Find Buffalo Blog

If your looking for one more reason to visit Buffalo, or you’re a resident in search of great locally produced items, then mark Saturday mornings on your calendar. The Buffalo, MN Farmers Market kicks off the 2007 summer on May 5th with hanging baskets, bedding and vegetable plants, lettuce, spinach, and radishes and continues with fresh local fruits and vegetables all season long. You will also find eggs, fresh baked breads and pies, delicious maple syrup, candies, and handmade soaps and crafts throughout the season.

The Farmers Market is open every Saturday through October, rain or shine, from 8:00am to Noon. The market is located in downtown Buffalo (get directions) in the parking lot across from the Buffalo Movie Theater.

I always see the high traffic (A-listers if you will) blogs passing around their meme’s and basking in their popularity and I feel so left out. I’ve been part of one, but there are many that never sniff my neck of the woods. Finding Buffalo isn’t for everyone, right?

So I’m talking matters into my own hands and starting a Minnesota Blog Meme. Requirements are simple, fill us in on three things about MN ….anything … what you love, what you hate, where you visit, where you party, where you blog from, just keep it Minne-sooo-tan. Then tag three other MN bloggers. If you are unaware of any other MN bloggers, City Pages has a good list of MN blogs, so visit a few of them!

3 Minnesota Items:

• Downtown Buffalo, MN is on the shores of Buffalo Lake.
• I bet I watch at least 100 of the 162 Twins games on TV each season (my wife loves that).
• Nothing beats eating lunch (a made-to-order wrap or sandwich) at BJ’s Deli in Buffalo during summer on their patio.

3 Minnesota Bloggers I’m tagging:

• Paul Jahn of Local MN, great local search info
• Jean at Searching For Minnesota
• Cafe Cyan - Sharing recipes from Apple Valley, MN

OK, the bus has left Buffalo, I hope it makes it around this great state without running out of gas.

Yesterday I wrote on my frustration with Topix in trying to give them the user generated content they’re after. As stated, I contacted them after posting this and here is what took place:

• My email to Topix.com support was responded to within an hour and after trading a few replies my submitted story was posted.
• It sounded like (what they responded with) the main reason was the lack of a human editor for the Buffalo, MN news page, proving that even with all the glitz and glam of technology, it still takes human power to make things work correctly. I could really expand on this as human gathering, editing, approval and attention is the key to any great local website … but I’ll save that for another day.
• Lastly I choose to become part of the solution and submitted to be the editor for Buffalo, MN news. Within an hour I was approved … so let my duties begin.

Overall, I’m still not impressed with what had to take place to get this to happen. Isn’t the hard part of any business model, service or product getting people to engage the first time? Making a great first impression should be a major priority. Many users I feel would not have contacted them and their contribution would have sat dormant and that would be the last time they tried to participate or contribute. I was impressed with the timely replies to my emails and the quick resolution on their end … so it seems their customer service is in place to bail them out.

Topix.com has been redesigned and moved from it’s (dot)net domain to (dot)com. They reportedly paid 1 million dollars for that. Along with the redesign was the goal to get more local news contributors. I looked at it as a way to promote FindBuffalo and put better content on their site. Win - win I thought.

I made my way into the Buffalo, MN section (view here) and submitted my recap of the Buffalo Bison boys basketball state championship, submitted a photo and gave them all the info their form asked for … and then ….. nothing. I have not received an email, the story has not been posted … no contact of any sort. Why? I can’t tell you. Surely they would be interested in posting an original story and photo on the biggest things to happen in Buffalo in the last decade … thats what great local news is all about right?

They got me all the way to the end, had me put in the effort to participate, and then left me with nothing. What a bad experience. I’m sending them an email to their info address and we’ll see what happens with that. Stay tuned.

I have loved reading Daniel’s DailyBlogTips Blogger Face-Off posts (Odden vs. Fishkin, Chow vs. Coddington) and wanted to use that format with some great local search minds. Paul Jahn of LocalMN and Matt McGee of Small Business SEM are two great local search experts. I emailed these pros of local search with nine questions and here is how they weighed in. I’m hoping to put together another Local Search One-on-One next month so stay tuned.

