White Pages and Reverse White Pages
Staying connected is the buzzword these days. Everybody is online, pinging away on the messenger staying connected to the computer all day long. If this was not enough, Black Berry cell phones have given everyone mobility. This article starts off with the initial telephone directory and then talks about the advantages of online white pages and ends with the advantages of getting listed in business white pages.
White Pages
A more common name given to telephone directories is White Pages which basically contains the address details of residential customers. They are termed white pages to distinguish them from the Yellow Pages which contains commercial listings. White pages can also be used to refer to a directory of people on the Internet.
With the advent of Internet to a level where life stops without it, online white pages have become very popular. You will find over a hundred websites on the Internet which can pull out telephone numbers of people based on a name and zip code. You can find international white pages too. To add yourself or remove your entry from an online white page directory, you simply have to send an email to the webmaster.
Come to think of it, online white pages have innumerable advantages over the conventional paper telephone white pages. Firstly, the online directories will be more updated when compared to the paper directory which gets published every year. Secondly, the amount of natural resources and trees that we will be saving if we do not require paper in incalculable.
Even if your city does not have an online website, you can get all the numbers printed on a CD ROM and distribute this instead of the paper directories. It will even work out cheaper. As a matter of fact AT&T has announced that they would stop publishing their white pages directories in Charlotte and Raleigh (North Carolina) and would instead provide web based or CD ROM access to residential listing data. According to a recent article in the Canadian Press, Clifton Metcalf, who is an AT&T spokesman in Charlotte, made the announcement that the company wants to try the idea in North Carolina before it could expand it elsewhere. Clifton Metcalf also said internal research showed that customers hardly ever used the (residential) White Pages as they were by and large using the Internet for find basic phone listings. He concluded stating that if all customers in Raleigh and Charlotte were to switch to the web-based version, AT&T has estimated that it would save about two million kilograms of waste (paper) each year.
Reverse White Pages
Reverse white pages provide the opposite functionality when compared to traditional white pages in the sense that when provided a phone number, they can return the name of person along with the residential address to whom the phone is listed.
Business White Pages
To build a successful business, it is important to build brand awareness. To increase your revenue who will have to spend very extensively on advertising. One means of advertisement that you can use is to get your company enlisted in the business white pages. You will be accessible to people across the country. It will be more advantageous to you if you cater to very specific service or product as narrowing down on your number will become simpler. The same holds true if you are a customer and are looking for a specific vendor or service provider on the Internet. This statement can be backed by the recent findings from Pew Internet & American Life Tracking survey that about 60 million American adults are using search engines every day.
Another important to thing to note is that these days, when you need to borrow money on credit for expanding your business, creditors often check business white pages to confirm if you are legitimate. If your business is not listed, it may raise questions about the authenticity of your business and also regarding your commitment of your business. I agree that you may be bombarded with calls from the telemarketers and this may be one of the key reasons that you have not listed your business so far, but I do believe that at the end of the day, even if you get a call from a single genuine customer, it will out weigh all the headache that the telemarketers can cause.
To conclude, online white pages are more preferred than the traditional white pages paper directory for the various reasons listed above. Also, if you have an upcoming business, get yourself listed in the business white pages immediately.
