The Near Memo

Send us Fan Mail Whenever Apple announces a new consumer focused privacy update, the pundits become Chicken Little. E-mail has long provided the best ROI of any marketing channel and while metrics might be harder to garner, that won’t stop a great email from succeeding.  Google seems to have stopped enforcing naming abuse by businesses in Google Maps. And they have now increased the field length t...

Send us Fan Mail The Washington Post details the travails of a couple seeking treatment and the problems that befell them after they picked a provider based on what turned out to be fake reviews. The article looks at the lack of incentives to do reviews right and the lack of disincentives to not cheat. The article discussed how Section 230 creates an environment where review companies can “look th...

Send us Fan Mail Mike discusses his journey down the gamified rabbithole of the wildly successful Google Local Guides program, how the program promotes quantity over quality and why every business needs to not let their brand be controlled by the likes of the Local Guides.    SMBS have traditionally relied on best of breed SAAS point solutions to solve their pre-sale, in house and post-sale needs....

Send us Fan Mail Hospitality Case Study of Reviews: What Happened to Yelp? Looking at 20 years of reviews for a popular Santa Fe resort, we examine how Yelp faired against the likes of TripAdvisor, Facebook, Google and OpenTable. The analysis shows, that at least in this segment, Yelp’s problems were largely self-inflicted not caused by a Google abuse of their monopoly. Google I/O: they flex their...

Send us Fan Mail Part 1 Shopify makes the case for local ecommerce A report with a soup-to-nuts discussion of  shopping and commerce trends, including online vs. offline, social commerce, retail experiences, payments and banking services. One interesting finding: retailers with local pickup/delivery options saw 13% - 19% higher online conversions. Apparently the Japanese are the least likely to su...

Send us Fan Mail Apple Tracking Opt-in at 4% in US, lower than anticipated, Shopify focuses on helping SMB be better and retain customer relationships, Facebooks Neighborhood, a NextDoor clone, is likely to be like Nextdoor but worse because of poor moeration As the Apple 3rd party opt in rolls out, opt in numbers are lower than anticipated. THis points ot the consumers desire for more privacy and...

Send us Fan Mail Is Apple being paternalistic or ethical in not allowing advertisiers to provide incentives for Apple users to opt into advertising tracking? Should privacy be commoditized? Can Yelp make their way back by moving to transactional approach to local? After alienating most SMBS in the country and seeing ever increasing declines in readership David doesn't think that Yelp moving t...

Send us Fan Mail Episode 12:  Zagat reviews, but shorter and graphic appealing, rise from the Google ashes; The FTC ability to levy fines as a deterrent is knee capped by SCOTUS; Apple privacy changes AND review capability coming this week. Zagat, bought by Google in 2011 for their 30 point system, then discarded by Google is re-entering the food reviews market with more image heavy, briefer revie...

Send us Fan Mail FB SMB Survey showed 22% of SMBS adopted e-commerce over the past year, women led businesses were more agile in the adoption of digital technology, but impact of the pandemic hurt minority and women the most. Near Media survey detailed the list of activities that American's had planned once they felt safe & economy opened. The top two (by a large margin) were travel and e...

Send us Fan Mail The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.  With Swyft providing last mile same day delivery will we see small businesses being able to offer their Prime like subscriptions? - David The new FTC rule-making changes are signaling that the FTC will use their a...

Send us Fan Mail Website Builder SquareSpace acquires restaurant backend system Tock; will other website builders need to acquire more backend functionality? Will Web 3.0 be about business services? - Mike blumenthal Google My Business, historically tone deaf when it comes to small business, shoots themselves in the Messaging foot by showing competitors when a consumer attempts to message a specif...

Send us Fan Mail The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.  Episode 8: Google fights with Rand Fishkin over “zero-click” searches. Can a rating only review ever be defamatory? Will Yahoo’s brand rise from the ashes as a Verizon subscription service? Written by Near Media F...

Send us Fan Mail The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.  Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us Fan Mail The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.  Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us Fan Mail The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.  Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us Fan Mail The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.  Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us Fan Mail The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands. Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

Send us Fan Mail The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about search, social, and commerce: what happened, why it matters and the implications for local businesses and national brands. Discussed this week: -Google’s integration of Business profile messaging into the Google My Business for the desktop and the implications for SMBs and enterprise brands -Google’s test for displaying local e-commerce...

Send us Fan Mail The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about search, social and commerce: what happened, why it matters and the implications for local businesses and national brands. Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/