Support Small Business Saturday Today

[PDX Guy]

This Black Friday weekend is Small Business Saturday, a grass-roots effort to promote small businesses in your communities.

They are pushing this weekend event via the social networks, so this is right up out alley. If you know some great local businesses around you, take to Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare and let the world know how awesome they are!

Small businesses are truly the backbone of society and I encourage everyone to shop and eat local this weekend. Just say no to big business and store chains. Try it, you'll like it! ;)

Lates!

[Clay Franklin]

Great idea and to do it every week too!

[PDX Guy]

Totally agree. ;)

[PDX Guy]

Good for you! ;)

There are a good amount of geo-targeting apps that you can get for your phone that can help you find all sorts of local merchants and vendors when you're out and about.

Just off the top of my head, Foursquare and Yelp are great for this sort of thing.

[PDX Guy]

On Foursquare, you can also leave people tips and do shout outs. You've just checked in at a local deli and you leave them a tip, "You HAVE to try their roast beef sandwich! It's to die for!" Look for other user's tips. It'll give you ideas about where to try or where to avoid.

For businesses, Foursquare is a wonderful tool for getting additional traffic by offering specials for check-ins and Mayorships. It's sure nice for the customer, too.

[SEOArbiter]

I think it is an excellent idea to support local and small businesses everywhere. They are the backbone of this country.

[chickblogger]

I wonder if Foursquare connects to Facebook? Meaning if when one updates the former does the latter get notified, because then I could really see a benefit. Most people are on Facebook and know clearly what it is, but not Foursquare. Not yet, anyway!

[PDX Guy]

Yes, it does connect to Facebook.

When you check in, you have the option of:

Letting your Foursquare followers know
Posting your check-in to Facebook or posting it to Twitter
Doing a shout out

There's also the new Facebook Places that people are using now

[chickblogger]

Ah, very cool then. Will let my roommate know who's dad runs a local restaurant in town. I just don't think he's into the tech and social media stuff too much, but it would be cool if he were.

[PDX Guy]

Once he sees the stats and starts reaping the benefits, he'll jump on-board. If not, his competitors are doing it and taking his profits ;)

Foursquare recently hit 4 million members.

What makes my job so fun as a Social Media Marketer is showing clients all this groovy stuff and watching the light bulb go off inside their heads.

For one, I do the local business social marketing for a coffee shop right down the street from me. They have definitely seen the light and now they're setting up events on their Fan Page, having fun with Foursquare specials, etc, etc.

[chickblogger]

Yes, but the way he see's it - we live in a small town and not yet very wired. He's still old school in this regard, but he is slowly (very slowly) warming up to technology. lol.

[PDX Guy]

Very small towns won't see much or any difference, so he'll be fine without the local social marketing stuff.

It's the smaller businesses in the larger cities that are going to get the best bang for their bucks, especially if there is a good deal of competition.