In the November 13th edition of the Denver Business Journal, an article - Craigslist Becomes Useful Tool for Real Estate Brokers" was featured.
Note: You'll need to have a paid subscription to view the entire article - and if you're doing business in Denver metro - it is probably a good idea to go ahead and sign up. A digital subscription for 12 months is only $59. Clicking on the link above will give you the opportunity to sign up if you're not already a member.
The article highlights the fact that most postings on Craigslist are free - never a bad thing in a down economy. Craigslist commercial real estate postings do particularly well for the smaller business owner who doesn't need a ton of space for their office. As office space becomes more readily available at a lower cost, brokers are turning to Craigslist to reduce their advertising costs.
My Personal Experience with Craigslist
The real estate offerings mentioned in the article were most likely made through the "housing" section on Denver Craigslist which covers commercial real estate. Brokers selling or buying commercial real estate can put their listings here for free. If you're in a different industry, you can post your services - for free - within the services area within Denver Craigslist.
Responding to Denver Craigslist Posts
I haven't actually posted my services to Craigslist - but I have responded to Denver area posters who were looking for online marketing and web related services. My results have been successful. Craigslist has generated clients for my business. But... you can also waste a lot of time on Craigslist looking for opportunities if you aren't careful. There are a lot of junk postings in Denver metro for services - as described below.
Beware of These Junk Offerings
A typical craigslist posting for a service - especially an online marketing / computer related service like the services that I provide for my Denver clients might look a little something like this:
New Denver metro company with an unbelievably great idea is looking for someone to help market our business. Since we're a startup, we don't have a lot of funds, but we are willing to give you a percentage of the company in return for your online marketing and website expertise.
I think it is pretty obvious why posts like that are fairly worthless. I find it hard to believe that people who post ads like this ever get responses from anyone competent. Obviously, no one wants to work for free. Plus, most people have their own wonderful ideas that they'd like to execute. People are much more inspired to follow their own high risk - high reward ideas than to carry out someone else's hare-brained ideas for no compensation.
How to Quickly Separate the Wheat from the Chaff
The key to making the most of Craigslist for Denver lead generation is to take advantage of the RSS feeds. Find an area within the "jobs" or "gigs" sections on Craigslist that would apply towards your lead generation efforts. If you're a web designer in Denver, check out the web design jobs section. If you're in the financial industry - look at the financial jobs section. Keep in mind, that these jobs areas are just used for example, and there may be offerings on Craigslist that apply to your business.
Denver Craigslist Post - Finding the RSS Feed Button
Once you get to the listings that apply to your business, scroll all the way down. In the lower right, you'll see the opportunity to sign up for the Craigslist RSS feed for that section. Click on it and bring Craigslist opportunities right into your feed reader. If you don't know what a feed reader is, I'll be posting about that in a future blog post. Once in your feed reader with your other blog feeds, you can easily go through the offerings daily to decide if a particular client may need your services. This is by far the quickest way to sort through all of the listings to find what you need.
How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?
I encourage most Denver small businesses to at least take a good long at Craigslist to determine if they can possibly generate clients from the website. Going to the website every day can be a bit of a time waster - instead, set up an RSS feed (or better yet a FILTERED RSS Feed that I'll describe in a future post) to provide you the services and opportunities that apply to your business. It won't take more than seconds a day to see what is listed on Craigslist and potentially improve your bottom line.
The Denver Business Journal is the Mile High City's weekly business newspaper and the nation's oldest weekly business journal. The Denver Business Journal is a unit of American City Business Journals, the nation's largest publisher of metropolitan business newspapers.