Many businesses tend to get customers locally, even if they do business across state lines. This is where the website Nextdoor.com can make a significant difference to your business.
If you aren’t familiar with Nextdoor, it is a site / app where neighbors share things in their local community. Often a neighbor will post something that affects other neighbors, or ask for recommendations such as “who do you know that can do some landscaping for me?” The result is that neighbors share with neighbors and create a sense of community. Here are a few qucik stats about Nextdoor:
- 11 countries
- 285,000 neighborhoods globally
- Nearly 1 in 3 U.S. households
- 55 million business recommendations from neighbors
Nextdoor offers business the opportunity to create a free business page to showcase what they do. As an example, here is ours:
Nextdoor Business Page
As you can see, you are allowed to include your logo, a header image, tell your story, and add additional photos. Start by searching for your business on Nextdoor. It is possible that a page has been auto-generated for you. If it has, you want to claim that page rather than starting a new one. If you don’t see a listing for your business, then create one by visiting: https://nextdoor.com/create-business.
By claiming and verifying your business page, you can also get recommendations from your neighbors, which can be huge for social proof.
Get Recommendations
Last week I showed you how much time and effort goes into creating great content for you with these weekly blog posts. If you appreciate this and get value from these tips, I would appreciate you recommending me on Nextdoor. You don’t have to live in my neighborhood, just follow this link: https://nextdoor.com/pages/webstores-ltd-franktown-co/recommend/. You will have to sign in or join Nextdoor if you haven’t already.
Notice that you can request recommendations and grow your following faster by choosing the “Share page” button. But this is just the beginning! Nextdoor also allows you to create up to 2 posts per month that go out to your neighbors promoting your business. In order to keep the news feed from being nothing but ads, businesses cannot create both posts in a single day. But every month you get 2 new posts. Business posts are shown just in your neighborhood, and for a radius of up to 2 miles. Yes, this is a local platform, so if you are looking to promote your shop to a nearby town, you will have to advertise.
Create a Post
Once you have your business page, to create a post go to Posts -> Create a Post
Next you will be asked to provide the details about your post: a title, the text copy, and a photo. This is an example of a post I created for a local cleaning company.
When you click on “Next” you will be allowed to preview your post before confirming it.
Finally, You will select the neighborhoods that can see your post. I recommend changing this to the maximum radius, which is currently 2 miles.
These are the recommended guidelines directly from Nextdoor on the best practices for business posts:
1. Get (at least) 5 recommendations.
Nextdoor Business Pages with 5 or more recommendations have 30% higher engagement (more views, reactions, and replies). I am trying to practice what I preach: Click Here to recommend WebStores.
2. Post between the hours of 5-7pm.
Businesses that post between their local hours of 5-7pm, tend to see higher engagement rates than posts made at different times.
3. Plan to post on Thursdays and Fridays.
Posts later in the week tend to see higher engagement rates than those made earlier in the week or on the weekend.
4. Post every other week.
Post engagement generally declines after about two weeks. To stay top-of-mind with neighbors, aim to share a new post every two weeks.
5. Add photos that best represent your business.
Include a photo with your post: Posts that include high-quality photos are more visually-appealing and can grab the attention of readers better than those without, encouraging neighbors to stop and spend a moment reading your post. Make sure your photo is clear and relevant to whatever you post.
 Advertise on Nextdoor
You can reach even more people by advertising on Nextdoor. Unlike Facebook, Google, or many other advertising platforms, Nextdoor does not allow you to target customers based on anything other than location (your neighborhood and surrounding areas). For local businesses that appeal to anyone in your geographical area, this is ideal, but if you are a plumber and someone isn’t looking for a plumber, your ad is going to be seen by everyone, even if they are not interested.
The good news is that Nextdoor rates are relatively inexpensive and you are likely to get lots of impressions. this depends upon your competition and your budget, but we have seen good results with Nextdoor compared to other platforms.
You will want a good graphic to be part of your ad creative. Don’t worry, WebStores can help you with this so you get the most traction from your ad. Once you have decided on your offer, you will set a goal for your ad. Nextdoor gives you 3 choices:
- Increase website visits
- Promote a sale or discount
- Get more messages
Like most marketing, you will want to experiment with each of these to see which gets the best results for your business. Next you will choose an audience. This is based on a radius around your address. While Nextdoor used to allow you to select zipcodes, this is no longer the case. You cannot choose a specific location – you must select a radius around your business address, with a maximum radius of 30 miles. Obviously this is a much larger reach than your free post.
Finally, you will set your budget. This can be anywhere from $1 per day to $50 per day. Of course, the more you spend, the more impressions you will get.
Conclusion
Reviews are the lifeblood of a business. You must constantly be getting new reviews, as old reviews (over 6 months) tend to lose credibility with potential customers. Nextdoor provides you a great way to connect with local customers and get reviews from them. You can also post twice a month to stay in front of your local customers, but the reviews can be seen and used by people from anywhere.
I’d love to have you leave a review for WebStores on Nextdoor. You can do this by visiting https://webstoresltd.com/nextdoor. You can also leave us a positive review on Google by visiting https://webstoresltd.com/review.
In addition to a free business page, Nextdoor also provides an advertising platform that allows you to easily get in front of customers within a 30 mile radius. WebStores Ltd. provides marketing services to assist you with this. We can help you with this regardless of where you live. Give us a call at 303-688-6560 to get started.
Greg Jameson has been writing blog articles on ecommerce and internet marketing for over 10 years. Learn more about Greg at https://webstoresltd.com/about/
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