Local businesses in Manchester are taking full advantage of social media to help promote their selves and services. There can be a lot of businesses who try this and fail tragically, but for certain business this makes full sense. I always get a lot of random people following me on twitter purely to get me to follow them back, albeit mainly people promoting their SEO services / blogs etc, but more recently I have noticed a lot of bars begin to follow me on Twitter (@MickCropper).
I think this is a great idea for bars and events to follow local people on twitter, purely to promote their event since good places and events can be difficult to find when not always mingling in those circles.
A couple of bars who have started following me are @FabCafeManc and@TheTigerLounge, both of which I haven’t been to before. They are always places on my “to drink at” list but I have just never got around to it, so I may just be going to these places a little sooner than I planned now they are back in the forefront of my mind.
If you are looking to promote your local business via social media then Twitter can be a good place to start by using Twitter’s Advanced Searchand finding tweets for people in your local area.
In addition to this, another option for finding new customers for your local business is seeing who your competitors are following and who are following them. One thing I certainly noticed with the bars who began following me is that once one started following, others soon followed on so this is already happening. If you aren’t stalking your competitors then you are missing a trick, since they will be doing it with you.
Michael Cropper