BING LOCAL BUSINESS LISTINGS

Bing has been steadily gaining market share over the past year and, like its counterparts, Bing offers both free local business listings and paid advertising. Formerly referred to as the Bing Local Listings Center, Bing Business Portal is the all new bing local directory that provides business owners with more opportunities in which to have customers reach them.

Bing has made notable gains in providing enhancements and features to the new Bing Business Portal including:

• Business owners can create a mobile site and QR code through the bing local directory portal, allowing customs to learn about your business via mobile devices
• Bing's deal wizard allows business owners to create an unlimited number of deals plus manage coupons.
• Coupons appear next to your local business listing for both PC and mobile users.
• Publish deals from bing's local directory directly to Twitter and to your business Facebook page as a Wall post

Getting listed in Bing's local directory

Step 1: Create a new business listing or claim an existing one
This includes adding standard information such as business name, address, and phone number.

Step 2: Select Categories and Specialties
Business owners can select up to six categories in which to place your listing in bing's local directory. In addition, business owners can now choose several business specialties which are noted by a set of sliders. A rather nifty approach, these sliders allow you to indicate which specialties are most important.

Step 3: Create a mobile website
Bing gets big points here by offering free mobile websites as part of their Business Portal. As noted above, business owners can create a QR code (Quick Response code) which is just a two-dimensional code that acts like a barcode. These codes are read by dedicated QR barcode readers that are found in many camera phones and will take the customer to your mobile website.

Step 4: Upload photos
Aside from the company logo, Bing allows you to upload up to nine other photos.

Step 5: Describe your business *Important!*
Bing allows a sizeable amount of copy to be entered to describe your business. This is a critical step and careful attention should be paid to the way in which you write your business description.

Step 6: Verify your listing
As with Google Places and Yahoo Local, Bing Business Portal requires a verification process that is done via mail. (They claim phone verification is an option but that's not the case.) A letter should arrive at your address within one business week that includes a PIN number for you to enter into the Business Portal to complete the verification process.

Bing has made great strides with improving their local directory and it'll be interesting to see what they'll offer up next.