Create Engageable Local Content!
Welcome to the first edition of the Main Street Marketing newsletter! Each week on Tuesday I send actionable marketing ideas and strategies for local small businesses.
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Creating Engageable Local Content
Whether you're just getting started on social media and only have a few followers or you've grown your page to a few hundred, it can feel impossible to reach people and get engagement.
You're not wrong either. It has become harder and harder to reach people on social media, especially for small pages. It's not impossible though!
Reaching new people becomes easier as your page grows, but the right content can help a lot. The more that people engage with and share your content, the more new people it reaches. So, you want to try and create content that encourages people to react, comment or share.
Creating content that people want to see and share can feel like a tall hill to climb. So, I'm going to share some ideas to help get you started. I've used these ideas with local businesses and they're a great place to start!
Focus On Local Landmarks
People are often very proud of their town and enjoy showing it off. When you are generating content for your local business a great place to start is with local landmarks. There are all sorts of local locations and it's completely dependent on your town. It might be a popular park or building or it could be a natural formation. Whatever it is, it should be easy to recognize quickly and be very popular. Once you pick out a couple local landmarks start working them into your content. Here are a few ideas:
- Feature your product in photos or videos in or around the landmark.
- Create a "guess where we are" post based around the landmark. (Don't give it away!)
- Share your favorite activities or things to do at the location.
- Host a local event or flash sale promoted on social media if you're able to.
Tell Your Business Story
People have a much different relationship with locally owned businesses than they do with large household name brands. Instead of a faceless corporation, local businesses are a beloved member of the community. People want to connect with your business on a personal level.
To take advantage of this, you can create content that tells them the story of your business. Share raw unfiltered photos from the early days of your business. Tell stories about times you struggled or your first successes. Explain how the community has stepped up to support your business.
People crave stories and they'll be excited to engage with and share the stories you tell.
Highlight Your Employees
Another great way to connect with people is to highlight your employees. People in your community see and work with your employees on a regular business. Even though they may have talked to them dozens of times, they may not know them on a personal level. People really like getting to know someone and being able to share in their life.
The best way to turn this into social media content is to highlight your employee. Make sure you ask your employee if they are interested in being featured online first. If they are, then you can ask them to share some details about their life or give them a short questionnaire with predefined questions.
More outgoing employees might be interested in being featured in a video highlight or interview. Written content can be shared in question and answer form or if you're comfortable with copywriting it can be written as more of a story.
However you decide to showcase your employee make sure you encourage them to share it with their friends and family too and maybe even give it a small budget to promote it to more people!
So, what do you think? Did this give you some ideas to get started? Let me know!
Looking For More Local Marketing Content?
From Google My Business to paid search to online reviews and more WordStream has some great local marketing tips.
Wanting to get started on social media, but don't know where to start? Check out my guide to starting local social media.
Allie Bloyd is a great local marketer and shares a ton of awesome content. She shares 4 tips for local businesses using paid ads here.
That's all for the first edition! We'll see you next week!
If you want more you can check me out on Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram too!
Visit harrisonjhepp.com for more content.
Harrison J Hepp
Welcome to the Main Street Marketing newsletter! Each week, on Tuesday, I send actionable marketing ideas and strategies for local small businesses. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can do that here: Subscribe The Power of Evergreen Content Let's start by explaining evergreen content for those who don't know. The purpose of evergreen content is to be relevant and applicable for long periods. So, content that focuses on special events or things that change often won't work. If what you are...