Last night I spent 30 minutes creating the most comprehensive real time search directory of Burlington, VT businesses (that’s where I live).
How is my directory the most comprehensive, and why does it beat the Yellow Pages?
The Burlington VT Business Directory is actually a Twitter List, which means it’s a mash up of all the most recent news from local businesses in our community. I just invested some time creating it as a resource. You can do the same thing for your own community, and the best part is you don’t need to include every last business. Just find enough local businesses to list so that yours is the authoritative source, then encourage people who aren’t on it to pop you an ‘@’ reply on Twitter asking to join.
Now you’re a trusted resource who is getting referenced by relevant, local business owners. Nice.
If you need a refresher on creating and managing lists, check out my post on Twitter Lists and Listorious Primer.
Real Time Search Directories Beat Static Yellow Books
Twitter lists are basically just groupings of people you wish to aggregate and share with others. By adding people, groups or businesses with a common theme you turn the list into a living, real time directory. This is powerful stuff, because instead of just guiding people to a static page with a possibly vague description of a business, you are sending people to the source.
How much more useful do you think it is to someone if they are able to read short updates from community members instead of old, outdated messages on a website? What if I want to reach out to the community for an immediate need? Twitter is great for serving this purpose.
Bringing the topic full circle, I encourage you to become the gatekeeper to a relevant Twitter list for your own community. Just by creating the list you get to ensure your personal brand is the URL people navigate to in order to interact with the community resource.
What are you waiting for? Go start your list now…but don’t forget to check out the Burlington Business Directory first!