How to get the most out of CoTradeCo communities for your business, club, group, or organization

1. Create a FREE SPOT
   This is an online profile similar to many social networking sites you might have seen. Create an account, add personal and/or professional profile information. Only fill out what pertains to you.
2. Add a welcome message
   Your spot has a welcome message to say anything. This is your home / about me page to do with as you like. Share useful information or resource links. Link to your website. Make it an ad. It’s your own single page mini-website to greet people when they wander by.
3. Upload a profile picture
   Could be of you, your dog, your club, your store front, or your logo. Having an image for your spot will help you get noticed and meet people.
4. Post an introduction
   We encourage all new visitors to introduce themselves in our Introduction story topic. Let everybody know who you are and what you do. Introduce yourself to every community you join and invite people to visit your spot.
5. Post a shameless promotion
   This is an outright advertisement in our stories feature. CoTradeCo stories are like community blog postings grouped by community and topic/theme. And every community has it’s shameless promotion topic.
6. Post a tip, story, article or advice
   While we want you to network and promote yourself, we want a community of folks sharing useful information and interacting. Share some information or news that demonstrates your expertise to the community. Make yourself available to answer questions and give advice.
7. Respond to other peoples posts and invite friends
   No better way to get noticed than to login once or week or so and post something new, respond to what other people are doing, and invite people as friends on CoTradeCo.

We look forward to seeing you in our communities

Tips for business

• Post your press releases in appropriate communities
  Post them in Shameless Promotion story topics. While we discourage repeated posting of the same item, feel free to post your company news and announcements any time you like.
• Have different people from different departments get their own spot
  As we build more useful networking tools, having different people from your company represented helps people get a hold of the right person for the right reason. Not to mention that multiple spots for the same company increases your exposure.
• Post original industry and trade articles
  It’s a fact that businesses that post new useful content on their sites are more likely to keep visitors and increase conversion. Posting on CoTradeCo gives you another opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and attract attention.

Tips for clubs and organizations

• Use your SPOT’s welcome message to create permanent links
  While posting stories in our community blog system is the best way to attract attention, having up-to-date mission and contact info and useful profile information gives a more permanent means for people to find you.
• Make FRIENDS
  By having a look around and making friend requests with others on CoTradeCo you are giving another way for people to find you.
• Have all members get their own SPOT
  Feel free to not only get the extra exposure from multiple SPOTS, but use the community blog as an extra means to communicate. By dialoguing through our community blog stories you instantly letting people know what you have going on and why they would be interested in joining.