The Business Owner’s Guide to Local Search was created by Kathy Hendershot-Hurd – founder and chief of everything over at Virtual Impax LLC.
Kathy has worked with hundreds of business owners helping them to harness the power of the web to create more business for their business. Prior to launching Virtual Impax in 1997, Kathy worked in “traditional” media as an account executive for newspaper, radio and a full service regional advertising agency. Her knowledge and experience in traditional media was a key factor in the migration of the business from focusing exclusively upon web development to adding internet marketing consulting. In 2005 she wrote Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results
When “social media” began exploding around that time and Kathy was leading her clients – both old and new – to embrace blogs as a new, easy to use “better” type of web site. Blogs were just the beginning of the social media explosion – with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others leading the way into a brave new interconnected world.
Now there’s another online “explosion” and it’s known as local search. Suddenly, business owners who hadn’t gotten “around” to getting their business online found themselves with a website – complete with consumer reviews they didn’t ask nor did they want.
While the web is just another means of communicating with consumers, unlike other advertising media options like television or newspaper ads – consumers who interact with your business can now have a voice via these local directory listing sites.
It’s a new era for owners of businesses both big and small. Customer service hasn’t been this important to business survival since the Depression. If you’re a business owner, find out what consumers have to say at your business by checking out the sites in our Local Business Search Listing Guide.