Local Branding: What I learned from Tampa Bay Business Journal (TBBJ)

TBBJ Team Out in the Community

Small Business Saturday is long gone, but that tiny jewelry store on Main Street is still your bread and butter and people seem to pass by without noticing it. So what do you do? You get with the program: create profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. to promote your business. You spend endless nights online trying to figure out how to achieve SEO greatness on Google. You probably also print some flyers and hand deliver them in your neighborhood, rent a billboard or an air banner, or even send a pigeon with a message. Whatever your marketing strategy is, one thing is certain: Local branding is essential to your business. You need to communicate and you need to do it locally.

Brandon Decker – Director of Audience Development

Local branding and local communication is extremely important for a company. Why? The key to success is to integrate your business into the community. The more you make your name visible and the more you’re cited, the more people will know about you. When you’ve branded yourself and people know your name, they can more easily trust you. This will foster the growth of your business, according to Brandon Decker, the Director of Audience Development for Tampa Bay Business Journal.

TBBJ Team at the Office

A mention in the local newspaper, even without a link to your website, is a sure way to create a buzz about your business and validate your existence. Further, participating in the local business community and learning how your competitors are performing will provide you with valuable information on where you can improve. Additionally, if you belong to a business community that highlights the achievements of local companies, you can help bolster your city’s reputation. This will encourage outside businesses to consider your community as a desirable location to grow and it will bring more capital to the area. This is exactly what we all want. Starting to communicate locally and concentrating on local branding will launch your business to a new level.

About the Author
Fany Georgieva

In 2006 Fany landed in Florida straight from Bulgaria and brought with her two Bachelor’s degrees  – Broadcast Journalism and Film Production. With such diverse, yet related academic background, she decided the right thing to do was to get a Master’s degree in “something similar”. So, she graduated from the University of South Florida with her Master’s in Strategic Communications. Currently, Fany is a Production Assistant at AVI-SPL Creative Show Services and is constantly on a quest for learning and gaining professional knowledge to establish herself in the field of Communications.