Thanks Katerina for your excellent post on the local business challenge -- I wanted to re-blog this so hopefully someone will see it who didn't know about the challenge.
When Bob Stewart ran the neighborhood challenge last week I discovered a lot of Active Rain members did not know about the challenge or found out about it on the last days of the challenge.
Bob is running a the Local Business challenge for the next 12 days.
Write a post about a local business in your area and receive 1000 points. Add the URL to your post on Bob's challenge post by clicking here. You can get up to 7,000 points for participating with one post every other day for 2 weeks. The challenge started on Thursday and I tried to get this post up by yesterday but stuff happens like closings:)
Since this challenge will really help you with your networking for word of mouth referrals I thought I could give you some pointers since this is one of my favorite type of posts to write.
Why write about local businesses in your area?
- To get referrals!
- To show the biz owner that you get their biz on page of Google= appreciation.
- To get to know people within your community.
- To pay it forward in a positive way.
- What goes around comes around- you will be blessed.
- Become the GoTo person in your town online.
- Showcase your favorite biz owners and they will think of you when someone brings up real estate.
- Givers gain.
We have our favorite little Cuban Restaurant, a mom and pop place that we frequent, Casa Santiago. We took some great photos, interviewed the owner which was a lot of fun and then put together a featured post. He is not into the internet and does not go online so we brought him back a CD. We also gave him the link to give to his daughter who then went on line to show him what we did for him. He was very thankful.
The immediate benefit was dinner was on the house. The long term benefit is that he loves us and whenever we go to his Cuban Cafe he treats us extra special, has a place where he puts our brochures and cards and tells his customers about us.
Here is the link to the Cuban Case Santiago post so you can study it and follow what I did to write your posts for your local restaurants. You will see why it was Localism featured. Study the layout of this post.
We are avid homeschoolers so I get the chance to highlight many local businesses that support and have programs for homeschoolers. The Gold Coast Christian Camp is one of those businesses that has generated a lot of activity from my post about them and their programs for private schools and homeschoolers. You can click here to read one of the posts I wrote about Gold Coast Christian Camp.
Here are some tips on how to write a Localism Business Post:
- Be yourself and add your personality to the post. I just had a buyer call us because she found our homes for sale post about a neighborhood that I did for the challenge and she said she liked me already before she met me. She said she felt like she knew me already. Our buyers agent is selling her a house already.
- Take interesting and lively photos. Look at the colors in this photo. Don't take the boring snapshot that any newspaper would take. Give it some personality.
- Take photos of the owners of the business with you. You can also use these later on for press releases. This is a huge opportunity that gets overlooked by most marketers. The owners most often LOVE to have photos taken of them in their businesses.
- Tell a story. "Facts tell, stories sell." Don't just state boring facts about a place, consumers can find that stuff on citydata and other sites. Tell a story- your story, the owners story, any story. That engages the reader and plants the information in their memories.
- Tell me more... I love interesting people and history. So I ask a lot of questions when I am interviewing. Well, I ask a lot of questions all the time:) Nevertheless, this is a great way to connect and find some gems that they ordinarily might not recall to give you.
Have fun with the challenge, meet some business owners in your community and add some value to their businesses.
Active Rain Local Business Challenge- Get On Board! by Coach Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Liz, Thanks for getting the word out about this challenge. I did not know about it until reading you reblog.