Want a free shout-out from Iowa Road Trip for your family-friendly small business destination in Iowa?
Submit a short video using the following guidelines, and we’ll give you a free shout-out to our audience.
What do you mean by “family-friendly small business destination”?
We are referring to small, mom-and-pop businesses that operate a physical location, allowing you to take a road trip and visit. Might be a bakery, a bookstore, a restaurant, a gift shop. As long as you can take a road trip to visit the shop and they have regular hours, then it’s a possible road trip destination.
Do I need to hire someone to produce the video?
No. In fact, we don’t want an edited or polished video – we prefer simple videos recorded on cell phones. In fact, the video shouldn’t be perfect. Our audience likes real people in real situations. We had a pumpkin farmer submit a video and rooster went crazy in the background during the video, and it was perfect. It made the point that you were going to visit a real farm.
What should be in the video?
The ideal video to submit to Iowa Road Trip has three pieces:
- Product
- People
- Place
Here are some specific examples:
Flying Elbow in Marshalltown, Iowa
Garrett, the owner of the Flying Elbow, is showcasing his award-winning pulled pork sandwich – and we have all three key ingredients: People, Product, and Place.
Berry Patch Farm in Nevada, Iowa
Why we like this video clip:
- They introduce themselves
- They tell us where the farm is located
- They tell us what’s available on the farm
- and they finish by telling us where to find more information.
We also like this video because it is NOT time-sensitive. In other words, this video can be used all summer long. If you state today’s date or reference some specific event/date, then the video can only be used once. We encourage you to keep the video more general, as the video can then be used multiple times – giving your business more exposure.
What is the best way to submit a video to Iowa Road Trip?
The best method is to upload the video to either Google Drive, DropBox, or something comparable – and then send a link to the file to brian@iowaroadtrip.net. Using this method allows us to download a high quality copy of the original video.
If you need, you can also email the file directly to brian@iowaroadtrip.net – however, most email carriers will degrade or lower the quality of the video, so the video that you see online will not be as clear or as sharp as the video you created.