Convert Offline

Search Engine Land has an article about a new web based tool that helps small business owners to take the first step in Local Search – claiming their business profiles, getlisted.org.

You just enter the name of your business and the zip and the tool will tell you whether or not you have claimed your listing in google, yahoo, msn and botw and if you have not the link to claim it is right there to help you get started.

Well worth a look.

Chris Silver Smith wrote a post on saving the yellow pages over at Search Engine Land last week. He outlined 10 points that could help the yellow pages industry. Though I have tremendous respect for Chris Silver Smith I disagreed with almost each point he made. This post is about his first point:

1. Come up with some way to stop distributing books to people who no longer use them. There’s no way to explain to people why they should be getting these if they don’t use the books, and it irritates the environmentally-conscious even if the books are printed on recycled paper like you’ve been telling everyone.

This one I disagreed with because the ability to opt out of phone book delivery has been around for over a year now and the cynic in me believes that most people care about the environment only when it is convenient for them so nobody took the time to do it.

Then I did a search on the internet and couldn’t find the number to call and no one commented on his blog post like… Hey Chris, diid you know that you could do that for over a year now! So I was forced to consider the possibility that no one knows about this or how easy it is to do.

So, let’s find out. Here are the numbers to opt out of Yellow Page delivery for each major publisher. Is Chris right? Will the environmentally-conscious take the time to call? Or was the cynic in me right all along?

Idearc 1 800 888 8448 Option 2 (Opt Out Of Verizon Yellow Pages)
At&t 1 800 922 0008 Option 3 (Opt Out Of the Real Pages)
Dex 1 877 243 8339 (This will also work for Embarq)
Yellow Book 1 800 888-8448 Option 2

The funny part about this is how cleverly the phone companies disguised these numbers. Each one is published in their own directory as the number to call to order a phone book. I swear you can’t make this stuff up.

I would also like to assert that just because I disagree with what he wrote on that one post in no way diminishes how much respect I have for Chris Silver Smith as a leader in the local search industry. A lot of what I know about local search I learned reading his blog.

In future posts I will discuss the other 9 points.

Will Scott, a search marketer in New Orleans, who I’ve met online, emailed me yesterday asking me if there was a way we could talk. “IM? Twitter?

That email was sent around 10:30am, I responded “not really” at around 3 because that was the first time I checked my email since early in the morning. So, the combination of the content of his message along with my inability to respond quickly has woke me up to the need to get more social.

So last night I got the kids down and joined twitter and despite feeling a little awkward I twatted tweeted my first tweet.

Now, feeling empowered and ready to move forward… what’s next?

LinkedIN? Facebook? (oh! Dear God no, not Facebook), maybe I just better start with a few IM accounts and have my 9 year-old teach me how to aggregate them.

I would like to follow some of the local bloggers I read most often including , Miriam Ellis, Mike Blumenthal and David Mihm but I couldn’t find them in the people search or they had me pre-emptively blocked

Any other tips to help me get more social in 2009, please let me know. Especially any tips that help me understand how you find the time to be social online.