Promoting your Business

Bowes and Bounds Connected
Policy on Promoting Commercial Interests on the Bowes and Bounds Connected Website

Introduction: We want to champion local businesses and local business people and we're keen to support them, but members who use the community forum don't want it swamped with advertisements.

Bowes and Bounds connected is entirely volunteer run – but it does cost a little to maintain the site each year. So, we want to balance supporting local business, covering the cost of running the platform and preventing advertising dominating the site.

Anyone can apply to advertise, either through a paid display advertisement sponsored forum thread or sponsoring our weekly e-news update. Just as you wouldn't expect to get advertising space in a local newspaper, or a street poster site for free - we expect recompense for using the platform to promote a profit making enterprise. We offer a comprehensive service – including design, tracking and outcome measurements.

Additionally it may be possible to obtain coverage through giving back to the community. This could be via a feature article on the site in return for member / community benefit, or in-kind services to help run the site.

Our flexible approach will leave room for advertisements via features, forum posts or events listings, where the commercial nature of the activity is clearly stated.
A detailed advertising pack and rate card is in preparation; this is the outline offer:

Display Advertising
To help with our running costs, Bowes and Bounds Connected is happy to consider display advertising. Advertisements on the site are visible display towards the top of the right hand column and show on all the busy pages throughout the website. All sums received for paid advertising are used ONLY to meet the running costs of this community website.

Weekly e-news sponsorship
A weekly e-mail digest is sent to every registered member of the site each Friday. Advertisers can sponsor an edition of the e-newsletter with a small ad at the bottom of the newsletter, plus a mention in the editorial.

Sponsored Forum Posts
We will consider advertising within the body of the site in a forum discussion initiated by the business owner or manager. To assist our members, sponsored threads will carry a small reference at the foot of the post identifying it as a promotional message. Remember this is a community forum and forum posts that don’t fit into the overall tone of the site may not achieve your anticipated aims.

Other paid options
We would welcome a discussion about other ways we could help promote local businesses, whilst covering our costs. Including offering an advertising and promotion package exclusive to your sector for a fixed period. Contact admin@bowesandbounds.org for more information.

Tradespeople Recommendations
Site members frequently seek out skilled and trusted local businesses recommended by others. Inclusion on this Recommended Tradespeople section of the site remains as a peer-to-peer recommendation by a disinterested site member and is not available for paid advertising or self-promotion.

Events
Our events listings allow members to include information about free, or paid-for local activities. Any local events offering genuine entertainment or educational value may be added as event listings as long as they are in-line with our terms and conditions and this policy.

On occasions particular events will be featured included in the weekly e-mail update, or shared via Twitter, Facebook etc. Choice of events to feature will be at the judgement of site administrators, and will in the main focus on not-for-profit, charity, fundraising and community-led events, rather than fee-paying activities generating income for the organisers.

Advertising on a quid pro quo basis
We want to make a clear distinction between paid advertising and member generated content however, you may be able promote your business, by advertising, or running a feature in return for giving your services or expertise to the community. This might include advertisers offering a free prize draw to our members e.g. a free yoga course, free art class, free wine tasting course and so on. For example we recently offered a prize draw for completion of our online users survey with a prize donated by a local business. (We're not normally a great fan of an 'introductory discount' or benefit that would already be available elsewhere.)

For more information or to discuss placing your advertisement, please contact us at admin@bowesandbounds.org.

Site Admin and Editorial team will determine which establishments are considered as local and which ads are deemed appropriate. This is based on a judgement of the services or goods offered for sale.


Business Representation
Site membership is open to individuals – not businesses or organisations. (with a handful of agreed exceptions e.g. Safer Neighbourhoods Team, London Transport etc.) Member profiles cannot at any time be used explicitly to promote a local business.

Occasionally businesses have sought to promote themselves without contacting us first or with no intention of contributing to the site or the local community; any postings of this mature will be removed and the member may be suspended from the site. Experience from the recent history demonstrates that it’s probably more effective to be identified as an engaged and active local person than a faceless business anyway.

POLICY
1. This policy applies to all commercial entities. We define a commercial entity as one that trades in whole or in part for profit, including individual sole traders.
Voluntary organisations including residents' groups, friends groups, charitable groups, schools, etc which may charge for activities, are not covered by this policy.
2. No commercial entity, or their associate or agent, may promote their business on Bowes and Bounds Connected in any way without the express permission of Site Admin. For the avoidance of doubt, this includes promoting a commercial business by:
• using the internal messaging system or commenting on members pages,
• adding or commenting on events,
• adding or contributing to a forum discussion or blog post,
• adding or commenting on an image or video,
• adding business details to a member's own page
• adding a self-advertisement on the Recommended Trades page.

In the event that a business owner learns that their business has been criticised, they have a right to respond. Any such responses must stay within what is reasonable in the context.

Questions & Comments
Any questions or comments about this policy can be addressed to us at admin@bowesandbounds.org

Connecting the communities of Bowes Park and Bounds Green in north London.

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