December 21, 2009

Let’s face it; most small businesses do the bulk of their business locally. So, the thought of gaining access to Facebook’s 300 trillion users (may be more by now) isn’t that relevant or useful.

However, if those local businesses could use some of the new powerful online tools and platforms to gain access to the 200-300 social media users in their town, now that might just make some sense.

There are many ways to filter, sort, aggregate and otherwise take advantage of social media tools that can specifically benefit even the smallest neighborhood oriented business.

Below are five things any local business can do to get more business using social media tools

1) Start a Local Group Online

Most social network platforms offer some form of group creation. Any member has the ability to start a group around a niche or pretty much any topic – including a local topic. Sites such as Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn and Slideshare all allow members to create and manage groups.

For example here’s a local independent merchant group in Austin, TX using a Flickr Group to promote it’s “Keep Austin Weird” slogan.

This Boston Networking Group on LinkedIn was founded by Jeff Popin, owner of BostonEventGuide.com. With over 3,000 members, there’s a pretty good bet this group serves as a conduit for Popin’s main business locally.

2) Find and Network with Local Bloggers

Using tools such as Placeblogger, outside.in, Bloglines you can locate bloggers in your community that might have an interest in writing about your business or industry or actively linking to your blog.

Networking with relevant bloggers locally, commenting on their blog posts, and maybe even contributing a post is a great way to create additional local exposure. Don’t forget to seek out and add blogs from traditional media publications locally as well. Most radio, TV and news journalists have been asked to write a blog as part of their job, these can be great local social media contacts if you take the time to build relationships though their blogs.

3) Hold Meetups and Tweetups

Using a social media tool like MeetUp, you create and promote local events and tap the user base of MeetUp to create additional awareness about your seminars, product demonstrations, open houses, and grand openings.

Here a home remodeler in Encinitas, CA is offering a workshop on green remodeling through MeetUP.

TweetUps, a gathering of people in a community using Twitter, have become very popular ways to meet others locally that believe in the power of social media. That alone can be enough common ground to network on. Search locally for the term TweetUp and don’t be surprised to find one schedule in your community.

The online social media network Biznik allows members to join its online platform, but belong to a local community and promote in-person local events on the site.

4) Find local leads

Finding local prospects or potential strategic partners on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter is pretty simple through the use of the powerful search interfaces built into all. Simply searching by City is a great way to find other people using social media in your community. A service such as Twellowhood or LocalTweeps may aid in your search to find other businesses in your community using Twitter.

Many smart marketers are also employing some of the advanced features of Twitter Search to find people locally and filter their tweets to turn up leads. An auto body shop might set-up searches for people talking about being in an accident and reach out to them with advice for what to do to get the best quote. A computer network service provider can use advanced search to find people locally complaining about their network being down.

Naked Pizza in New Orleans uses Twitter to publish exclusive offers to followers and attributes a significant rise in business using to this tactic.

Cupcakes on Wheels, a Los Angeles mobile cupcake business, tweets its location throughout the day so followers can find its signature brown vans.

Facebook’s Ad Targeting is also another great way to reach only local prospects on the Facebook platform. One of the targeting criteria is geography, so you can create ads that promote your web site or Facebook Fan page that are only shown to people in the geographic region you choose

5) Enhance Local Search Results

No matter how you put social media to use to create engagement locally, simply creating profiles on dozens of social media sites and linking those sites with local keyword content back to your main web site will help your site do better when people search locally. Creating very brand and local optimized profiles on sites like YouTube, Flickr and Slideshare will help with overall links to your site. Creating and enhancing local profiles on Google Maps, Yahoo and Bing Local will help you show up higher in the local results.

Finally, don’t forget to get active with the social review sites like Yelp! and Insider Pages. Ask, and even teach, your local customers hot to write reviews about your business. Currently Google Maps and Bing Local add these reviews to their local profile database too.

Using the technology and ability to access large groups of social media users locally has become a proven small business marketing tactic and is a great way to further enhance the face-to-face relationship building you already do.

Image credit: gloom

John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing.

Join the conversation ( 22 )

• Steven Chen 6 months ago

  

  In my personal opinion, local business owners always had a tough time marketing their biz and brand online. This article definitely helps in some ways. Mobile and social technologies have been emerging very quickly recently, I think social media like Facebook Fan Page and Twitter will gradually help local businesses establish better online presence in near future.
  
  This article is near two years old. We are currently summarizing the best practices for local biz owners to take advantage of Facebook Fan Pages at Tweetarm - http://tweetarm.com/question/214/facebook+page+local+biz
  
  If you're interested, please do help out!

• Udit Bhansali 1 year 0 months and 23 days ago

  

  Thanks for sharing such an informative and cool blog with us. Keep blogging with http://www.oddpath.com..
  Again sorry for double posts

• Udit Bhansali 1 year 0 months and 23 days ago

  

  Thanks for sharing such an informative and cool blog with us. Keep blogging with ODD PATH

• Simon Schnieders 1 year 5 months and 18 days ago

  

  I've just seen the beta version of http://explore.to
  
  Very exciting for small business owners, though I'm sworn to secrecy - It's due to launch late August 2010.

