the products and services the business offers their neighborhood.

A big part of this scrapbook process will be fans tagging themselves in the photo your business provides to show they have visited your business before. We will also ask them to write a comment if your business’ products or services had a big impact on them or their local community.

We would love your input about this idea and suggestions of local CitySquares’ businesses that should be highlighted. If you are a local business and have a CitySquares’ profile that you would like to be featured, you should contact Marissa to receive further details.

The CitySquares’ Team is excited to see the Scrapbook grow each week and continue to show how much local businesses have become essential parts of communities across the nation.

Become a part of the CitySquares family and sign-up today!

October 16, 2009 marked the fourth year for CitySquares.com, a reflective milestone for co-founders Ben Saren and Bob Leland who recognize the successes and growth of CitySquares.com since its launch in 2005. CitySquares.com began as a small website with information about local businesses in seven Boston area neighborhoods to what is now a national hyperlocal resource with over 14 million businesses, tens of thousands of users, and rapidly growing traffic. Today, the CitySquares team continues the vision these two founders have spent the last four years expanding on; to ensure that neighborhood businesses get the attention they deserve.

The CitySquares.com website was founded with business profiles from only a few communities in the Boston Area. As of March 2009, CitySquares expanded across the nation and today there are over 14 million businesses on our site with over 18,000 written reviews from website users, and growing fast.

Co-founder Ben Saren says, “We both originally had a vision of helping small businesses get online exposure in a hyper-local context and now it’s not just a vision, it’s a reality.”

A little over four years ago, October 13, 2005, the CitySquares.com launch party was held in Davis Square, Somerville, MA.

There were performers from the Deborah Mason School of Dance, face painting and other activities for members of the local Davis Square community. The neighborhood warmly welcomed CitySquares into their neighborhood and lives. This assistance and the many other contributions people have made since day one for CitySquares have not gone unnoticed by either founder. Some of the first businesses to be a part of the CitySquares family include The Square Nail Studio, Massage Therapy Works and Wedgewood-Crane & Connolly Insurance Agency.

Ben Saren, co-founder and CEO, says, “The exciting thing about being a part of CitySquares is the culture, mission and approach. Everyone who has been and is a part of CitySquares helped us get to this point. I want extend a huge thank you to all of them.”

Along with the development of CitySquares, the long-lasting friendship between co-founders Bob and Ben is a model relationship for all business duos.  Bob says, “While so much has changed over the past four years, and we’ve been through so many highs and lows, our vision is being realized. We’ve come so far as a business, as a company, and Ben and I have grown so much as entrepreneurs and friends.”

Both founders are humbled by this milestone and how much CitySquares has grown over the past four years.  They are looking forward to many more years of helping small businesses get exposure, and attract the interest of their local communities and consumers.

Special thanks to Justin, Kim, Michael, and Amber, who continue to fight the good battle on behalf of Local Search and on behalf of small businesses.

Happy 4^th Anniversary CitySquares.com!

Well, it’s three years later and this past July we expanded the site to cover to all of New England and metro NY. We are one of the top 2500 sites in the nation according to Quantcast and have hundreds of paying customers. Going national seems like the next logical step doesn’t it? What are we waiting for? Grow, grow, grow! It all sounds logical and simple but in fact it’s far from it. What makes CitySquares unique is the value we provide customers. We have cultivated the site around the local communities and earnestly want to see small businesses succeed and grow. So the question wasn’t why don’t we expand, but how do we expand and preserve the essence of who we are? It’s a tough question to answer, one that we’ve been working on for some time. We don’t want to devolve into a just a national directory where the small business is buried under the national players or where the consumer’s opinion takes priority over SMBs. We care about small businesses, they’re our priority. But we also care about real-world community, offline life.

The fact is, we’ve only begun to achieve our vision. There’s so much more for us to accomplish. Our aim is to not be just a business directory or city guide, but to be the ultimate resource for local communities. Whether a county in Montana, a borough in NY, a village in Vermont, or a neighborhood in Seattle, we want to get all the information about that community, that locale, online. Get the geopolitical information online, municipal information, local government, post office, libraries, public schools, trash and recycling collection schedules, historical facts, playgrounds, parking lots, public transportation, local school lunch menus, athletic program information, July 4th fireworks locations, and so much more. CitySquares’ vision is, and has always been, to be “Your Neighborhood, Online.” Not easy, but necessary. And it will happen.

So here we are, starting our national expansion. And why? It’s simple -  there is a need. The need for the local tractor equipment company in French Lick, Indiana to be found when someone searches for local tractor equipment in French Lick, Indiana and not find John Deere in Indianapolis, Indiana. It’s about getting these small businesses online, and allowing them to be discovered by local, qualified consumers. Period. But that’s just the beginning. The rest and the best is yet to come. It may not sound or look like much right now, but as we chug along in the next couple months, the next year, and beyond, you’ll see this ultimate vision become reality.

This week CitySquares launched an additional 1.7 million businesses to fulfill the rest of New York and New Jersey as well as the entire state of Pennsylvania. We will quickly be rolling out other states to complete the national expansion. It is an exciting time for us and it’s equally exciting to see so many small businesses, mom-and-pops, across this great nation actually get online – many of them for their first time ever! This is one small step for CitySquares, one giant leap for your communities. You just wait and see.

– Co-founders, Bob Leland and Ben Saren

The easiest part of this challenge has been the restaurants. From Pescatore and Redbones BBQ in Somerville, Union Oyster House in Faneuil Hall, even all the way to Barnacle Billy’s in Maine, we’ve had an unlimited supply of local spots to dine. Downtown Wine and Spirits and local bars like The Draft (which just opened their new outdoor patio, by the way) and The Fours next to the Garden (Go Celts!) were obvious choices for entertainment. Groceries have been relatively easy as well with markets like Foodies in the South End. Farmer’s Markets like the Union Square Farmer’s Market have also been a big help during our buy local challenge.

Aside from a few blunders; a flat screen from Best Buy, a window air conditioner from Home Depot and some last minute Father’s Day cards at CVS we’ve made some major improvements. We’ve kicked our Dunkin Donuts habit and in exchange we’ve been frequenting places like the Buttery. We’ve replaced our Exxon Stations for neighborhood gas stations like Teele Square Auto. One of us even went so far as to drive to Hampstead New Hampshire to buy a power tool from East Coast Lumber! It hasn’t been an easy few weeks, but it’s definitely been a learning experience. We’ve got two more weeks to go and many more lessons to learn. Be sure to check back for more updates this month.

How about you? Do you feel like you try to shop locally when you have the choice? If so, why and if not, why? There’s no right or wrong answer either, so please, be candid!

– Julie

Working on this project, I started to draw a few conclusions. It is not that consumers have no interest in local business, it is that they don’t know where to find you, and they forget. It used to be that customer loyalty was gained simply by being an active member of your community in a physical sense. It is obvious that the definition of a community is rapidly changing. Whether it is MySpace or Facebook or any other site, people are congregating in these online communities where they feel some sort of connection or draw. CitySquares is quite literally an online playground for local business owners and consumers looking for them. The kid who used to play jacks outside your storefront is still out there, he just happens to be sitting on his Mac for a few hours while he plans out his day. The point is that CitySquares gives you a chance to be found by people who want to find you.

The flash demo storyboard came together nicely. It really will offer a new outlook on the benefits of becoming part of our community! I am excited to see what it looks like when it is finished. Keep an eye out for it!

– Jason