ancy Parker is the owner of Parker Virtual Office Services in Natick, and the organizer of the Metrowest Exchange Team (MET Group) an online social networking community for business professionals. She can be reached at nancynatick@aol.com.
10. Discover Community
Read between the lines and you will learn plenty about your neighborhood (business closings, new stores, foreclosures). It will help you implement services.
9. Build Relationships
Post a question seeking assistance and you will see that neighborhood professionals do reply and offer advice and services free of charge or for trade.
8. Use RSS
Click the RSS icon when searching to subscribe to that particular search, and bring all found listings to your RSS reader (Outlook or Google Reader). Not having to return to the site each day to perform the same search will save you time.
7. Customize
Consider how people will search for your products or services, and then design your post to include those words. Keywords ensure your listing appears in the search results as often as possible.
6. Be Cautious
Select the anonymous email option, rather than your own, to limit spam and keep information private. Limit contact details, but do include a link to drive traffic to your web site.
5. Get Creative
Improve the look of your post with expressive photos and basic HTML codes such as bold, italics, underscore, color, tables, lists and lines.
4. Establish User Account
Track posts with a color-coded list that displays your active, pending, and expired listings and makes reposting a breeze. A free user account eliminates the need to repeatedly post the same listing.
3. Get Routine
Set up a recurring calendar entry to remind you it is time to post/repost.
2.Go Global
Search all Craigslist domains at one time, by using Google’s advanced search. Replace the word “ITEM” with your subject and type the following in a Google search box: ITEM –directory site:craigslist.org
1. Streamline Searches
Preview current item images, on other sites such as ByeByeList.com, for quick searching. An image gallery lets you avoid clicking through each listing to find what you are looking for.