• Tim Tevlin 2 years 0 months and 29 days ago

  

  Very informative piece John as are all articles I read by you. I would add that a strong social media and search marketing tactic local businesses can use to attract attention is to create low-cost videos about their business and what they do and then promote these videos online. You can get great Google exposure this way, plus also use a single video to get exposure with customers multiple online 'touch-points' such as your blog, website, Facebook page, Google Maps listing and more. thx

• harry riddle 2 years 0 months and 29 days ago

  

  newbie as ya'll put it...but finding answers/suggestions very, very helpful. from here....I'll listen and learn to adapt to using the puter world to build this local biz I've wanted to do for some time. thanks john for triggering the new thoughts to expand on.

• Jay NaPier 2 years 1 months and 7 days ago

  

  Local business owners need to get in the game. Many are way to focused on their business to market their business. What really makes it worse is that too many will miss out on some of the biggest opportunities online & offline. Video Marketing and Text Message advertising are just a few.
  
  Jay NaPier
  http://www.JayNaPier.com

• Robert Boccabella 2 years 1 months and 9 days ago

  

  My company, Business Design Services, is a commercial interior space design firm that has a local (San Francisco Bay Area) as well as national client base. Over our 26 year history I have sometimes found balancing the two constitiuntcies a challenge. BDS's local marketing has always been grounded by participation in nearby Chambers of Commerce while the national presence requires maintaining active contact with specific networking with hotel franchises, dental equpment suppliers, etc.
  
  I find this article very informative on how to expand and better focus on our "Local Market".

• ANDREW SWINDLER 2 years 1 months and 12 days ago

  

  Great overview of local business marketing strategies. The only one I see missing is http://GoHuman.com. We’re revolutionizing the way micro-business gets done at the local level, empowering the smallest of small businesses to take control of their local markets. I welcome you to participate or pass it on.

• John Jantsch 2 years 1 months and 12 days ago

  

  @DigitalWavepoint - don't you recognize a good hyperbole when you see one :) - it was intentional for humorous impact. Guess I should have said 350 Gazillion

• John Jantsch 2 years 1 months and 12 days ago

  

  @Jeffery - or better yet, don't say anything for a while, just listen and learn - it's the best way to understand how you might actually use some of these new platforms.

• NIRMAL PARIKH 2 years 1 months and 12 days ago

  

  Hi. The article was a great read although I am not sure how no one has pointed this out yet. At current count, Facebook has 350+ million users, not 300+ trillion!!
  

• STEVEN SUE 2 years 1 months and 12 days ago

  

  Great presentation and advice!

• Jeffery James 2 years 1 months and 12 days ago

  

  Really great advice. You really need to do more than create a twitter account and a Facebook fan page to get results. My bit of advice would be not to promote your social media outlets until you get some history. Nothing worse than seeing someone promote that they are now on twitter when they have posted twice about six months ago or their stream has nothing of value in it.

• John Jantsch 2 years 1 months and 12 days ago

  

  @Steven - I'm flattered - overwhelm is a major hurdle for small business folks when it comes to social media. I would love to hear about some of your results after you apply these tactics.

• Steven Pine 2 years 1 months and 12 days ago

  

  This might be the best summary of what local businesses can do with social media that I've read. Succinct but with enough practical advice for "newbies" to follow. We have a local video production company at www.image-werx.com that is truly local: we don't need to conquer the world, but would like to generate a conversation with our non-profit and government agency clients. The social media methods described above are realistic ways to get in the "mix" without getting overwhelmed or going off-target into a "national" e-conversation. Well done...

• John Jantsch 2 years 1 months and 12 days ago

  

  @Roland - Don't forget to use these methods with existing clients - it's a great way to generate more referrals.

• John Jantsch 2 years 1 months and 12 days ago

  

  @Ryan - Another thing I've seen professional services people do locally is write about local events, non-profits, and general happenings on the local level. This is great way to logically throw in the names of clients, prospects, suburbs and the like.

• Roland Millward 2 years 1 months and 12 days ago

  

  This is excellent advice. I have used these methods quite successfully and made some good business contacts and gained new clients as a result.

• Ryan Hanley 2 years 1 months and 12 days ago

  

  Localizing content is SO important. For my own website (www.ryanhanley.com) I have tried to pinpoint the local market and the market segments that I specialize in. However, this is much easier said than done. Tips such as these are great for focusing efforts.
  
  Thank you,
  
  Ryan H.

• John Jantsch 2 years 1 months and 13 days ago

  

  Clemens - so much of hype this last year has been about big brands using social media, you watch this year it's going to be about doing business locally.

• Clemens Rettich 2 years 1 months and 13 days ago

  

  This is excellent John. I have a lot of small/med business owners wondering about the ROI (mostly in time) for social media when their market is very local. This answers that question very well. I particularly like #1 with its focus on generating support/interest for your community.