Local Business Promotion using ecademy and InterNations

Let me tell you a bit about the clients I have in Spain, some are owners of small hotels, others are real estate agents, but I also support translators, holiday home management, restaurants, and people who own shops. All of them are finding the current economic crisis is hurting their bottom line, and they all want to connect with customers to build relationships.

Of course any smart business person will know that clients can come from knocks on the door, website referrals, advertising, but the best business always comes from personal connections who know your business and pre-sell your service or product to their friends.

This is where ecademy and InterNations are so valuable - both are professional networking sites, the first is for business people all around the world, the second is for people who are expatriates and have global connections. Do you see why these networks could be so valuable?

Small shops dealing purely with local customers might not get much advantage from membership, but in Spain most of my clients are somehow involved in the tourism industry or they deal with property owners and investors, most of whom are not local.

In bigger cities or regions where business networking is an important part of doing business the story is different and a lot of success follows from joining ecademy. Similarly, people involved in tourism get a lot of value from InterNations because statistically expatriates travel more, and they talk about travel more.

I want to quickly talk about the difference between travel websites like TripAdvisor, GoGecko etc, and ecademy or InterNations. The difference is the level of professionalism and the quality of referrals your business can attract, and in many cases the volume of referrals you can get.