As I spend a good percentage of my day tearing through information about directories and Yellow Pages, I happened upon this article from Mobile Marketer quoting the President of Yellow Pages Association. I never knew such an assoication existed.

Whether it is mobile or online, the biggest problem that I see as the co-founder of NextStepDrectory.com is that Yellow Pages and even search engine results do not give enough qualified information. If you look at most Yellow Pages, they simply take the paper version and drop it on your 22 inch monitor, they don’t take advantage of what the web offers as a community space. Yes they put some maps in there, but that is about as far as it gets. We see directories as information portals that are dynamic and “alive” with user comments, uploads, ratings, maps, mobile and more. Yellow Pages isn’t doing it, and neither are the search engines. Yes, Yellow Pages has maps, and Google search has its new “experimental” project that allows users to use a search engine result page (when logged into their google account) like a wiki. An interesting development from a company who relies on mathematical formulas to drive you search results, as it looks like they are dipping their feet into the power of “crowd sourcing” search results.

Yelp.com does it for restaurants, and some travel websites provide such services for their niche market, but there does exist a common depository for business services online.

The question is what do people what to find when they search for a company or service online or offline through a personal referral?

Our answer is simple

1. Reliable and qualified information ( a trusted third party)

2. Multiple  references (i.e. online comments and ratings)

3.Quick competition check (side by-side matrix)

4. The externals, like driving directions, maps, pictures, and videos.

We ask for all or most of this in the offline world of our business referalls, but little exists online. And if you have a look at the Mobile Marketer article mentioned above, you will see that the Yellow Pages Association is worried more about the advertisement revenue than the delivery of a complete service pacakage to the end user.

What do you want to know when you are looking for a service provider? If you are too shy to share it here please do not hesitate to contact me at joseph DOT constanty AT nextstepdirectory DOT com

Another cool PR and SEO tool that I came across on my twitter and blog roll over the weekend is something called HubSpot. In a nutshell it grades your press releases based upon a variety of criteria. It is an intuitive tool that take seconds to start using, something that I like most about the product. Within 30 seconds of landing on the site, a LexDex.com press release was being ripped apart by HubSpot’s software. Needless to say, we didn’t make the grade, scoring a lackluster 51%–it was too long, links with no key word anchors, and a whole laundry list of issues. Go check it out for yourself, especially you marketing and pr reps who make your bread and butter off of this work everyday. I was introduced to HubSpot by a blog posting by Lonnie Hodge on CultureFishMedia.

When trying to explain your company to a friend, customer, or potential investor it is key to have a concise message that defines what your company does and what value it brings to the marketplace. Surprisingly, this message should be nearly identical whether you are delivering it to a customer, or sitting down with a VC. As entrepreneurs we tend to spend too little time on thinking this explanation through, and prefer to speak on the fly. This leads to rambling, the rambling leads to confusion, and you have lost your sale in under one minute. For instance, LexDex.com has many offerings on hand for students, but our main draw is online and mobile flashcards for students’ textbooks. Yes, we offer internal messaging, pdf files, forums, and user profiles in addition to the flashcards, but this is all ancillary to our core: online and mobile flashcards. So when somebody asks me what we do over at LexDex.com, my one sentence answer– We create online and mobile flashcards for university and high school textbooks.

Of course the above statement will change as we expand our core offerings and alter our business scope, but at the end of the day, when I am asked what I do, I stick to only explaining the core. The rest can come later if necessary. Have a look at the BootstrappingBlog.com for other interesting information.