Sara Broers of Social Connections approached me a month before our open house with the idea to promote our open house through the North Iowa Bloggers. It was a no brainer to have them out to the nursery for an afternoon of friendship.

All of the bloggers that came out to the nursery wrote a blog post about our business within the week. It was a fun way to read other people's perspectives of our business. They said some really nice things about us, and to be honest, it was a little confidence boost.

This year's open house was a big success, and I attribute some of the success to using social media and the NIB's blogs to get the word out. I now have around 100 more likes on our Facebook page. I'm not super focused on the "numbers," but it's nice to see more people are following along with us.

Being a part of and also partnering with the North Iowa Bloggers as a business owner has brought a lot of great opportunities to our business. Being a part of the community on social media is an ever-growing necessity for small businesses. It's a way for us small guys to reach out to our customers on a more personal level, and engage in conversation with our biggest supporters.

I'm excited to see where this journey with social media will take our business and the North Iowa Bloggers!