Monday, April 20, 2009

Merritt Island & Space Coast Local Business Spotlight Series

There's an old saying: "All politics is local", and the same rule applies to business.

Whether it's in our business or our personal life, some of the best opportunities and partnerships spring up in our own backyard. Consider all of the businesses you drive past on your daily commute to work. The best relationships in life and in business are mutually beneficial. Our "flat" digital world tempts us to focus on the biggest names in the biggest cities, but the best business partner may very well be in our own neighborhood. For example, we're based in Merritt Island, Florida, 45 minutes east of Orlando. When telling people where we’re from I often find myself saying “45 minutes east of Orlando and 10 minutes west of Cocoa Beach”. The 45 minutes east of Orlando is the part that usually gets them. Then I’ll go on to say that we’re 5 minutes from Cape Canaveral, you know: where the Space Shuttle goes up, and by that time they still don’t know where Merritt Island is but they have a general idea of where we are in respect to their mental landmarks. For those not from Merritt Island, please read the next paragraph so we can introduce you to our home on the Space Coast of Florida. Merritt Island residents can skip a paragraph (it’s a local thing, tourists wouldn’t understand).

Merritt Island isn’t a one-light town yet certainly no Manhattan either. The town’s motto, “Where dreams are launched”, is a tribute to the Kennedy Space Center (think NASA). KSC (as we locals know it) is the biggest employer and the rest of the workforce includes some large businesses (like Harris Corp) but mostly hundreds of small businesses.

Why are we telling you about Merritt Island? In part because we want others to know about our little slice of heaven situated in between the Indian and Banana Rivers. But more importantly, because there are quite a few very cool little businesses in the area that we’re just now discovering ourselves. These businesses range from local shopping cart system providers to trophy fish mounters to local newspapers and even a skate shop or two. Yes, even our own seo firm.

Since Marketing shift was launched 5 years ago, it has become a staple in the marketing community known for exclusive interviews and keen insight into seo and marketing. Whether we’re interviewing Kevin Ross of Digg or giving you behind the scenes info from MySpace we always break down complex topics into real world language anyone can understand. We have prided ourselves on our straight speak, and even snarkiness, and will continue to produce this type of content.

However, a couple of weeks ago we came to the realization that we’ve been living in a glass bubble in our local community. Our founder, Jason Dowdell, has always called Merritt Island his “bat cave” because he could be nearly professionally anonymous in Merritt Island one day and the next be delivering a speech to hundreds of marketing experts in Silicon Valley. But as he and I were talking a couple of weeks back, we realized that we’re doing local businesses in Merritt Island and the Space Coast a real disservice by not reaching out to them at least to say hi and show our support. In light of this we have decided to begin showcasing some local businesses that we have recently come in contact with thanks to Twitter and other social media outlets and good ol fashioned word of mouth. We’ll post real interviews with real small business owners and hopefully bring a little more exposure to our hometown during the process.

Now don’t worry, it’s not going to be all local all the time. We'll still cover the major movers in technology and social media, but we’ll also cover several little guys you will have never heard of that reside in our local community. Hopefully, this mix of national and local companies / stories / people will spark some ideas for you and your business. As always you can follow us on Twitter twitter.com/marketingshift or grab our rss feed. If you have a local company you think we should spotlight then fill out our contact form and we’ll respond shortly.

Posted By Jason Dowdell at 04:30 PM
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