Bizwiki.co.uk has once again been mentioned in the Telegraph as a great way for small firms to advertise online.

Being asked for advice on how small businesses can promote themselves on the web, Will Critchlow of online marketing firm Distilled, said that listing in free business directories like Bizwiki.co.uk made sense but questioned the return on traditional paid-for directories. Read the full story here.

The story primarily focuses on promoting your website online. Remember that if you have a website you can add it to your Bizwiki listing at no charge. We’ll even show a snippet of your website’s text in the “From the Website” section on your Bizwiki record.

If you don’t have a website yet you can use your Bizwiki listing to advertise your business online. A Bizwiki listing puts your details in front of potential customers by being distributed to some of the UK’s top local search sites. And it’s all FREE.

So sign up now and add as much factual information as you can. See this post for ideas of what type of information to add to your Bizwiki record and this one for tips on getting it approved quickly.

This 394 Yellow Pages business card holder was designed by a London-based industrial design professional Afroditi Krassa and presented at this year’s Green Design Festival in Athens. It was a part of a ‘Once Upon a Year’ collection and came with free instructions on how to make it using last year’s telephone directory. Business cards, photos, envelopes, notes and other paper items can be stored in this holder, which can be laid flat or displayed vertically. Sizes and configurations are up to the maker.

It may have been worth holding on to your last year’s directory after all!
(Via: MoCo Loco)

A new study of 3000 US consumers puts local search at the top of the charts for ways people use to find local business information.

TMP Direction Marketing’s Local Search Usage Study confirms that in 2008 the web comes out ahead of print for local business information searches. Last year’s study showed printed phone directories as having a slightly larger following with 33% of respondents citing print as their first point of call for local information and the web following closely behind at 30%.

This year the tables have turned and search engines top the list at 31% with printed directories falling to 30%. It’s a close race, but as Screenwerk’s Greg Stirling puts it, we have now passed the tipping point. I wholeheartedly agree with Greg’s comment that there will be differences in the web/print usage depending on the category and market but the trend is definitely moving towards the richer data consumers can find online. Printed directories simply can’t provide reviews, opening hours, product and service details in the same way that online local directories can.

What this means to local businesses is that it’s now essential to have a good local search presence. A listing on Google Local, Bizwiki (and the sites Bizwiki powers) and other free online business directories and local search sites help to put your details in front of your potential customers. The good news is that, unlike some of the print directories, Bizwiki is free and you’re not limited to just a phone number and address. And Bizwiki also saves you time by placing your listing on not just the one (albeit fantastic!) site, Bizwiki also powers other major local search sites such as Accessplace.com, TownPages.com and British Services as well as industry specific verticals such as BuilderNet.

Have you signed up for your free listing?

Bizwiki has just launched an exciting new ‘Instant Publishing’ feature. Where previously if you submitted a new company to Bizwiki it would only be publicly available once an editor had verified and approved it, now all submissions will be instantly published on the site and immediately available on Bizwiki to the general public.

In line with our goal of creating a website that is both a comprehensive and reliable resource for the public, these new records will be marked as ‘Awaiting Approval’ until an editor has reviewed them. This lets users know that Bizwiki Editors have not yet checked the information and contact details. Once the submission has been verified and approved that label will be removed and at that point the record will also be distributed to the other sites that Bizwiki powers.

Please note that this update only applies to brand new submissions. Any revision (change) requests will currently still be held for Editor verification and approval.

We’re planning a lot more updates in the coming months and are now powering some of the UK‘s most popular local search sites. More information about submitting to Bizwiki can be found on our FAQ section. And remember, it’s FREE and you can add your website, branches and as much factual information as you want. So submit your company and get listed now!

Two of the people behind Bizwiki will be at the Hyperlocal (Local 2.0) mashup Workshop in London tomorrow (3rd October).

This Workshop aims to provide a forum for the people, organisations and companies working in the ‘local’ sector affected by and developing solutions, to collaborate around a number of key issues.

Keith Hinde, Bizwiki’s Chief Technical Architect, and Jurga Galvan, Bizwiki’s Social Marketer will be in attendance, so if you have any questions or would like a chat about what we’re doing in the local space please feel free to come along.

Mashup Hyperlocal

We are pleased to announce that Casey Lee has joined Bizwiki as an on-staff editor and is already doing a sterling job.

