Nextdoor bills itself as “the private social network for your neighborhood.” In just a few years of existence, it’s grown to an audience of “double-digit millions” and claims to reach over 100,000 neighborhoods in the United States. It’s different from Facebook in that it’s specifically designed to help connect people in local neighborhoods.
Nextdoor also uses address validation to ensure that people who register actually live where they say they do. It’s not only working to connect people within neighborhoods, but adjacent neighborhoods and local government as well. It’s starting to replace dedicated HOA websites and email lists, as well as neighborhood Google and Facebook groups.
Nextdoor is rapidly growing and is expanding internationally. It’s also getting ready to launch new advertising options for local businesses. You can read more about this social network and its expansion plans at The Verge.
What You Should Do About Nextdoor
Nextdoor is poised to become a significant force in local marketing, although it’s not quite there yet. There are three steps that I recommend that you take:
- Sign up as an individual user. Create an account, join your local neighborhood, and download the app for your iPhone or Android phone. Just get familiar with it.
- Go to https://nextdoor.com/create-business and follow the instructions to claim your free local business listing. We’ll do a more in-depth walk-through of this process in a later post.
- Sign up for notifications about Nextdoor for Business. It’s not ready to launch yet, but this way you’ll be notified as soon as it goes live.
