Last week and early this week we have engaged in a crash course on our hyper local markets. We got hundreds and hundreds of great posts submitted by members from Alaska to Florida, Maine to California (oh yeah and Hawaii too). These posts covered every corner of the country and shined a light on hundreds of great neighborhoods and communities. Many of the members participating were able to see their posts skyrocket to the top of Google search results for their market. I couldn't be any more pleased with the response or with the successes that were reported.

Ready for the next challenge? (I know the first one isn't quite over, but hear me out)

Local small businesses are the cornerstone of the American way of life (at least that's my opinion). I was raised in a small town, Ashford Washington (pop. 267 as of the 2000 census). My parents owned the only grocery store in town, Ashford Valley Grocery. My Grandpa went to breakfast every Saturday morning with a few of his buddies at a place called Flo's, the only diner in town. Since Ashford is on the route to get from Seattle to Mount Rainier, our town had no shortage of cars passing through on any given weekend. Flo had a couple of daughters that helped run the place, but I am pretty sure that if we had the internet back then, Flo wouldn't have had a clue how to allow someone to find her if they were searching for a 'place to eat in Ashford WA' on their iPhone as they neared the base of Mount Rainier.

The same thing is prevalent today in mom and pop shops all across the country. It's true in your towns and cities. We have small business owners with little understanding of how to expose their businesses on the internet. Many probably think that there is no room in their budget to have an online presence. Many others are no doubt cutting corners in other parts of their business to come up with the monthly fees they are being charged to have a listing on some online directory, as if that constitutes a presence. And, unless the person reading this blog post (yeah, I'm talking to you) is a networking superstar (don't worry, we can learn this stuff) many of these small business owners have no idea they have a patron who is capable of exposing their business to the almighty Google giant.

Who is that patron? DUH!! It's you. You don't think the only thing ActiveRain is capable of ranking well for is neighborhoods and communities do you?

Over the next two weeks, I am going to challenge you to write about local businesses in your area. These are businesses that, like you, know how to treat their clients. These are businesses that you rave about to your friends and family. These are businesses that you would send your next client toward in an instant, because you know they would walk out the door satisfied. These are businesses that you yourself frequent and for whose service you would personally vouch, because you've been there and you've tried that.

The primary purpose of this challenge isn't really to be able to get your blog into the first position on Google for the businesses name (although my guess is a few of you will). The primary purpose isn't to get your blog post into the first position for keywords that are relevant to the businesses you chose to highlight (although in conjunction with geographic terms, I'm sure some of you will get your businesses to rank for key words). The primary purpose of this post is give you a great reason to walk in and speak with a fellow local business owner in your neighborhood, town or city. It gives you a chance to let them know what is working in your business and how you have chosen to differentiate yourself from the 10 other agents in town, the 100 other agents in town, or even the 1000 other agents in town.

Of course, you are going to want to follow Brad's advice on these posts as well. We can rank well in the search engines if we make a decision to do it!! You can make that decision by studying Brad's post and incorporating the stuff he talks about into your blog posts. Or, you can make a half-ass effort and wallow in mediocrity, unfortunately I will probably still give you the 1000 points, but 1000 points won't pay your bills. Quality relationships with local business owners will go a lot farther in doing that (paying your bills that is)

(Folks, I am not kidding. That post I just linked to.....here, I'll do it again, is probably one of the top five posts you will ever read on this network. If you haven't taken the time to read it and digest it, and you are still blogging....you just DO NOT get it. If you don't do what Brad is telling you to do then you are just blogging for fun, not for business)

A few Caveats for receiving 1000 points per post:

• The post must be written after my post. So please do not just go dig up an old post. The idea is to get out and talk with and meet business owners that maybe you have never talked with. Or if you have, to do something new to stimulate a relationship with them.
• I said 'over the next two week'. This means you are going to get two days per post. You can only submit one post every two days. Since I am encouraging you to go out and meet the local business owner and maybe even get some pictures of the business (Did I tell you posts on AR with a picture have more than three times as long of average view time than a post with no photo?) you will need an extra day between posts.
• This challenge will start on Thursday, July 30th. You have until midnight (Central Time) on Friday July 31st to post your first link to a local area business. Then every 48 hours after that you can post an additional link. Please don't put links on here prior to that. The reason I am giving you a few days to think about this one is that I believe this will be more challenging. In fact, some of your are going to probably be forced out of your comfort zone....but that's alright, you'll do great!
  
• You do not have to do all seven posts. You can do one, or two or seven. I don't care. You don't have to start on the first day. However, no posts will be accepted after 11:59pm (Central Time) on Wednesday, August 12th. If you find this post late, you can start late....but you can only get 1000 points every two days until the last day.
  

For some reason I don't expect the level of turnout that we had in the first challenge. My guess is that it is easier to see direct tie in for writing about local neighborhoods and sub-divisions. I sure hope that just as many, if not more people take advantage of this though. Using your blog as a tool to get involved in the local community is the stuff that can take your blogging efforts to a whole new level. Your blog can become what it was meant to be, a complete guide to living in your town and a way to reach out and be proactive marketing your business and yourself.

Ready, Set, GO!!!

(Well get ready to go anyhow. This one is going to take some planning. Who is first on your hit list? The butcher? The baker? The......do they still have candlestick makers? Of course they do!! In fact, I saw a great one at the Puyallup fair last year. Too bad when I JUST Googled 'Puyallup Fair, Candles' I had a tough time finding the business I was thinking about. If I had written about them they would be right there. Since I haven't I spent about 4 minutes browsing through this and that and then I finally gave up......but man, those were cools candles! I could seriously go on and on for hours........haha........)

EDITED: This post is closed for comments. You can leave your links here for the rest of the challenge