For local small-medium businesses (SMBs), the summer season brings more than warmer weather; it brings the potential for an additional revenue stream from the flow of seasonal tourists to local attractions, concerts, fairs, and special events; such as visitors to the Cornwall Ribfest Community Cookout. The obstacle for most businesses is that they don’t know where to find tourists.

The Challenge For SMBs

It is a challenge for local SMBs to find opportunities to communicate their marketing message directly to consumers. This can be even more challenging when trying to capture the attention of those who are visiting from other parts of the province, state, country, or even the world.

The Solution For SMBs

SMBs must adopt a locally-focused social media marketing strategy that is tailored to tourists and visitors, who are searching for local information, tips, and advice; before and during their visit.

The Strategy For SMBs

To ensure that SMBs reach local visitors with their marketing message, they must create and contribute locally-focused content that targets tourists in search and on the social networks they use most. To achieve this, whether the event be Cornwall Ribfest or other, businesses must:

  1. Include their location in social media profiles and in their posts.
  2. Monitor and contribute to local and event hashtag conversations.
  3. Collaborate with other local businesses, organizations, agencies.

1. Add Location To Social Media Posts And Profiles

Aside from providing a carefully crafted narrative to visitors, the description included in your social media profile also communicates valuable information to search engines.

Within your social network profile’s description, you should include the name of your city or town (and perhaps even province/state to avoid confusion), as well as local landmarks that are close to your business.

For example: “Located in downtown Cornwall, Ontario.”

Both Google and Facebook offer Local Business pages to help you increase your exposure across their platforms. Although Twitter does not offer a dedicated page for businesses, it does encourage users to include a valid geographic location in their profile description.

Google

Including your business in Google My Business connects your business directly with online consumers, whether they are searching for information using Google Search or Google Maps, and regardless of what device they are using (computer, mobile phone, or tablet). Do not underestimate the value of this exposure.

Your business’ page will provide driving directions to your business, display your hours of operations, and include a telephone number that mobile phone users can click-to-call you.

Facebook

When Facebook introduced Graph Search, they announced that their users were performing one billion search queries per day. According to the platform, most of these queries were related to local information.

Some examples of these locally related searches included:

  • specific interests in a particular city
  • photos/videos taken in a particular city
  • restaurants in a city

From a marketer’s perspective, this clearly demonstrates Facebook’s intention to work towards becoming a leader in connecting people with their favorite local businesses.

To capitalize on opportunities to connect with the local Facebook audience, be sure to include your local street address and phone number with a local area code on your business’ Facebook profile. As well, add your business as your current workplace under the “About” tab in the “Work and Education” section of your personal profile.

Another great way to increase your business’ exposure locally is to engage with other local Facebook pages. To accomplish this:

  1. Click on the settings wheel icon at the top right of your Facebook screen.
  2. Select your page under the “Use Facebook As” section.

Doing this will allow you to search for, like, and comment on other business pages as your page; instead of your personal profile.

Local Engagement

To get the greatest exposure, you will want to engage (“Like”, comment, and share) with local pages where your ideal customers are active. Some great examples of local pages to begin engaging with as your local business, especially during events such as Cornwall’s RibFest Community Cookout, include:

Local News

City Government & Agencies

Professional Organizations

Local Events & Participants

Facebook’s Nearby Places

Another feature that will increase your exposure to tourists on Facebook is to add your business location. This will help your business display as a “nearby place” when users perform a search on Facebook.

To benefit from this, it is important that you have added all of your basic Page information, including your business name, the proper category (must be Companies & Organizations or Local Businesses), local address, telephone number, store operating hours, username, and a short description of your business.

To let people check-in at your business’ location, go to your page’s Address section. Below the map, select the box next to “Show map and check-ins on the Page.”

It is important to note that places the user’s friends have recommended or checked into will be displayed higher. Additionally, results that are similar to the people, places, and things that a friend has already connected to may be ranked higher; as well.

Add Location To Facebook Posts

Providing information about your location increases the relevancy of your posts when visitors are searching for local stores and services.

Adding your location to your Facebook posts is another very effective way to gain local exposure with Facebook users, whether they be residents or visitors to the area.

