Social Media & Local Listings What the...@?!

[motorcity]

Okay how about a thread for local listing dummies?

 

My one and only oscommerce shop has always been the website of my brick & mortar store. It's been in business 67 years now (only 9 with me). You might guess it by my screen name, but we operate in a pretty depressed neighborhood of a large urban city.

 

We've had both ups and downs with both walk-in customers and our website sales, and these days you hear it from all over; "you need to be on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Yahoo etc."

 

So we tried Facebook. First a friend setup a personal page for the store. Then my partner setup a business type page for the store. Then about a year later I decided to give it a try and ran into a brick wall. It seems Facebook has this huge drawn out process to change ownership of what? An account, a page, whatever! It all ended in frustration and I canceled the thing.

 

Now I'm trying to follow Google's recommendation to check how your business is listed locally and I'm finding a bunch that have our name wrong or even worse, give a different companies website out as ours. And I find to make changes to these listing like Yahoo, I need to setup an account. Ok. I'm fine with that...sorta!

 

Once bitten twice shy for dummies

What kind of account do other businesses use? Do you setup a personal account? Is there a way to setup a business account? Is my experience with Facebook typical?

 

Thoughts? Comments? Help?

[Guest]

@@motorcity

 

Unfortunately, you should be looking at a facebook support forum since your question really has nothing to do with osCommerce.

 

 

Chris

 

 

btw, I live across the puddle from your "large urban city".

[motorcity]

Well, I'd say kinda yes and no.

It's true my question has nothing to do with 'ssl for the unclothed' code work, but here you'll find people who specialize in ecommerce websites and store owners like myself.

 

I've tried several other places including Facebook. Over there you have people of every conceivable persuasion pursuing their lost fan club by waiting in line for the admin. Somehow, it makes me feel like a munchkin.

 

Here you'll find some successful people, some inspired, and some just working at it.

 

As I've been told by a wise OSC coder, 'Facebook isn't for everybody'.

 

Yahoo, yellowpages and other local search engines is really what my question is all about. If you have to make an account there to correct or affect their listings, are there pitfalls or is this child's play?

 

I like your side of the river, we get some pretty good hockey players from over there.

[Atwoodz-eCommerce]

Hello,

 

Facebook has always been more for branding, than for generating sales. There are very few success stories through Facebook, and they are far and few between; plus, they generally revolve around some great story that went viral and not from just some guy selling something.

 

People often get in trouble working with "local listing" seo companies, who rely on directory submissions and other business-type directories to promote their client's website. The biggest issue is when the SEO company sources the work to India or some other off-shore company. One spelling issue or incorrect address and they will put incorrect info into what could be hundreds of free directories. They try and get the customers to use a new (800) number, and once the customer cancel, they can have hundreds of ads and directory listings with a phone number that has been resold to another customer.

 

It is always a big deal to transfer ownership of business accounts, due to the fraudulent nature of the marketing business. Shady marketing companies have been known to close and/or try and take over the listings of competitors. There are processes in place to transfer ownership, by they are rarely easy to use.

 

Facebook's system is fully automated, and FREE, so there can be too much expectations of high-level customer service.

 

It isn't as easy as some would think to market a website, and there are many ins-and-outs that are learned from mentors or years of working on them. You will likely need to start accounts at every location that has false ads, there isn't anything wrong with starting the accounts, they are pretty safe. The information they need to start the accounts is already publicly available, like address, phone number and such. You shouldn't need to give out personal information to start business listings, besides your name.

 

Matt