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/2009/10/21/citysquares-celebrates-its-4th-year/ http://blog.citysquares.com/2009/10/21/citysquares-celebrates-its-4th-year/#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:00:55 +0000 Marissa Green http://blog.citysquares.com/?p=823

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!

It’s probably a bit overstated, but perhaps if consumers have too much power, and small businesses can’t defend themselves, than they’re in trouble. Perhaps all that would be left are huge corporate chains, with substantially more money (and hence power) than any mom-and-pop. They can afford a PR offensive, they can afford hiring dedicated twitter people, dedicated social media experts, etc. The small businesses cannot. And it’s these small businesses that are the thread in our economic quilt. They are essential, and yet they are challenged everyday by huge obstacles, nearly all having nothing to do with the Internet. You’d be surprised by what small businesses have to deal with every day, that threaten their fate. From macro economic conditions, to micro economic conditions, to neighborhood/street construction, to local zoning laws, from tax policies, to crime rates, small businesses can be crushed in ways that might seem petty and insignificant to the average consumer, or to big business. More often than not we really have no idea what small business owners have to go through to keep their doors open, to make payroll, keep their lights on, keep customers happy and returning. Too often then not we’re quick to jump to conclusions, and make assumptions. More often than not, these small businesses are greatly affected by one persons opinion.

Some people will suggest that the best way to counteract this is for the SMBs to “get on Facebook” or “get on twitter” or “hire a social media consultant.” My response? Give me a break! The small business owners response? “What is Facebook? What is twitter? What the heck is social media?”

So, we decided to take another step towards solving this problem for small business owners, and it might be interpreted as a controversial one: CitySquares now allows businesses to opt-out of reviews all together on their CitySquares.com business profile page.

Why? Well, take the local dentist for example, who no matter how hard she tries, she can’t win over all her customers. Truth be told, not everyone enjoys the dentist, right? And we have reason to believe that not all reviews left on a dentists profile are going to be glowing reviews for her root canal skills. Is it fair for this local dentist to have virtually no way to combat this? Sure, we could give her an opportunity to talk back to consumers, but what does that really do for the dentist? It’s her word against another – it’s tit-for-tat, he-said-she-said. And ultimately, that single dentist is up against a whole lot of (mostly) anonymous voices, people who are hiding behind an avatar, a username, while everyone knows who the dentist is, where she works, and have the power to nearly destroy her operation. OK – maybe a bit overstated, but nonetheless, reality!

This is just one scenario – there are lots of others that could be described. But you get the point.

So now, if you’re a small business owner you can opt-out of consumer reviews on your CitySquares business profile.

Here’s how it works:

• If you are a paying customer, you can choose between having reviews, or not having reviews. Period. End of story. There is no gray area – reviews are either enabled, or disabled, for paying customers only.
• If you are not a paying customer, we cannot disable reviews. You must be a customer. And all it takes is $5.99/month to become a customer, and that is all it costs to have reviews disabled on your profile. Not a penny more.

This new feature is not intended to be a revenue opportunity, that’s not the point. It’s not some crafty bait-and-switch, or anything like that. The point of this is to give the merchants a little more power, a little more opportunity to manage their online reputation, at least on CitySquares.com.

We’d like to do much more – and soon we will be. There’s much more in store for small merchants, but I’ll save that for a later post.

What do you think?

Our company blog has been running for about a year or so, and it’s served us well as we’ve grown. But now, it’s time to take it to the next level. We believe in an open and candid dialog with our audience, and that’s what modern marketing is, a dialog – a conversation. One-directional marketing is dying, and it’s dying a long and slow death. Conversational marketing is here and here to stay, there’s no doubt about that.

So welcome to the new and improved CitySquares blog! There’s a much improved user interface and experience, but also a host of new features like videos, easy access to our archives, tweetbacks and tweetsuite (for you twitter users), but best of all, coming in the next few days, articles from guest writers!

