LocalVox Launches Full-Service Marketing Solution To Help Local Merchants Target Their Customers

Hyperlocal is all the rage these days, and content companies, deal sites, and everyone in between are trying to find better ways to access (and advertise to) local markets. Over the last decade, the majority of media companies have attempted to launch internal or on-site outlets that cover local news, but most have met with middling success.
NearSay, a New York City-based startup that launched six months ago, began by asking a simple question: ?Where do we get our neighborhood news?? NearSay?s founders, Trevor Sumner and David Pachter, were startled by the lackluster and confusing responses to that question and, in turn, the dearth of valuable neighborhood outlets for local news. So, for their answer, they started a platform that began as a realtime business newswire to allow local businesses in New York City to publish announcements (on events, deals, etc.) to the NearSay platform.
Now an aggressive publisher of neighborhood lifestyle news, the startup has partnered with small, local publications (where they exist) to allow local businesses to target their content to the people who can actually benefit from ? and want to hear about ? local news. To add to their platform, the startup launched LocalVox, which is (among other things) a white label advertorial publishing tool that allows niche publishers to syndicate their clients? content across the startup?s network and blast that content out to social media outlets.
The idea was to create a Yellow Pages 3.0, which not only serves as a tool to help readers or searchers find telephone numbers or addresses of local merchants, but to actually help those merchants optimize their placement in search results and get found by the people who need them.
Today, the company is now calling itself LocalVox Media, and NearSay, its contextual newswire service, has become a feature of the platform. As a part of this rebranding, the startup is launching LocalVox 2.0, with which it is hoping to become a full, multichannel marketing tool for local businesses and pu