This is a follow-up on a post that I did back on July 19 – titled “YellowPages.ca Launches Facebook Integration for Local Businesses” in which I profiled that yellowpages.ca had included facebook as part of their save and share functionality. However, in September, yellowpages.ca expanded one step further by integrating the “add to facebook” directly into the search results as well as the merchant page for each and every business in Canada.
Here are some screen shots of what this looks like. I used my mom’s business in Calgary called TheBraLady.ca. Here are the steps of how I got these screen shots:
First visit yellowpages.ca and do a search for bras in calgary. This actually loads a full page of results, but I captured just the result listing. As you can see, from the listing level you can add to facebook.
If you click on the company name this loads the merchant page for TheBraLady.ca. As you can see from the following screen shot there are two locations where you can “add to facebook” including the logo in the top right hand corner. Sorry for the small size – click on the link above to see the live version.
This is what it looks like inside of facebook.
As far as I know this is one of the first times that a company has allowed every single business in a country the ability to brand itself inside facebook – if you know of another integration – please send me a comment.
From a user perspective this is a great way to share a meeting location since all the merchant pages on yellowpages.ca have a map – when an address is available. From a small business perspective – this is a great opportunity to brand yourself within facebook.
Imagine – you set up a small business profile in facebook and invite your customers to connect to you. Why would they do that – because you are going to send out messages, promotions, coupons, etc. You use the add to facebook functionality to continue to update your friend list of these promotions. There is very little investment to make this happen and you potentially create a great viral tool.
If I had a small business – I would definitely take advantage of the many opportunities that could come from this integration. But that is just me – I tend to think a little differently.