Neighbourly delivers leads and sales
Social networks are often in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons – yet they are a critical communications channel for businesses across New Zealand. Neighbourly has carved a unique […]
Social networks are often in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons – yet they are a critical communications channel for businesses across New Zealand.
Neighbourly has carved a unique position for many marketers and local businesses – focused on creating a safe and harmonious space for community connections, founded on hyper-local content. Unlike other social networks, all members are identified by their full name and address-verified, which provides a level of intimacy and familiarity often foreign to many neighbourhoods.
“Our NZ-based Member Experience Team provides personalised content moderation,” says Neighbourly GM Jake Shand (pictured). “This is an advantage we have over other major social media platforms, which use a lot of automated content moderation and offer limited human customer support to users.”
When comparing Neighbourly with Facebook, a common misconception is thinking Facebook has better reach – especially when it comes to local businesses reaching locals.
“With Neighbourly, you get to talk with real people who live in the community you want to target,” explains Shand. “You don’t have to spend years growing your community; products like our Business Listings provide you with an instant audience.”
Devan Devaroyan, director of Smart Express, says after signing up with Neighbourly in 2017, they quickly noticed the number of users engaging with them through their messages.
“We wanted Neighbourly members to understand what makes our customers love us,” he says. “We’ve been able to do just that through our messages and posts. The benefits of Neighbourly in Auckland were so great that as soon as we opened our second branch in Tauranga it was one of our priorities to set up.”
Keep it local
On Neighbourly, businesses interact with members in their community just like a neighbour would, helping them keep front of mind with their customers.
There are three golden rules for promoting your business on Neighbourly:
• Be your community’s expert. Position yourself as the ‘go-to’ expert in your community by being friendly, responding quickly and remaining positive to members’ questions and comments. Offer to help and be transparent about the purpose of your post.
• Limit your posts. If a business wants to post more than once a week, then we suggest using the site as a neighbour would – post a shout-out for a local business, give something away, find staff or share a topic of local concern.
• Keep it local. Neighbourly members are much more likely to get excited about content specific to their community, over something that appears in the whole country’s newsfeed.
To maximise your business’s reach, Shand recommends the Premium Business Listings (www.neighbourly.co.nz/premium) which gets your message out to thousands of members for around $1 per day. Businesses can also target other geographic areas through Sponsored or Featured posts which appear as prominent posts on the newsfeed for a day, before being placed in a preferred position in the days following.
Neighbourly has a special offer for all NZBusiness readers, with $100 off the annual price of a Premium Business Listing. For more information visit: neighbourly.co.nz/nzbusiness-promo