Providence Media Joins Forces With TheProvidenceLife.com
Providence, RI, February 1, 2010 — Providence Media, a rapidly expanding Rhode Island-based company that publishes five publications, announces a new partnership with TheProvidenceLife.com, an internet company with operations in Connecticut, New York and the Washington D.C. area. Both companies are joining forces to provide a dynamic, interactive and hyperlocal website for the city of Providence. Sales support will be supplied by Providence Media while the technical expertise will come from The Local Life, which currently operates websites in eight East Coast cities.
Providence Media has been producing free regional lifestyle magazines for 35 years, starting with the publication of East Side Monthly in 1975. Providence Monthly, the flagship title for the media group, was added in 1997. The real growth, however, has occurred in the past two and a half years. Providence Media has launched three successful new magazines: SO Rhode Island, which covers the southern part of Rhode Island from East Greenwich to Watch Hill; The Bay, a monthly publication that covers the East Bay from East Providence to Portsmouth and into Southeastern Massachusetts; and In Providence, the publishing group’s first foray into the tourist market. With combined monthly circulation of over 70,000, the media group has more than doubled its size in the past two years.
Originally launched in 2007, TheProvidenceLife.com has been redesigned to incorporate the new content accessibility while adding an interactive, user-friendly, advertiser-driven platform that has proven successful in Stamford and New Haven, Connecticut, Saratoga Springs, New York and four cities in the Baltimore-Washington area. The site highlights the arts, entertainment, shopping, and dining scenes in Providence.
For additional information on the new joint venture, contact Jeanette St. Pierre, Publishing Director for Providence Media: jeanette@providenceonline.com or 401-521-0023; or George Ehinger, Managing Director of The Local Life: george@thelocallife.com.
December Update
Its that busy time of year again. We had our first snowstorm and now we are all scrambling to get our shopping done. If you have any Holiday specials going on over the next two weeks, add them to the calendar or write an article about them. Over one thousand events have been added to our calendar in the last three months - all by you, the users themselves. So log in and post your sales, specials and events - if you don’t know your log in please contact us today and we’ll give you a refresher course on all the great features of the site.
This is our first newsletter aimed specifically towards our business owners and managers, but we will be featuring one business each month that is doing something great on the site. This month that business is One Caroline and The Mouzon House. (Sounds like two, but really Dave Pedinotti runs them both). Dave has taken full advantage of the blog and has posted several articles about his cooking style, his influences and most recently several great recipes used in his restaurants. You can see his business page here - notice how all his articles are featured on the “Articles” tab, and all the upcoming events at his business are listed under the “Events” tab. He also posts updates to their menus directly in the body of the Business Profile. Thanks Dave for helping visitors get a full picture of what make One Caroline and Mouzon House special.
That is one example of using our new platform to emphasize everything thats happening at your business. We want to also introduce a new feature - Fans. I wrote about Fans when we first launched it just before Thanksgiving - read that article here. Basically, any registered user can become a fan of your business, and once they are a fan you can message your fans and let them know about upcoming events, specials and promotions at your business. As with all our tools, you can manage your fans and messages through your Dashboard. We will be visiting with some collateral for you to use in your business to encourage your customers to become your Fan on The Local life.
We are in the process of converting all of our old sites to the new platform. As we do so we will be notifying you individually regarding timelines and upgrades available to you. If you have any questions about the platform or any of its features, please let me know - jamie@thelocallife.com or click the bubble in the upper right of the screen - we’ll get back as soon as possible.
Thank you so much for being a part of The Local Life, have a great Holiday Season and we wish you the Best for 2010.
Cheers,
- All of us at The Local Life
New Features for Friday the 13th
In our quest to bring you more tools, and a better user experience, we are announcing two new features this weekend, both of which are now live. The first is a more advanced way for users to track views of their business and event pages. Its a simple addition that allows you to track, by day and by month, how many people are looking at your page. Not overly exciting but we think it will help you track what is happening on your page.
Second, and much more exciting is the new Fans feature. If you use Facebook or Twitter, you are probably familiar with “Friends” & “Followers”; well for The Local Life, “Fans” is our version of those two things. Becoming a fan of a business will soon allow you to follow any updates a business makes to their page, like adding a new coupon or event. Once we have a few fans, we will begin to show the businesses with the most Fans on the homepage, and within each Category.
