9 Things Every Local Organization Should Have in Their Bing Business Portal
By Kurt Steinbrueck
April 14, 2011 
3 Comments
Bing has launched their enhanced local listings which are now called Bing Business Portals and it has a lot of great features for local businesses and organizations. If you don’t have a portal, then you are missing out on lots of visitors. If have a portal, but aren’t using it right, then many of the visitors you get may just leave. So, here are…
9 Things Every Local Organization Should Have in Their Bing Portal:
- All the basic info – Name, phone number, address, email, etc.
- Your website URL – Even if you want people to contact you directly in some way (email, phone, physical visit), most people like to start with an organization by gathering some information and would rather be able to learn more about you on your website before contacting you. Also, the link can help your website in the general search results.
- Upload a logo or photo – Branding is an important part of marketing and being able to brand your portal page is a great opportunity. If your organization has a logo, use it. If not, at least upload a picture of your staff. Avoid a picture of a building if possible. Buildings don’t usually help with branding and people don’t connect to buildings like they do to pictures of people.
- Twitter and Facebook URLs – Social media is hugely important these days. So, make sure your social profiles are listed. If you don’t have a Twitter or Facebook account…get one.
- A mobile website – I’ve never been sold on the need for a mobile version of a regular website since most smart phones can now handle a regular website, but Bing’s free mobile website is a different story. The mobile website is designed to make it as easy as possible for mobile users to call you, look you up on a map, find info on a product, or like you FB. It’s a pretty brilliant design and I highly recommend using it.
- Photos – You could use the photos to post product images, but I like the idea of using the photos to connect with people. I would primarily put photos of staff or for churches, ministries and schools, pictures of activities. If you want people to visit your location, including a picture of the front of your building to make it easier to recognize is probably a good idea, but not absolutely necessary.
- Additional contact info – If you have unique contact info for certain departments / ministries, include that info. Why not let visitors contact the appropriate person directly instead of wasting some poor secretaries time forwarding the contact. This is also way to let visitors know more about what you offer and have links to specific pages of your website. Hello, more links.
- Deals and discounts – Obviously this is more for businesses than churches or ministries and is a great way to entice visitors to make a purchase. Also, businesses offering deals are highlights in the search results making it more likely that people will view your portals
- Select categories – The categories do effect search results.
I didn’t mention it in the official 9 because it’s such a niche market, but if you have a local restaurant, the Bing Business Portals indicate they let you setup an online menu in your listing. Very cool.
So, take a few minutes and setup / update your Bing listing and so you are getting the most out of local search in Bing.
What features of the new Bing Business Portals do you like the best?
Great content here. We have been ignoring Bing but this is so easy that I think we'll go ahead and get it done. Add the ease of this to the increasing market share of Bing and it sounds like a no-brainer.
I found a lot of useful information, thank you guys!
Very interesting article you have shared.Your site is very informative and helpful for others.