Putting business back into the community and getting the community back in business

Byron based social commerce site communityengine.com.au wants to show off their community building tools. But instead of buying ads they want your help to donate $100,000 to local community groups and charities.

communityengine.com.au is a website to help small businesses and community organisations

• Find new customers and members
• Stay in touch with existing customers or members by sharing news, photos etc
• Sell goods and services online, including special offers

For everyone else it’s a personal guide to news, information, products and services from businesses and community groups they are interested in.

This year community engine.com.au set up shop inByronBay.  “Northern Rivers residents have held on to their village values in an increasingly global economy so it was a natural place to start the Engine” outlined CEO Warren Lee.

“It seemed to us that for many small businesses, traditional marketing tools like the Yellow Pages weren’t enough anymore, yet most online tools were too complicated, too expensive or both. So we set out to make it easy for businesses and community groups to promote and sell online in a way that also reinforced a sense of community. We like to say we are putting business back into the community and getting the community back in business. Ultimately, we want to make that possible for everyone, everywhere – online”.

Almost 1,000 Northern Rivers businesses and organisations have signed up to communityengine.com.au already. The tool is free to use with only a small fee for processing payments (4.5% for community groups, 6.5% for business).

So to say thanks to the Northern Rivers and to encourage others to join, communityengine.com.au has put their advertising dollars back into the organisations at the heart of everyday life. They are giving $100,000 to local community groups and charities in a campaign which kicks off Tuesday June 3^rd.

What do you need to do to get a share of the $100,000 for your group?

1. Go to communityengine.com.au and claim your free organisation or business profile, or
2. We can do it for you. Call us on 1300 266 686, come by the shop at 1 Byron St, ByronBay, or email hello@communityengine.com
3. Click to register for the campaign.
4. If you’re a community organisation in the Northern Rivers (Tweedto Grafton) gather followers for your group on community engine
5. If you’re a business choose an organisation to support and start gathering followers for your business on community engine
6. Then tell everyone – post it to Facebook, Tweet it, put up signs, whatever. Just start collecting as many follows as possible on your claimed community engine profile.
7. Community engine will donate $1 to your nominated group for every follow you collect above a minimum of $50 and up to $5,000 per group.

“It’s a case of first in” said Warren Lee, “so I encourage all businesses and community groups to get on the engine and start raising money, we’ll keep giving until the money is gone. We hope that once you’ve seen for yourself how easy it is to stay in touch with what matters to you on community engine, you’ll want to stick around”.