Cross Marketing and Social Media: Two Peas in a Pod

Cross marketing and Social Media just go together like peanut butter and chocolate…

I work for a local builder who buys local, hires local, lives local and stays local. I also do all the social media for the builder. Lately I’ve been on a quest to promote local businesses. It just makes sense.

If you employ the 80-20 rule when using social media, you really only want to be talking about yourself 20% of the time. I don’t want to bombard you with, “buy a house! Buy a house!”What do you do the other 80% of the time? How about talking about the great businesses that are locally run, the local events that are happening in and around town etc. Now it’s one thing to talk about these great venues, shops and restaurants, but it’s another thing to cross market.

Cross marketing can be free for the most part. Go out, talk to the people in your community and tell them you’d like to promote them for free…at first you do get looks like you might have horns or two heads. After all, since when is marketing free? But it can be.

Here are a few ideas, that may seem like no brainers to think up, but the implementation does take a little time and commitment. But very little if no money.

• Promote local businesses on your facebook page
• Talk about local events in your twitter feed
• Blog about other businesses in your neighborhood
• Get out and ask these businesses to do the same for you
• Have events and feature the goods and services of local businesses
• If you start doing this for them, they’ll want to do it for you
• Create a link exchange page on your website “These are the People in Our Neighborhood”

None of these ideas cost you anything but time. The results create a stronger more unified community of local businesses and benefits all who are involved. Everyone has limited resources and marketing dollars in this day and age, that’s what makes Social Media such a powerful tool.

How are you going to use it? Throw out some more ideas!