This week, I have a tip to help you promote entrepreneurship. Use a social bookmarking site to collect the websites of businesses in your area. This idea is one way of recognizing your existing entrepreneurs, presented by Dave Shideler in a webinar called “Building Entrepreneurial Communities.” Why use social bookmarking? 1. As you bookmark those businesses,…
A local merchant had a radio ad where at the end… they mentioned their local competition and asked us to keep $$ local. Very cool. @codyks on Twitter Now that is a commitment to shop local. Also particularly good for small towns. If you’re promoting shop local in your town, take a look at our…
Shop local is a popular topic here, but this week I’ve watched a new trend pop up: bank local.Move Your Money is encouraging people to shift their money to locally owned banks. The site includes bank rankings by Institutional Risk Analytics. All of my local banks scored B+ or higher. The project was dreamed up…
Two new shop local ideas hit me this week. 1. Can you get your city utility on board? The City of Alva added this shop local message to their utility bills: Support your local merchants – Shop Alva for the Holidays Some cities and towns mail out larger bills in envelopes. They might even let…
Lois Loucks, Director of the Tri-Cities Economic Development (Wheaton-Onaga-Havensville, KS), shared some of her innovative thoughts with me in an email about shopping local. “Shopping Local” as a two way street, with responsibility placed on the business owners to earn “their share of business”. Just because someone decides to be in business, does not automatically…
Shop local and buy local campaigns can significantly impact your hometown economy, but the instructions available online assume you are a big city. That’s why I decided to create a step by step guide to starting a shop local campaign in a small town, as a downloadable e-book. It includes solid research that shows whether…
Our friend Rob Hatch sent me a link to Do the math with your gas, about keeping your gas cost down by shopping locally. It immediately made me think of your small town, shop local campaign. This is a great new reason to mention when promoting the benefits of shopping locally. You do have a…
Need ammo for your shop local campaign? Use this fact: local merchants are worth three times as much to your local economy as the chain stores. From Civic Economics: The analysis demonstrated that locally owned merchants generate more than three times the local economic activity of their competitor chain stores on equal revenue. Found in…
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