Social media has become a pretty essential part of promoting and making connections for many types of businesses. But one key group is often left out when it comes to the main social networks – companies looking to make business-to-business connections.
That’s why the team at AboutOurWork.com just launched its new MatchUp service, which aims to help entrepreneurs and small companies easily connect with others in their industry who could help further their business interests.
For example, a wedding planner could use MatchUp to make connections with wedding photographers, caterers, and other professionals in the wedding industry.
Co-founder David Hunegnaw said:
“What we noticed when talking to local chambers of commerce is that when small businesses need to connect with one another, they still almost always do it through traditional channels like trade shows. In the wedding industry, there are so many professionals involved in the process and it can be very beneficial for them to connect, but to do that they travel around the country to different shows and events. We just thought that there had to be a more efficient way to make those connections.”
Users of the site need to first create a profile on AboutOurWork, and then they can use the MatchUp recommendation engine by adding tags with pertinent information about their company, such as “wedding,” “planner,” and their city or state. Then the engine suggests other users they might want to connect with.
Hunegnaw said that when he and partner, Brooke Paul, first presented the idea to the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, they dubbed it the “eHarmony for small businesses.”
In addition to the recommendation engine, AboutOurWork also offers company profile pages that are not only optimized for search engines and mobile devices, but can also be used as a primary company website. When a company directs its custom url to its profile, AboutOurWork automatically removes all of its branding from the page so that it looks like a custom and professional website. Creating an AboutOurWork profile is free, but there is a small fee for using a custom domain.
The photo above shows an example of a custom website on AboutOurWork, and on the right it shows a group of company profiles that other users can browse or search to find connections.
AboutOurWork launched in the spring of this year, and MatchUp just launched earlier this month. The company has a team of 5 is based in Columbus, Ohio.
Any tool for connecting businesses is a great idea since most tools today are ones that connect businesses and consumers. Our web portal http://inajiffy.com does something similar (difference is that we connect with vendors not other similarly situated businesses). Good luck to AboutOurWork.
I would be interested to know what the tipping point is for a service like this. There has to be a certain number of businesses in the system before the matching will work effectively.
Ti Roberts
Wow, this is pretty interesting. I wonder how well this will work and how effective this will be. I’d be eager to read an update on this.
Ti
David Hunegnaw
Rohit, I’d love to learn more about inajiffy.com and will check you guys out this afternoon.
Robert, agreed, creating network effect will be critical for us. A large part of our user acquisition strategy is establishing partnerships with the Chambers of Commerce & associations that serve the small business community. Luckily, our initial conversations with them have been positive and we already have several partnerships in place and through those partnerships we now have over 25,000 members.
Ti, I’m glad you find what we’re up to interesting. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on our progress. Also, please feel free to email me at david@aboutourwork.com anytime with questions.
Thanks,
David Hunegnaw
cofounder/ceo
AboutOurWork
201-OUR-WORK