We have some special guest writers lined up for you too – mostly small business owners who live this life every day, who are in the heat of the fire. They’re perspectives extend far beyond those of us at CitySquares. It’s high time that someone gives them a voice. CitySquares tries to do that through small business profiles, and we succeed in a marketing sense, but now it’s time to let them talk openly about anything and everything else on their minds – through their own eyes, as experts in their particular areas. Expect to see these folks up on CitySquares’ blog within a few short days!

The goal of this blog has always been for CitySquares to communicate with our audience, first and foremost, and that’s easy, we can do that until the cows come home. Our new goal of this blog is to continue to give you access to content that’s more important that what we might have to say. I’m confident that our guest writers, along with you’re participation on this blog (through comments and so forth) can make that happen.

As CitySquares goes national, so does this blog. If you’re interested in becoming a guest writer, please email me! We’re especially interested in hearing from small businesses all across the country, whether they’re in small rural towns or bustling urban districts. Please reach out and let me know if you want to be heard! The only requirement we have is that the topics must be within the broad spectrum of small business matters. That’s a huge range of topics – spanning from hiring practices, to marketing and advertising trends, to finding the right summer student help, to working with your town on zoning, to the green or local movements, to taxes, bookkeeping, inventory management, or anything else! There’s far too many topics for me to think of. That’s where you, the small businesses come in… join us.

1) the small businesses along the streets, with their storefronts, their goods and services, their owners who employ the locals and teenagers during the summer, who take good care of their customers, the local residents. Who know the children, the selectman, and who keep their sidewalks clean.

2) the artists of the community who hold high aesthetic standards, who remind us of the beauty in our world, and even the darkness. The artists who have passions for certain causes, who stick together and surprise us, who open our eyes. The musicians who sit on the park bench strumming a guitar, or the painter who stands on the shoreline painting a landscape, and who all hang out at the local coffee shop talking about politics or collaborate on some new media projects.

3) the local non-profits and pioneers whose only mission is to give something back to the community, the country, the planet, and do good things, who work tirelessly and usually for barely a livable wage to ensure everyone has access to affordable housing, to health care, or who work improve the local economy, or help clean our planet for the next generations.

These three constituents in our society are the very core of our communities. They attract a certain population, they affect the local culture, they define the community. They attract people of all walks of life, of all races, of all belief systems and politics. They are the heartbeat of our communities. Without them, our communities have no identity or character.

For the last three years CitySquares has offered non-profits and local artists free profiles on CitySquares.com. Unfortunately we’ve never really publicized this, never really marketed it. That’s always been a bit of a thorn in our side too, something we’ve always intended to do but keep getting distracted from. So I’m hoping that this blog entry can serve as our first real foray into marketing this better. Let it be known now:

CitySquares provides all non-profit organizations, and all local artists with free Deluxe Profiles on CitySquares.com. There is no catch, there is no cost, not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

If you are a non-profit or a local artist, then you are welcome to sign up for a Free Deluxe Profile! Here’s just a basic example. How the profile looks and functions largely depends the content you make available on it. You can get very creative with these profiles!

What are the benefits of having a Deluxe Profile on CitySquares.com?
Like all of our profiles, they’re extremely Search Engine Optimized. So when people use the search engines to find you they’re very likely to discover your profile on CitySquares.com. Also, we have over one million people each month using CitySquares.com, and that number is growing especially as we continue to roll-out the site nationally. If you have a website, use your CitySquares profile to link to it and improve your search engine rankings. Take advantage of some of the bells and whistles on these profiles like reviews, and ratings. Embed a YouTube video if you have one, or add some images showing your art work or photography. There’s much more.

How do you get started?
Add your non-profit or your Artist profile to CitySquares.com by clicking here. Then standby for a phone call or email from us and we’ll take care of the rest. It’s pretty easy. And don’t worry about the lingo on the page, or about pricing.  Just proceed with the free options and we’ll take care of the rest.

We hope you’ll take full advantage of this opportunity which has no expiration date. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or need a hand.

Happy Holidays,

– Ben Saren

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