I just received an email from a customer who asked a simple question, “How do I add a news article?” I told him, it’s as easy as 1-2-3. Or Write, Preview, Publish.
1. Write
2. Preview
3. Publish
If you think this is easy, take a tour or request a demo to start communicating with your neighbors today.
Broadband internet (DSL, cable, high-speed internet, or whatever you want to call it…) is now reigning supreme in the world of connecting people to the internet in the United States. AT&T and Comcast have officially surpassed AOL in subscribers bumping AOL to the #3 spot.
With broadband adoption over 50%, the future is bright for the internet companies, and hopefully this is a sign that web 2.0 will not burst like it’s ill-fated 1.0 version. To give you an example of why I believe this to be a great sign of the times and also why the web 2.0 companies are approaching this next era with more focus and realism, we at eNeighbors have approached our business model in the following manner:
1. We launched a web 2.0 application in less than 6 months for under $100k.
2. We have less than 5 people in the company.
3. We have no official office space (we all work virtual).
4. Finally, we are self-funded so far — no insane VC funding/spending here.
There’s no substitute for critical thinking and talent. We excel at both. The market is primed. Online use is on the rise. Google, Yahoo, YouTube, MySpace, etc. have made it commonplace (and cool) to be connected 24/7. This is a great time to be working in the online space. It’s so much more fun to go to work when you’re having fun!
Oh, and happy Cinco de Mayo!
We had our first “server crash” today here at eNeighbors. From sometime early this morning till about 1pm, our site was down. Apparently our hosting company had some sort of hardware failure that took out a number of servers, routers, etc… I’m not a network admin, so the details are a little lost on me. However, we are back up and everything seems fine now!
I guess you’re not a true start-up company until you’ve had a server crash, right?
There’s always that one person in every neighborhood. You may not know them personally, but it’s likely that you’ve benefited from the time and effort that they put into your community.
I’m talking about the person who plans the annual garage sale, organizes the progressive dinner, gets the kids together for the pool party, publishes the neighborhood newsletter, and may even call you for a donation for the neighborhood swim team.
As you might imagine, I love working with these people. At some point, I’m almost always in contact with the “neighborhood champion” in every community that uses our services.
If you sit on the board of directors in your neighborhood and you don’t know who your neighborhood champion is, I implore you to recruit them immediately. The energy that they bring is overwhelming and will be amplified with the support of the board of directors.
Neighborhood champions are so important because they bring the community together through constant communication. They spend hours in Microsoft Publisher creating flyers and newsletters in hopes that they can get a few more people to come to the Fall Bash.
I was talking with a neighborhood champion today who explained to me how eNeighbors acts like a neighborhood champion, which got me to thinking about the similarities between eNeighbors and the neighborhood champion:
Whether you have a neighborhood champion or not, eNeighbors can help keep your neighborhood connected. If you’re interested in seeing more, Request a Demo today.
Tom Skiba, the CEO of Community Associations Institute (CAI), posted a great article on neighborhood communication on the CAI blog, Ungated, last month. He highlights a community in Arizona that is making extra efforts to provide effective and clear communications to their residents.
Cottonwood Palo Verde at Sun Lakes is the HOA in question. The HOA spokesperson, Richard Hawkes, states that they will be working with local news publications in addition to their website, weekly flyer, and TV programming in order to deliver on their promise of open communication.
It’s great to see that HOA boards are so open to the next generation of communication tools. This is the same sort of transparency of communication that eNeighbors is promoting with our web-based service. The eNeighbors tool allows for 24/7 communication to and from any member of the community. We encourage open dialogue between residents and the board of directors. In addition, we take the typical website up a notch. Our service is private and secure. Only the residents of the community can view the site and participate.
eNeighbors just surpassed 1000 registered users! Our customers have helped us improve our application over the last two months and endured through our beta testing period.
Rest assured, we’re in the process of incorporating your feedback into future enhancements that we’ll release shortly.
In the meantime, thanks for your help and keep the feedback coming!
Let’s say I own a restaurant, and I want to run a Google ad campaign where I buy keywords to show my ad to users within a 10 mile radius of my physical location… uhm, nice try.
Urban Mapping posted some insight last week that does an excellent job describing the issues surrounding local advertising — mainly how it fails miserably.
Sure, Google and Yahoo can attempt to deliver your message to a specific geographic region, but if you want targeting any more focused than the general metropolitan area, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.
The portals don’t really give clear data on how exactly all this “we’ll only show your ad to certain users in the country” thing really works. And speaking from experience, if you are local small business owner — good luck getting your keyword buy to only show your online ad to the local residents around your establishment. Most likely, you’ll waste most of your daily budget advertising to people that would never even consider visiting your business based on logistical distance issues, if nothing else. Ultimately, there is nowhere to go for effective online advertising if you’re a small business.
This is where eNeighbors will change everything.
eNeighbors is building the first “bottom up” hyper-local, social network based on where you live. This social network will then provide neighborhood-centric targeting for advertisers to spend their ad dollars more effectively. Instead of Val-Pack coupons, or the typical 1.5% return on direct mail flyers, these small business owners can leverage an online channel to message their service offerings while being confident that the people actually receiving this message live nearby.
Can you imagine the response rate on such a marketing tactic?! I make no predictions in terms of numbers or percentages (yet), but it’s going to be unbelievable! It will literally change the advertising landscape.
eNeighbors Blog 