As Bizwiki has become more popular the amount of new submissions from the public has continued to increase. With a background in customer support and assistance for companies such as BP, Casey joins the other members of the Admin and Editing team to help get through your submissions as quickly as possible. Her responsibilities include verifying and approving (or rejecting) new submissions and revision requests.

We are certain that with the addition of Casey to the team and the soon to be released improvements Bizwiki will be an even better, faster source of quality business information for the UK.

So “Welcome Casey“!

Yesterday’s post on the Kelsy Group blog highlights the fact that people no longer want to search through categories to find businesses, they want to search by service or product or other “keywords”. They want to use “natural search”.

This is where Bizwiki is leading the way in local search. Bizwiki provides the standard categorisation for anyone wishing to search that way, however the majority of our users use the free form search box. By building a unique synonym set and merging it with our own proprietary algorithm Bizwiki is able to provide relevant local results in seconds.

Here are just a few examples of the relevant results Bizwiki’s NaturalSearch functionality provides:

Looking for a curry house in Birmingham?

Has your Selby office run out of printer ink?

Do you need help selling your Essex based business?

Want to know where the all night petrol stations in Warwick are?

Going on holiday from Swansea and need travel money?

NaturalSearch is the way forward. Why limit users to selecting a category? Why confine them to some archaic taxonomy?

Bizwiki’s NaturalSearch technology is still in the beginning stages. If you think it’s good now just wait til you see what we have in store!

This will be old news to some of our most frequent users, but with the final elements integrated we are very happy to announce that Bizwiki is now the power behind the extremely popular Accessplace Business Directory.

Anyone following the Bizwiki Blog will have read our announcement on July 25th that we now power the TownPages.com local information website.

‘One more reason to add your business to Bizwiki – TownPages’

This has now been heavily underlined by the powering of Accessplace, which Hitwise list alongside such respected sites as Google Maps, Yell.com, BT and Local.co.uk in the top 10 of the UK’s Local Search sites.

See the top 10 table here:

What this means to our users is that by adding your business or increasing the amount of information available about it on Bizwiki, you will get exposure not only to our users but to the very many people who use Townpages for local search and the vast audience of Accessplace Business Directory.

Additional information including photographs is provided to all three sites by Local Data Company, but the only way to get a new company listed is to add it right here.

The good news is its completely free to do so. That’s the wiki difference.

An article for the British newspaper the Telegraph highlights the importance of Internet Directory sites like Bizwiki for businesses forced to save marketing budgets in adverse economic conditions.

‘Blog on and use web pages to drive up sales opportunities

By Richard Tyler, Enterprise Editor

Given the current economic slowdown and that marketing is often the first expense to be cut when firms face a financial pinch, here is a snapshot of some free services being used by firms on the internet.

Internet directories

Traditional directories have moved online, like Yell.com. New free sites feature highly on natural searches: www.Brownbook.net and www.Bizwiki.co.uk are fast-growing business directories with self-edited listings and customer reviews.’

At Bizwiki, we whole-heartedly agree with his assessment. More and more commerce is moving online, and with all the talk of possible recession and belt-tightening in the wider economy, it makes more sense than ever to take full advantage of resources that are available online for businesses -particularly sites like Bizwiki that list companies for no charge at all.

The first step is to make sure your company is listed -simply use the search form at the top of the page. If it isn’t, you can add it for free in a few simple steps. If it is listed, now would be a good time to add more information and details.

Bizwiki gets a wide variety of users from other businesses owners and managers to researchers to competitors to local councils to suppliers – and perhaps even your next customer.

Full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/08/12/ybmedia112.xml

In case you needed another great reason to add your business to Bizwiki -or to add more information and details if you’re already listed- Bizwiki has just joined in powering the TownPages.com local information website.

TownPages is a popular destination website that has hundreds of thousands of unique users every month. Their goal is to provide information about all the towns and communities outside the main centres, the places that are often over-looked online. Bizwiki information is being added alongside The Local Data Company’s, helping build this useful site into an even more comprehensive resource.

Adding a company to Bizwiki is quite simple and completely free of charge, and any company listed here will also appear on TownPages.com free of charge. You can manage your company’s internet listings from a central location on Bizwiki, add much more detailed information than was previously possible, and best of all benefit from a larger online audience without any extra effort.

Visit the new TownPages website, http://www.townpages.com

Register on Bizwiki, http://bizwiki.co.uk/user/register

Add a company or business, http://bizwiki.co.uk/addcompany.htm