Information about posting News and Announcements to the community, using your FoundLocally lisitng(s)

We have made our Business Listings more powerful. Customers can view & search News by company or by category, and can even search for keywords in the News/Announcement text. All news is posted immediately, and unfiltered, very different from the chancy process of sending a “Media Release” to traditional media.

Post News & Announcements

Post corporate/organizational news, changes in staff and management, new products now in stock, anything you think will be of interest to your customers. Try not to duplicate information already in Jobs, Events, or Coupons, and keep it newsworthy. Use this feature to announce Event tickets for sale !!

Post News Quickly

Click on Add New on your News listings page (once you are logged-in). Copy and paste from your Word Processor – nothing is more embarrassing than typos! Keep your paragraphs short (2-3 sentences max) and try to keep your announcement under a typed page (in Word, use View-Page Layout to check this). For already-activated listings, your News is “live” immediately. (For those posting News as part of a new listing, the news is live as soon as the listing is reviewed & approved -you’ll get a confirmation e-mail at that time)

Choose Categories Wisely

When posting News/Announcements, the categories correspond to the portion of the site that the item will be displayed in. It is highly recommended you choose those categories that correspond to those you use in your CATEGORIES tab. You can also choose a category that corresponds to where your customers will be looking (for example, a restaurant supplier would appropriately choose the “Dining & Restaurants” category.) You can select multiple categories by Ctrl-selecting them

Clone News to multiply your offers to other Locations

Registered Contacts managing multiple locations, or “chain” type operations, can assign news/announcements to other locations (they all display the same news item), and even assign multiple categories to a news story (they show up in different parts of the web site). This way if you run a chain with (say) 10 locations, you don’t have to create, edit and manage 10 different news stories, and our visitors don’t have to wade through 10 identical offers, either. This is done with the POWER USER tab.

News/Announcements generally display until deleted/deactivated

Most News/Announcements are presumed to have a long (infinite?) shelf life. If you have event-based announcements (ticket sales, performer/speaker highlights, a fundraiser, or seasonal information) you may want to de-activate the announcement after the event or corresponding time period. In that case, set the end date. After that date, news is automatically hidden from the public listing but not deleted, so you may edit, clone, or re-use details for future offers (for the same event, held next year).

Manage Large Numbers of News/Announcements

Use the new “Power User” tab. If you manage several listings (like a chain) you can post a News/Announcement to one listing, and clone it to any or all of your other listings (but only your listings).

Add Specific Web Links for each News/Announcement

Link to a detailed offer or order form on your web site, only WITH LOGO & LINK UPGRADE. FoundLocally now gets 6 million visitors a year, so isn’t it time to consider this? Click on Finish to accept this.