Love a Local Business with Intuit

Posted on 16. Dec, 2009 by Adam in Business, Websites

Small business software developer Intuit is doing its bit for the community and the economy by promoting a rather special program called “Love a Local Business.” Each month during the course of the program the company will allocate five local businesses a $1000 prize, or grant as they call it, with one of those five receiving $5000 on the basis of a community’s votes. Any local business can be eligible and all it takes is a simple nomination from the program website. Small business owners can even nominate their own company.

Love a Local Business is integrated with the successful Google Maps widget and you can drill down to your locality to see the local businesses nominated close to you. Eligibility is based on inclusion within the Google Maps database, so this is another reason to get a local business registered with the service. As we know, Google Maps results often show in a prominent position within search results and this certainly helps when geo-targeting keywords for potential traffic.

It’s important to mobilize your army of fans and take advantage of your followers. Once the business has been nominated, the more people that vote for it, the better and the more descriptive and unusual comments the better the chance of it receiving that grand prize. We will surely see a lot of requests on Facebook business and fan pages and numerous tweets as votes are solicited from an organization’s followers.

Intuit has also developed a widget that you can include in your own blog or website, using simple embed code to help you build awareness of the campaign and start spreading the word of mouth. To date, the company has awarded over $60,000 for this program, which is effectively designed to encourage consumers to “shop local.” Intuit is promoting their “Weblistings” product, which for $99 per year ensures that your business information is found on major local search related sites, including Google Maps and Yahoo Local.

Some entrepreneurs are being very creative when it comes to interaction with this program and are offering sweeteners or deals to their fans or followers to gain attention. Consider making some kind of donation or giving a special gift of your services to a nonprofit organization, encouraging people to nominate you in recognition of your philanthropy. Of course Intuit also hopes that you sign up for one or more of their products, as well…

Have you used Love a Local Business?

Adam Toren

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tags: Google maps, intuit, Love a Local Business, software developer

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