Cottonwood Heights helps its businesses on the Web - Salt Lake Tribune

By Steven Oberbeck

The Salt Lake Tribune

First published Mar 05 2012 06:47PM
Updated Mar 5, 2012 06:47PM Cottonwood Heights is out to give its business community a helping hand.

The city is offering the companies that operate within city limits the opportunity to have their businesses featured on the community’s website, as well as on its Facebook and Twitter pages.

"We value our businesses and want to make every effort to help them succeed," said Mayor Kelvyn H. Cullimore Jr. "And we think that offering that kind of exposure will go a long way toward helping our businesses better market themselves."

The city started sending out notices about its new program in January, along with its monthly business license renewal mailing. Invitations will continue to go out the rest of this year.

"Our program has a lot of potential," said Stephanie Archibald, the city’s public relations specialist, who along with Shelly Hanson, a city administrative assistant, came up with the idea several months ago while having lunch in a local restaurant. The program is offered free of charge.

Archibald said she and Hanson started talking about the state of the economy and how it would be a shame if the restaurant went out of business because of the tough times. "We just started brain storming about what we could do to help."

And it wasn’t long before their thoughts turned to the city’s website and its social networking pages.

"We realized that the website was already set up, along with its Twitter and Facebook pages, and that we could use them to help businesses get their names out into the public," Archibald said. "One of the big pluses was that it wouldn’t cost anything."

The city also will use the Facebook and Twitter pages to inform residents about available special promotions or discounts.

So far about 50 of the 1,400 or so businesses operating in Cottonwood Heights have signed up. "Given that the program has been available only for a short time, we think that is a pretty good response," Archibald said.

Jerry Rose, the owner of Hillside Floral, was among the first to take advantage of the program.

"I though it was a great idea. And while I can’t say that it had a big, immediate impact on our business — our volume didn’t double overnight or anything like that — in the long run I’m sure it will be a positive for the city’s business community."

steve@sltrib.com

Twitter: @OberbeckBiz

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