Leading online appointment booking solution integrates into social loyalty platform to help appointment dependent businesses generate leads and acquire new customers

BOZEMAN, MT(October 25, 2011) - Schedulicity (www.schedulicity.com), the leader in online appointment scheduling for small businesses, announced today a partnership with SocialGuides (www.socialguides.com), a social loyalty platform that helps small businesses manage social marketing activities. As part of the partnership, Schedulicity will integrate into the SocialGuides loyalty tab, adding online scheduling into their existing social media capabilities, which include customer acquisition and lead generation tools that help its clients attract and retain customers and amplify word of mouth.

To launch the partnership, Schedulicity and SocialGuides are creating a “Social Salon Package” for Marló Beauty Supply, a Michigan-based beauty supply company servicing salons and professionals across the US. It is the first company to adopt the special offering, giving them the opportunity to launch online marketing campaigns, create content, and schedule appointments from the same platform. “Social Packages” can be optimized for any small business wanting social engagement and increased customer acquisition.

“Having a comprehensive social media presence is paramount for small business owners and service professionals looking to build credibility in their market,” said Schedulicity CEO and founder, Jerry Nettuno. “Our partnership with SocialGuides will provide small businesses with the necessary tools to increase loyalty and engagement without sacrificing valuable time that could be spent running a business.”

The need for small businesses to maintain a social media presence that is both informative and engaging is growing at a rapid pace due to consumer demand. According to The Kelsey Group, in 2010, nearly all consumers (97 percent) use online media when researching products or services in their local area. This is up from 50 percent in 2007 and 82 percent in 2008.

“Today, even the smallest businesses are finding that a social media footprint is the key to staying top-of-mind,” said Christian Gammill, president and co-founder of SocialGuides. “Our platform offers businesses a way to reward social fans for their likes and comments on Facebook, and incorporating Schedulicity gives our clients yet another option to retain business and increase awareness among social customers.

Schedulicity takes the effort out of time-consuming tasks by completely automating and streamlining the entire scheduling process for appointment-dependent small businesses. By offering online service scheduling 24 hours a day through its digital channels, these businesses are able to save time and increase profitability through eliminating the hassles of scheduling.

SocialGuides combines social commerce applications and social media onto one platform. Subscription-based and easily integrated onto Facebook, the platform features a welcome tab, which enables fan-exclusive content, and a variety of social loyalty programs, aimed to retain existing customers with exclusive offers, listings, and panels.

SocialGuides offers small businesses three, tiered packages: Plus, Pro, and Platinum. All subscribers are given access to a SocialGuides dashboard that enables easy access to data, deals, and fan activity. Depending on the package, the users may also have access to Social Deals and Social Listings.

About Schedulicity

Schedulicity is the leading online appointment scheduling solution for small businesses. To date, more than 6,000,000 appointments have been booked through Schedulicity (an appointment is booked every four seconds) in more than 1,900 cities across the U.S. and Canada. Schedulicity currently facilitates over $450 million in appointment-based commerce per year. Schedulicity earned the prestigious DEMOgod Award at DEMO Fall 2011 for exceptional potential to thrive in the market, and was also honored by Tech Awards Circle 2011 for Best SMB Service, which recognizes small to mid-sized companies that have created a truly outstanding technology service. To sign up for the service or to find a service provider near you, please visit http://www.schedulicity.com or Schedulicity’s Facebook page.

About SocialGuides

SocialGuides is a Social Loyalty and Commerce platform that helps small and medium businesses with their social marketing efforts. SocialGuides’ applications and platform make it easy for local businesses to grow their fan base (with welcome tab and coupon apps) and drive customer retention (with loyalty programs) – all tied to Facebook to amplify word of mouth. For more information, visit www.socialguides.com.

Today marks a week since Facebook had their most recent F8 conference, announcing a slurry of new features that are sure to make waves for consumers and companies alike.  The new timeline and apps platform is now live for developers and will be rolling out to consumers in the coming weeks.  As we approach the general release one of the many questions to arise is how does the “new” Facebook effect fCommerce?

1) The new Timeline feature is not being rolled out to Fan pages yet.
For many brands this is a bit of a disappointment as there certainly were lots of clever and beautiful ways the Timeline could have showcased products on their Fan page.  Mashable has a fun article  that illustrates what the Timeline could look like on a fan page. We may see this yet, but as of right now, it seems Facebook is taking a conservative approach before rolling out the Timeline to brands as well.

2) The new action feature opens up new sharing possibilities for products and brands.
fCommerce provider 8th bridge whipped up a quick “want button” to correspond to the ever popular like button.  Look for more intent driven concepts from companies that are sure to benefit fCommerce in the near future.

3) The new story feature unlocks a higher level of engagement for brands.
The big demo at F8 was showing the realtime new ticker of what your friends were listening to on Spotify or watching on Netflix.  When you clicked on it the news item, you two could instantly begin listening to the same song or watching the same movie. Look for this to translate big time for fCommerce.  Think about the interesting (and some would say scary) possibilities: “Jeremy just bought a new couch at Ikea”, “Jeremy just enjoyed an ice coffee at Starbucks”.

4) Apps can now show up on the Timeline.
While this was mainly touted as a consumer feature, I fully expect fCommerce companies to think about fun consumer facing ways to engage their audience.  iTunes could show your top Albums for the year to drive more recommendations and purchases from friends, Nike can show you where you ran to drive more brand awareness, an airline could show you where you’ve flown, etc.  In the long run this is where I expect to see the most creativity and disruption in the fCommerce space.

Overall, really all of the major F8 announcements are positively disruptive to the fCommerce space.  As these new features rollout to consumers in the coming weeks, look for the major app providers to react with product updates that will surely be leveraging the new capabilities.

It’s been an interesting few months here at SocialGuides. The location space has heated up to say the least. This is in large part due to the success of check-in apps (Foursquare and Gowalla). We love what those guys have done and we couldn’t be more excited about it all – Location is our business…

Why do we love location? Location is all about the customer experience. It’s where the magic happens for a business – it’s what customers come for, it’s what customer experience is and it’s what customers talk about when they leave. read more »