Snapshot: The Bakersfield Californian's InsideGuide

Snapshots from the Edge: A look at new ideas in online newspaper publishing
By Beth Lawton

As Dan Pacheco, senior manager of digital products for The Bakersfield Californian, described it, Inside Guide is "MySpace meets the Yellow Pages." And that's a pretty accurate description.

Inside Guide, which initially is focused on restaurants and clubs, is a database-driven site that is part local business directory, part "best of Bakersfield" business guide and part social networking. At launch in early February, the Inside Guide included more than 900 restaurants, bars and clubs. Using data from AT&T, the Inside Guide will eventually grow to contain information on about 13,000 local businesses. Each database-powered venue page, called a business profile page, includes basic information such as hours, location, type of food and contact information, and registered Californian users can post reviews. Restaurant owners can "claim" their business' profile page, add more information and respond to reviews.

"I think it's the most beautiful natural integration of serving advertisers and serving your audience at the same time," Pacheco said. "It's really, I think, an expression of this trend I see of publishing and interacting."

Free Features, Paid Upgrades

For many newspapers seeking online advertising from smaller, local, "Mom 'n' Pop" businesses, there's a major hurdle to jump: "A lot of them don't have Web sites and the smaller and more local they get, the more likely that is," Pacheco said. The Inside Guide, by including free profile Web pages for each business, gets The Bakersfield Californian's advertising sales staff past this challenge.

Each restaurant's profile page includes a business address and a phone number, the hours of operation, a Google-powered map and space for reviews. It is also assigned cuisine categories. Once the restaurant owner claims the business profile, the page may include a blog and photos.

Because social networking and user-generated content is a strong component of the Inside Guide, all business profile pages include reviews, each of which the restaurant owner can respond to once. In response to a frequently-asked question about whether restaurants can remove or disable reviews, Inside Guide managers wrote, "All Inside Guide business profiles allow users to post reviews. We feel this gives the community a voice and helps other users make smart decisions about which businesses they choose to patronize."

Though the basic level participation in Inside Guide is free for businesses, in the coming months there will be plenty of optional add-ons business owners can purchase. These will include placing advertisements on the business' own profile page or purchasing ads to appear on an entire category of restaurants. Restaurants will have space to upload their menus, too.

Pacheco said the Bakersfield Web team is building the capability for businesses to target coupons and other ads to a specific group of people (called "regulars"). Regulars are consumers who list themselves as a frequent patron of the business and give permission for the business to reach out to them.

As Pacheco explained it, "If you put in your user profile that you're interested in skiing and beaches and YouTube and basket weaving… maybe there's an adventure sports-type company which could buy an ad." The ad would then appear to those users who identified that specific interest in their profile. Pacheco called it "super-targeted advertising."

Once the restaurants and venues category has been up and running for a few months, Pacheco said his team will work on targeting the services industry, including home contractors and auto repair.

Pacheco said in building the Inside Guide, he looked at other sites for ideas and inspiration. Those sites included Vita.mn www.vita.mn from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Yelp.com www.yelp.com, a business review and directory site (and one of Pacheco's personal favorites), Yahoo! Local http://local.yahoo.com and Angie's List www.angieslist.com, a business review site focused on home improvement.

Business Community's Reaction, Participation

In its first six weeks, the Inside Guide logged more than 500 reviews. "Among those people who are finding it, it's just been having incredible uptake," Pacheco said.

One Inside Guide and Bakotopia user, who goes by ProgressivePete2 online, in an e-mail to NAA wrote a mostly-positive review of Inside Guide. In the e-mail, ProgressivePete2 wrote:

I like the guide, but I wish there were a search for restaurants, etc. by area and by food type. I think you should be able to find a decent restaurant near wherever you live, etc. easily. This can't be done with a phone book or really anything…. I don't like the "regulars" part of the guide, but I do like the user submitted reviews. It's a great way for the community to rate businesses. It does seem like there are quite a few restaurants missing from the list, and I'd like to see more other types of businesses listed. Other than that, it's easy to use and informative.

I like the maps as well. I'd also like to see a breakfast category or a sub category. There aren't very many breakfast places aside from the greasy spoon coffee shop type. At least not that I know of, and I love a good breakfast out.

More than 70 restaurant owners had claimed their business' Inside Guide profile as of mid-March. "Some restaurateurs are offering suggestions and ideas," Pacheco said.

One of Pacheco's goals is to have local businesses on the Inside Guide "to be on fire like the bands are" on Bakatopia, the newspaper's social networking and community information site. Musicians in Bakersfield are using Bakotopia for self-promotion and marketing purposes in creative and effective ways. (See NAA's Growing Audience report Innovation in Action, 2007 for more on Bakotopia.)

Lessons Learned

Pacheco said one of the real challenges was finding a decent data source to get things started. While Yahoo! and other search portals have local pages, the information isn't always complete or up-to-date. So the team in Bakersfield turned to telephone and wireless company AT&T. They supplemented the At&T data by having an intern (who later became a full-time employee) call and visit area businesses. The result: "We're already more comprehensive in terms of quality than any of our competition," Pacheco said.

Pacheco said newspapers need to jump into the local search space quickly. According to recent data from the Kelsey Group, advertising revenues from Internet yellow pages and local search will increase exponentially in the United States in the coming years. Local search revenues will grow to $2.6 billion in 2011, from less than $1 billion in 2006. "I think in the future this is going to be a critical battle ground" for newspaper companies, Pacheco said.

On a more general level, Pacheco said newspapers need to hire people who think creatively, and newspaper executives need to innovate. "It's really important in this industry for people to just dare to dream and think outside the box…. There are so many more things that people consume online beyond news and advertising, and this growth of social networking is a perfect example."

First Published:
March 1, 2007