Did you know the BundlePost team works daily with Social Media agencies and Internet marketers? Folks that are working hard to get the word out about goods and services or hired to get the word out for others. One of the biggest concerns I hear among these folks is about hyper local marketing. Here is a strong accusation on the matter – Many agencies miss the mark entirely and are only concerned about taking money from small business owners. Sad, but true.
However, many small business owners miss the mark too by thinking everything is about the amount of ‘Likes’ and ‘Follows’ online. This is mostly because they have listened to folks that just want to take their money. Until one day the small business owner wakes up and says….. “my priority is getting my services and products sold or getting people in the door of my shop!!“
The pressure is on!! The Agency now has to get to work because Small Business owners have found out – Social Media: It’s Quantity AND Quality, Not Either or
Likes and Followers are NOT sales by themselves. So we know we need quantity and quality, but what exactly do we share for the hyper local market? You can set up Google alerts to feed into BundlePost on any topic. Alerts for local are news, local events in the area, or content aggregation on any subject you’d like for that matter. However, I want to introduce you to a few things that I know will get the conversation going with your hyper local target market. The kind of things that are outside of box thinking for the typical social media marketer.
When I think hyper local marketing I think ‘Community’. When I think ‘Community’, I think history, community spirit, friends and family. Wouldn’t it be awesome for hyper local marketing to reflect that? What do you know about the history of your community? When and how was the local town established? There might be some in the audience saying ‘Who Cares’, but please remember hyper local marketing is about the community, where locally owned brick and mortar businesses actually still care about the community, otherwise why would they have invested the time and money there.
If you can’t feel the community spirit, please know you’re not alone and I can totally understand. I was born and raised in Modesto California. I used to tell people, “Yup, born and raised, but was able to escape a few times.” Which obviously says that I wasn’t happy here. I could drive by the hospital and cemetery within five to ten minutes of each other and be overwhelmed with “Born here… died here”.
A couple of years ago I isolated myself in the mountains. Away from family, friends and community. For the very first time I spent a Christmas entirely by myself. One of the worst feelings ever. Loneliness. My only community was online. Shortly there after I decided I needed to go ‘Home’.
I am not saying to isolate yourself so that you learn to appreciate things more. Please don’t do that! What I am saying is that maybe it’s time to get re-acquainted with your surroundings. Time to do a little research like I have and possibly fall in love with where you or your client businesses live like I have.
Start looking for the positive things, the community spirit, the history and the fun trivia facts that most folks don’t know. By the time you are done with your research, you will feel like the town historian. That my friends can give you the cutting edge above your competition!
Seems like my favorite way to start a conversation lately is with… “Did you know?”
Example
Did you know that Modesto was established in 1870? Common knowledge for a local, but did you know that Paradise City and Tuolumne City literally picked up their homes and business buildings and moved them to Modesto? They placed everything on wood planks and wheels and drawn by horse to relocate for the new railroad city.
See, anyone can find out what year a town was established, Wikipedia is pretty good for that. If you want to sound more interesting dig deeper. Remember, I lived here my whole life and I didn’t know about the cities that disappeared. I was so curious about it that I looked up a map from the late 1800’s at the local library to see exactly where they were and drove to the sites, no sign of a city ever being there. NONE.
Did you catch that in the last paragraph that yes, I said LIBRARY. Your local Library is a wealth of untapped content dying for you to share! The only hard part is that there usually isn’t a ‘Share’ button. You actually need to read, learn, take notes and CREATE content that is not easily found online. The amazing part is that your librarian is eager and ready to help you. When I started asking questions about our community, I soon had a small audience of volunteers ready to assist with research.
Another Example
Did you know that Modesto is home to world’s largest winery? Again common knowledge for a local. But taking it one step further, did you know that Boone’s Farm wine is a Gallo product? Remember the Blue Hawaiian and Fuzzy Naval? Some folks probably don’t want to remember. LOL Okay, so still pushing the common knowledge for some here. So let’s get the inside scoop with this. SO, Did do you know how Boone’s Farm got its name? Here my friends is a great piece of inside scoop trivia for you. Boone’s Farm was named after a horse called Boone. Boone belonged to Julio Gallo’s granddaughter, Gina Gallo. Between the Gallo family estates was a small stall/shed for Boone on the property. Above the stall door hung a sign that read, “Boone’s Farm”
So in the last example I used the ‘Inside Scoop’. What large companies do you have in your community? Do you know someone who works for the company? Is there possibly a factory that offers tours? My inside source for this last example was my father. Dad used to work for the Gallo family in the early 70’s as a personal body-guard to the Gallo family. Awesome resource, right?
Step away from your computer and start asking the community about its past. You’ll be surprised about the awesome things you will find to share. You just might be able to rekindle the community spirit with your hyper local marketing.
In the end when we take pride in our community and we will often support our community by shopping local.
By Julia Hull @PerfectJulia
Director of Customer Support at BundlePost
Social media marketing professional that joined the BundlePost team early in its transition from a social media agency to a software company. She is an expert in social media tools.
Filed under: Audience, BundlePost, Community, Content, Curation, Local, Marketing, Social Aggregation, Social Business, Social content management, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Tagged: Bundle Post, Community, content, curate, hyper local, marketing, Social Media Content, Social Media Marketing