We will also be introducing some new functionality for business owners around Fans, which we will update you on fully when we go live with them, but we think they are pretty exciting as well.
For now, log in and become a Fan of your favorite business. Its easy - just click onto the “Become a Fan” tab on a Business Page click the button; simple Who doesn’t like simple?
Update Twitter from Your User Page
Well for those of you who don’t know what Twitter is, its a ragingly popular new messaging service that lets you broadcast short messages of 140 charachters or less to people who “follow” you, or those who care about what you have to say. For businesses, it is becoming a popular tool to send out specials and build good will with your customers, often resulting in more sales for those businesses using it wisely.
Since our ultimate goal is to help our small business customers increase sales, we just pushed out another great feature for our customers and users: Post to Twitter. As of last night anyone can update their Twitter Status from your User page, simply by adding your Twitter username and password to your User Profile. For those Businesses who use our Dashboard to track click throughs and views of their page, you will now see a message prompting you to either add your Twitter account, or to Post to Twitter if you already set it up.
No fancy stuff, just enter your Username and Password to Twitter like you would however you access Twitter, and then start sending your messages instantly. The beauty here is that not only will all of your followers see your post this way, but anyone who goes to your Business Page on TheSaratogaLife will see it too!
Let us know if you have any problems, but you should see a message in RED if you have any errors. As always you can contact us by clicking the “We’re in Beta” bubble in the top right. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
Thanks for stopping by today and being a part of The Saratoga Life
- Jamie
Local Blogs
Last week we released some very exciting new features, mostly around the ability for anyone to add a blog to their business, or to their user page, or just in general. We talk to a lot of businesses that would like to start a blog, but don’t know how or where to start. Well like everything else we do, we strive to make it easy for businesses to spread the word about their specials and features. Now we have made it easy for them to keep a blog, which they can then feature on their business page if they own a business, or simply share with the local world on the homepage.
Blogs are fun, they bring new things to light that you would never find otherwise. We are looking forward to seeing what the world comes up with, and sharing it all with you!
New Event Calendar Features
In the spirit of keeping an open line of communication with both our clients and our users, we’re going to start updating this blog alot more whenever we release new features. This week we released a few new features, with a bunch more soon to come. The key releases we’ll focus on here are some updates to the way the event calendar works, and how events are displayed in “Whats Happening”
The Whats Happening section is a major feature for our upgraded businesses. When a business has an event at their location, our software automatically associates the event, with that business, carrying over the Google Map, the logo, and most importantly posts the event in the “Whats Happening” section on the homepage. The Whats Happening section has been programmed to only show events which are upcoming with in the next 7 days, and randomly shows 4 events drawn from the pool of our customers events.
In order to have your event show in Whats Happening, you must have an upgraded account, your event must be with in the next 7 days, and you must be logged in as the account owner. Of course, as always any event added to our calendar will continue to be free for everyone. We want to maintain the best possible calendar while still providing our upgraded clients an awareness advantage by placing their events in the Whats Happening section, with their business’s logo.
We will soon be adding new modules showing featured events, and upcoming events across different places on the site. As our calendar grows, and we add more events in more categories, we will constanly improving usability and functionality of the calendar.
Cheers,
- Jamie
Jazz Fest Winner Amy Gerling!
“We hadn’t been to the Jazz Fest in almost 20 years”, Amy Gerling told us, “but after this weekend my husband said ‘This was so perfect. We have to do this every year.’”
Gerling, manager of East Greenbush Travel (East Green Bush Travel), heard about TheSaratogaLife Jazz Lover’s weekend giveaway on Twitter.
Her entry got in just under the wire.
Our lucky winner was presented with her prize package by Cathy French, Front office manager at the Holiday Inn Saratoga Springs.
Her bounty included 2 2-day passes to SPAC’s Freihofer Jazz Fest, dinner for 2 at Beverly’s, a picnic lunch provided by Hattie’s and a night’s stay at the Holiday Inn including breakfast.
Gerling and her husband, a union representative, were thrilled with the meals and the hospitality.
