Friday Five - Location

I look at many Facebook pages, websites and blogs, many of these have no indication of where they are located!

This week, I will give you five reasons to let people know where you are. I don’t necessarily mean to give an exact location, especially if you work from home and don’t want just anyone knowing where you live. In most cases a state and country is enough, or even something like “Melbourne, Victoria, Australia” if you want to narrow things down further.

1. Buy local - there are many people who want to support a local business. This could be businesses in their direct local area or just in the same country as they are. If people have no idea where you are, they may move on to the next business.
2. Postage - if you are an online store, postage may be cheaper if you are in the same country or state. Having a location on your Facebook page as well as your shop may help customers decide to buy from you as the postage costs won’t be as much as they would be if they were further away.
3. Local information - one blog I read regularly has great business information and are located in the US. Because I know they are in the US, any information to do with tax or regulations I ignore because they don’t apply to us in Australia. The same with many recipe’s, metric and imperial measures are different. If you share information, it can help your readers to know where you are.
4. Local Products - even with the Internet, there are some products that are only available in certain locations, or if you are the local distributor, it is helpful for people to know where you are. Another thing to consider is DVDs have different zones and something that is for zone 1 may not work in a DVD player in zone 6 (for example).
5. Meet You - especially if you blog about markets or networking events, your readers and customers may want to meet you face to face. This is another place where it’s helpful to have a location. For example, if you say you will be at the local Farmer’s Market this Sunday, it is helpful to know where that market is. Also if you are travelling interstate to attend a certain event, let people know so customers know you aren’t in the same state all the time and to attend that event to meet you.

For me, the biggest thing about having a location is I love to support other Australian business mums, and I know there is a whole community of business mums out there who feel the same. At the very least, please put your country on your Facebook page, blog and website so we know where you are.