Episode 2 – How to get your business marketing on nextdoor

Hi, I’m Randy Cooper, your host for the MARKETING ON NEXTDOOR podcast. 

I’ve been involved with developing online communities since 1988. Yes, I know… that’s before the internet. 

To understand social media, I think its important that you understand its origins.

In 1988, I was working for Hayes Microcomputer Products in Norcross Georgia. One of my tasks was running an online community for system operators over bulletin board systems. Bulletin Board Systems (called BBS) were computers dedicated to being a server, like we’d think of a website today. The difference was a BBS needed a phone line for each user to call into. If you wanted five users on your BBS at one time, you needed a computer with five modems and five phone lines. You can see why the internet with its ability to connect simultaneously to many connections was a necessity. 

While doing that job, I soon discovered USENET newsgroups. These were the discussion boards of the early internet. You would subscribe to an RSS feed in much the same way we subscribe to a podcast today. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of ReddIt because of the wide number of seemingly endless conversations centered around diverse topics.

USENET was exclusive. When the internet began, it was only used by a few universities that had research labs and were doing work in conjunction with the US Department of Defense. Soon more universities begged their way online. That soon was followed by requests from private industry. Finally, it was open to the general public.

Fun fact, the internet was designed to be the network that could survive a nuclear attack. Most networks at that time would go down if any member (node) on the network went down. The IP (internet protocol), was designed so that each node on the network operates independently. 

One of the first online communities for business was CompuServe. You had to have a subscription to join. Think of CompuServe as the LinkedIn of its day. Still, very exclusive.

Before long, America Online came online and I really attribute that as the beginning of the modern social media era. The regular Joe could now access the internet through America Online. Assuming, of course, you had a monthly subscription through America Online.

It wasn’t long though and anyone with an internet connection could gain access to the internet. You could certainly see the writing was on the wall at that point. Once Facebook was launched to the general public in 2006, social media was destined to become part of our social fabric.

Since then, we’ve seen social media evolve into a number of social media platforms.

Here’s the good news – the basics of building an online community is the same regardless of social platform. I want you to understand that I am looking at this from a business perspective and not that of a casual user. We want to create a community of users centered around your brand. 

I believe that the most successful brands for small business are focused on a brand ambassador. Typically, this is the owner but it doesn’t have to be. The main thing is that your business owns the profile of the brand ambassador so that if your brand ambassador leaves the company, the social profile you invested so heavily into is not gone as well.

Marketing on Nextdoor, you have two goals to accomplish. The goal would be to increase the number of your connections. You should have a connection strategy to send connection requests to everyone who engages with your content. Once connections are made, the algorithm will be more likely to display your content to them. Notice that I said “more likely”. These algorithms are being constantly refined and it’s a “black box”, something we are not permitted to know the inner workings of.

That brings us to content. Creating social postings for your business is more than taking a selfie and saying come support my business. In order for your social postings to be effective, you have to have a strategy. You have to think like your customer thinks. Your customer is not looking for your business or to read or engage with your business post. 

Local content interests us. We’re not discussing something that affects the 300 million people is the US or the 8 billion people on the planet – we’re talking about stuff right in our community – stuff that is going on right down the street.

A new traffic light – that’s interesting. What going in on the corner of 4th and Main, it looks like they are building something? – that’s interesting. There’s a new restaurant in town – that’s interesting.

So you’re thinking maybe you should have majored in journalism in college? Ha ha , maybe! HERE THIS: every company is now a media company. If you want to build your brand on social, don’t post 100% of your content about your business. No one cares.

Build a following by being a content leader in your community. You can post a comment about your business if every post. You can even build a call-to-action (CTA) there. You will get thousands of views and tons of engagement by following this strategy.

We’ll have more content tips and a lot more discussion on marketing on Nextdoor in future episodes.

You’ve been listening to MARKETING ON NEXTDOOR podcast with your host Randy Cooper.