“The hotel was great. Everyone was so nice.”
But she reserved her highest praise for the musical artists. “George Benson I loved. Oh my God. It was so great. And Pat Metheny…everything. We could have sat there forever and just listened to the music. Just perfect. Perfect.”
Will we be seeing more of the Gerlings in Saratoga?
“My husband said ‘We have to do this every year.’ So this is going to become a tradition for us now. Thank you.”
Thank you, Amy Gerling. Keep coming back!
Saratoga Scavenger Hunt Winner Kelly Meilstrup
Scavenger Hunt Winner Kelly Meilstrup with George Ehinger
Real People do win! People Like you.
Kelly Meilstrup found herself with a free afternoon and decided she had nothing to lose. Armed with a print-out from TheSaratogaLife and a pen, she sought to answer some puzzling questions such as “Just what kind of beer bottle is pictured in the mens bathroom at the Grey Gelding?” and “How many swans swim in the pond behind The Mansion Inn?”
Meilstrup, a criminal defense attorney, recently moved to Saratoga Springs from San Diego when her husband was stationed here with the US Navy. She says she has quickly found TheSaratogaLife.com to be indispensible.
“I love the deals and seeing what’s going on in town.”
Lucky for us and lucky for Kelly! She was named the Grand Prize Winner of our Scavenger Hunt Contest. Managing Director George Ehinger recently met Kelly to present her prize package which included 1 Night Stay at The Mansion Inn, $100 SaratogaLife Bucks Gift Card (valid at any of our member businesses), $75 Gift Card at Grey Gelding, $50 Gift Card at Lucia Boutique and a pair of tickets for Opening Night of the New York City Ballet on July 7, 2009.
Kelly told us that in addition to being our big winner, she’s also become a customer!
“Being new in town, we never even knew the Spring Street Deli existed. We are now ordering pizza and sandwiches from them at least once a week. That was a great find.”
Local Territory Manager position open for TheProvidenceLife.com
The Providence Life
Local Territory Manager
Job Description:
TheProvidenceLife.com, the premier online guide for people looking to shop, dine. stay or play in Providence, is looking for an outgoing, fun, results oriented, sales executive to join our team on a part time (2-3 days/week) basis as our Local Territory Manager. The ideal candidate loves living in Providence, embraces the power of the internet as a business and social networking tool, and either has or is eager to build relationships with the owners of Providence’s restaurants, shops, hotels, and businesses.
As our Local Territory Manager you will continue to make TheProvidenceLife.com an essential part of the community by 1) helping existing and new accounts use our advertising platform to tell their story to active buyers, 2) reaching out to community organizations, artists and musicians to help populate our events calendars, and 3) by working with our corporate marketing team to develop fun, community building contests, promotions and email campaigns.
Who would excel at this job? If you really love Providence and all it has to offer locals and visitors alike, you understand and embrace the internet as an advertising and community building platform, and you thrive on meeting people and building relationships with local business owners, then this job would be a good fit for you. In addition you have a natural insinct for marketing and communication, you can work indenpendtly and you are able to set your own priorities.
Preference given to applicants with the following qualifications:
- Strong ties to Providence via community involvement
- Restaurant or retail management experience
- Sales or teaching experience
- Ad sales experience-especially internet based
- Proven ability to work independtly
- Natural instinct for marketing and communication and good instincts for words, images and ideas that make people act.
- Most importantly you want to help locally owned businesses succeed and Providence thrive.
Compensation—position is heavily commission based but there is a strong revenue history and good account base. Details provided to qualified applicants.
Contact: Please email your resume and qualifications to george@thelocallife.com .
Washington Native Timur Tugberk joins TheLocalLife
TheLocalLife family is growing and we are very pleased to announce a new addition!
Timur Tugberk is a native Washingtonian, born and raised, leaving the city only to live abroad in both France and Italy. After graduating from the George Washington University he took on his first job in high end design sales. After more than two years of using his creativity in design, he decided to expand upon this in the world of advertising.
Timur is very excited to come aboard at The Local Life as the Washington DC metro area’s territory manager, and looks forward to helping you make your business even more successful!
Contact: Timur@thelocallife.com
A warm welcome Timur!