Those of you who remember the 80’s, remember the Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neil’s famous quote of “All politics is local”. The same can be said of the tsunami change of online presence, the localization of the internet. From geolocation websites like Foursquare and Yelp, to online yellow page sites, to local directories like CitySearch or insiderpages, to the major search engines, Bing, Yahoo & Google, local is where it is at in 2010 and 2011. Even Facebook has gotten into the act.
I’ve had this discussion with many of my clients over the last several years. To most of them this process seems silly and a waste of time. Those of us brought up in the days of 3 or 4 commercial TV stations in a given market, 1 or 2 daily newspapers, and 1 big phone book have trouble thinking of the exponential growth of the internet and the panoply of new channels and opportunities that it has spawned.
Since web browsing has largely taken over for yellow page books as the preferred method of looking up information on stores, making sure your practice takes full advantage of every possible listing is paramount to being found and getting patients and customers to your store(s). Almost every one of these sites allows you to take ownership or control of your listing for free. Take the time to take that control and fill in the information required by each site. You will be glad you did in the long run.
Here is a list of sites to start you on your local prospecting tour. There are plenty more out there, but at least these will get you started and well positioned.
Google Places
Bing Local
There are also sites who help agregate those listings for you. One I have used and liked is getlisted. Just type in your business name and zip code and it will show you if you have claimed the listings on 6 different sites.
