Last week I was over at Park Automall in Tampa Florida visiting Fred, the owner. While I was in his office he showed me this real estate listing. It didn’t take me long to see where he was going with this.

He actually took this home in on trade. A man bought 2 cars with it, and he used his home as a trade-in. As soon he filled me with the details, a big devious smile came across my face and I said “man, this has viral written all over it”. Then he smiled and said “I’m glad you get it, this is what I’ve been trying to say!”

Now when I say viral, you’re probably thinking about Digg or Stumble Upon. Well I’m not, maybe 2 years ago I would of. unless you’re part of the Digg or Stumble Mafia I wouldn’t count on getting anything from there. Of course I still submit to those websites, but I don’t hold my breath waiting for results.

I go for “local viral”, meaning the news. About six months ago we submitted a professionally written press release to lure a local newspaper or TV station to pick up the story. At the time, Twitter was big news so we wrote about “how a car dealer is using social networking to help sell cars in troubled times”. I used a local woman who had connections to write and distribute the press release, and within 24 hours a TV news crew showed up at the dealership and did a story on them. It was broadcasted every hour for an entire 24 hour period on Bay News 9 in Tampa.

This Local Viral Campaign Brought Park Automall Huge Business. Click The Screenshot To Watch It

They have the news footage on their website, and he really should check it out here. This resulted in a huge spike of showroom traffic and sales.

Now we’ll go back to the house story. Stop thinking like a carguy or cargirl for a minute and think about it. This is news!

I wrote a simple blog post about it 3 days ago, and a local news station picked it up. Now I don’t want to jinx anything, but I will finish this blog post after it is aired.

Until then try to be creative in your area and think about a unique situation. You can hire a local press release writer to write and release a story idea for about $300.00.

Believe me when I tell you, it’ll be the best 300 dollars you’re ever spent.