	Paul Jahn | Local MN Blog Covering local search marketing
	Matt McGee | Small Business SEM For small businesses that want to compete and succeed on their own terms (and budgets).

Q: What’s your favorite thing about local search?
Paul: Definitely being able to search for something online, finding exactly what I want, then walking or driving to purchase something and have it all within an hour or two.

Matt: From a marketing perspective, it’s a tougher nut to crack than regular search. From a user perspective, it’s less bulky than the phone book.

Q: What’s next for local search?
Paul: I see more adoption of user ratings and reviews, similar to what’s prevalent in online product search.

Matt: More confusion, more trouble with bad data or lack of data, more growth predictions, and hopefully more consolidation.

Q: The better local solution right now: Google Maps or Yahoo Local?
Paul: Two days ago I would have said Yahoo. Right now, I’d say Google and more attention to TrueLocal (Yahoo Local has some local spam issues to fix).

Matt: Yahoo has better tools for maps and driving directions. Google is a better natural search option for business owners, but Yahoo is a better paid search option.

Q: What is your favorite local directory?
Paul: Right now there’s not one in particular, but in a few months or so I’m guessing it will have something to do with iBegin Source.

Matt: Probably Yelp because at my age I tend to like things that make me feel hip.

Q: Would you rather own and operate a local search engine or a local directory website?
Paul: Given my lack of algorithmic formula skills, I’d definitely have to say a directory.

Matt: Neither? They both sound less satisfying than what I’m doing now.

Q: With a $1,000 or less annual budget, what 3 things should a small business execute online?
Paul: Getting their correct business information to the online portals, get social (online), and proactively encourage customers to provide online ratings and reviews … and up the budget (ok, that’s four).

Matt: Less than $100/month? That’s ultra-small budget. Okay… 1) A blog. 2) A listing in all the free local search sites. 3) A PPC campaign on low-cost, long tail phrases (including geo-targeting).

Q: What is the most important SEO tactic for a small business (excluding content)?
Paul: This deviates from SEO a bit, but 3rd party reviews on trusted, visible sites.

Matt: Almost impossible to answer because SEO is a process. Great content won’t do much good without links. But I’ll say keyword research, because if you get that wrong, you’ve sabotaged almost everything else in the process.

Q: What do you think FindBuffalo.com’s strongest feature is?
Paul: Aaron, there is absolutely no one in Buffalo that is providing the unique community content like you are, and there aren’t many people in other communities that do, either.

Matt: Aside from the fact you once linked to my wife’s real estate blog? Okay… you’re very focused on one specific area. “Hyper-local” seems to be the hot keyword these days, and that’s what you are.

Q: What one thing should FindBuffalo.com improve or add?
Paul: Hmm - maybe an area for businesses to portray user-generated “YouTube type” commercials and the Find Buffalo faithful could rate them? I don’t think anyone is doing that right now.

Matt: Localize what people are doing elsewhere on the web; i.e., Buffalo-Tube, where local folks can share videos. Buffalickr, where local folks can share photos, but with a better name than that! (What about a place for local photographers to post and sell their photos?) Buffalauction, where local folks can post links to their eBay auctions, because it’s always easier when the buyer and seller are nearby. That’s more than one, sorry.

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Thanks Paul and Matt for taking the time and giving great information for any small business and any local search mind. You’ve set the bar high for whomever follows here. My readers now have two new blogs to subscribe to.

I thought I would post on FindBuffalo.com’s traffic from March … and this isn’t anything associated with April Fools (is that disclosure?).

Users
Total User Sessions: 5,906
Average Daily Sessions: 190

Traffic Sources
Direct (entering URL into browser): 5,316
MSN / Live Search: 201
Google: 74 (slowly picking up speed)
Yahoo: 59
WifiFreeSpot.com: 18

Top Keywords
“buffalo cinema”
“Buffalo MN”
“buffalo mn newspaper”
“josh ortman” (Buffalo Basketball player)
“city of Buffalo MN”

We’ll see what happens in April. I have seen more traction with Google in the last few weeks and the Buffalo boys basketball team’s state title run brought some new exposure as well. I’m hoping to get some more time in the coming weeks to add some new content and features to the site as well.