Selecting the location icon at the bottom of your post will open up a list of known places near your current location. You may either select one of the existing nearby places on the list, or begin typing your location. Click on a location to add it to your status.

Instagram

Facebook is the parent company of Instagram. Generally speaking, the local marketing strategies you apply to your posts and profile on Facebook, such as geo tagging for example, can be mirrored on Instagram.

Twitter

Optimizing Your Twitter Profile

If you are not providing valid location information on your business’ Twitter profile, you are missing out on opportunities to connect with users shopping locally.

According to the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), 34% of Twitter users do not provide a valid geographic location on their Twitter user profile. Instead, many take the opportunity to make jokes, reference celebrities (such as Bieberville, Justin Bieber’s heart, and Bieberacademy), or provide no or non-real location information.

Near This Place in Twitter Search

The advanced page of Twitter’s search engine has an option to search “near this place.” You can simply enter your city or town and get a real-time stream of all the people tweeting from a specific location or near it. These targeted Twitter search results are influenced by the location field in people’s Twitter bio.

For fun, try an advanced Twitter search of “near:Cornwall within:25km”

Add Location To Twitter Posts

Twitter is another social media platform that allows you to show your followers the location you are posting from as part of your Tweet. Users can add a general location such as “Cornwall, Ontario,” or choose the name of a specific business, landmark, or other point of interest.

Sharing your location allows Twitter to deliver your content to users near your location, as well as include it in location-specific trends that will improve your exposure.

To include your location in your Tweet, select the location marker at the bottom of your post after composing your message, and then choose the location you wish to add.

2. Monitor And Contribute To Hashtag Conversations

The hashtag has emerged as the most popular means of categorizing social media content around a common theme or interest. When looking for local insights, hashtags can deliver a wealth of information about local interests and sentiment, as well as provide you a receptive audience in which to share branded marketing messages.

Event Hashtags

All the major events (fairs, concerts, etc.) in your area SHOULD have a hashtag for visitors to monitor and contribute to. Aside from being very effective in pulling a conversation together, hashtags make it easy for people to find event photos and interact with attendees.

To encourage engagement with your business, re-share and mention great pieces of content that attendees are sharing with the event’s hashtag.

For example, the 2020 Cornwall Ribfest Community Cookout will be using #ribfestcommunitycookout for the event.

Local Hashtags

Adding a hashtag to the name of your city or town is a good place to begin looking for a local conversation to participate in. Also, established neighborhoods, local landmarks and attractions provide the focus for many online conversations; as well. Perform a search, including a hashtag, for relevant locations in individual networks. Respond and retweet to engage with local conversations.

Although the posts you are engaging with may not be directly with tourists, getting your business/brand into the local conversation increases your visibility when visitors arrive for vacations and events, and search for local information.

For example, #CornwallOntario, #SouthStormont, #LamoureuxPark

3. Collaborate with Local Businesses, Organizations, Agencies

One of the best ways to connect with your community is by making meaningful contributions to other Local Business pages.

By interacting regularly with other local pages as your own business page, this includes re-sharing, commenting on, and tagging others in posts, you will build relationships and increase your own exposure locally.

To use an example unrelated to Cornwall Ribfest …

If Riley’s Bakery used apples from Marlin’s Orchards to bake pies for the Agape Centre Bake Sale, all three of these businesses/organization would have a keen interest in sharing each other’s content related to the bakery baking the pies, the orchard picking and providing the apples, and the non-profit organization raising money to help others. Their combined efforts are the recipe for a great story.

Even though they did not directly collaborate on a marketing campaign, you see how opportunities can present themselves, and give businesses a chance to tell the audience a story about the unique ingredients they contributed.

Become More Locally-Relevant

The goal is for you, your business, organization or agency to become more locally-relevant. This targeted exposure is best accomplished by establishing a strong local presence online in search (i.e. Google Local Business, Guides, Maps) and in social media, and by making meaningful contributions to local conversations on popular social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Focus your marketing efforts on creating and sharing branded content that highlights/showcases local businesses, events (such as Cornwall Ribfest), landmarks, and attractions. Additionally, you can increase the reach of your communications by collaborating with others in your area, and by properly categorizing your posts using the appropriate event and locally-focused hashtags.