For years, one of the most familiar invitations from a local business has been simple:
“Find us on Facebook.”
Or maybe:
“Like us on Facebook.”
“Follow us on Facebook.”
Those little invitations became part of everyday local marketing. You see them on websites, signs, menus, business cards, vehicles, receipts, and storefronts.
And for good reason.
Facebook gives local businesses a powerful way to connect with customers, share updates, tell stories, participate in their communities, and stay visible.
We use Facebook. We think local businesses should use Facebook.
But what if there were another invitation local businesses could make?
“Trust us on WhirLocal.”
That's a big aspiration for us.
Not because we want WhirLocal to replace Facebook. We don't.
It's because following a business and trusting a business are two different signals.
And we think both are worth building.
Facebook Helps You Build a Following
Facebook has become an important part of local business marketing.
A local business can build a Page, attract followers, share photos and videos, announce events, communicate with customers, participate in community conversations, and much more.
When someone follows your business, they're essentially saying:
“I'd like to hear from you.”
That's valuable.
It gives your business an opportunity to stay visible, share your story, and continue building the relationship.
WhirLocal Helps You Build a Trust Network
WhirLocal starts with a different question:
Who trusts this business?
And:
Who does this business trust?
When businesses and neighbors add a place to their WhirLocal Trust Network or Trust List, they're making an existing real-world relationship visible.
They're saying:
“This is a business I know, like, and trust.”
That's different from following a Page.
One isn't better than the other. They simply represent different kinds of relationships.
Follow Us. Trust Us.
That's perhaps the simplest way to understand the difference.
Facebook: Follow us.
WhirLocal: Trust us.
A Facebook follow helps a business build an audience and stay connected with people.
A WhirLocal trust relationship helps a business build a visible network around the trust it has earned in its community.
And those two things can work beautifully together.
Making Word-of-Mouth Visible
Think about how local recommendations already happen.
A friend asks if you know a good roofer.
A realtor recommends an inspector.
A contractor recommends an electrician.
A neighbor tells someone about a favorite restaurant.
A business owner refers a customer to another local company they trust.
None of this is new.
These relationships have always existed.
Most of them, however, are invisible until someone happens to ask.
WhirLocal is designed to make those relationships visible.
A business can show who it trusts and who trusts it. A neighbor can build a personal Trust List of favorite local places.
Those relationships can then help other people discover businesses through people and organizations they already know.
That's the heart of what we're building.
We All See the “Who Do You Recommend?” Posts
If you spend any time on Facebook, you've probably seen some version of this:
“ISO a good _____________. Go!”
A roofer. A plumber. A dentist. A mechanic. A hairstylist. A restaurant. A realtor. A dog groomer.
Then the recommendations start coming in.
That's word-of-mouth at work, and it's one of the things Facebook, Facebook Groups, and personal networks can be great for.
But the information being shared isn't always very complete.
Someone might comment:
“Call Joe. He's great. 555-123-4567.”
That's helpful.
But it can also leave the person asking with more questions.
Who is Joe?
What company is he with?
What services do they provide?
Where are they located?
What do other people say about the business?
Who else trusts them?
How do I learn more before I make the call?
This is where a WhirLocal Trust Network™ or Neighbor WhirLocal Trust List™ can make those everyday recommendations easier to share.
Instead of only typing a name and phone number, you can share the business directly from your Trust Network or Trust List.
That link leads to the business's WhirLocal Trust Profile™, where the person receiving the recommendation can learn more about the business.
The recommendation still comes from you.
WhirLocal simply gives you a more consistent and comprehensive way to share it.
Your Recommendations Don't Have to Disappear
There's another challenge with the way recommendations often happen online.
The conversation disappears down the feed pretty quickly.
A few months later, someone asks:
“Who was that electrician you recommended?”
Now you're searching through old posts, comments, texts, contacts, or simply trying to remember.
A WhirLocal Trust Network™ or Neighbor WhirLocal Trust List™ gives your recommendations somewhere to live.
You've already built your list.
You can find the business and share it again.
For a realtor, that might mean having a list of trusted inspectors, lenders, contractors, landscapers, cleaners, and other local professionals ready to share with clients.
For a neighbor, it might mean keeping favorite restaurants, coffee shops, dentists, hairstylists, mechanics, pet groomers, and home-service companies in one place.
For a business, it might mean quickly referring a customer to another local company you know and trust.
The recommendation becomes easier to find, share, and reuse.
And because the recommendation links back to the business's WhirLocal Trust Profile™, you don't have to remember every detail yourself.
Build an Audience. Build a Trust Asset.
Facebook gives local businesses a powerful way to build a following and stay connected with their community.
You can share stories, post updates, celebrate customers, highlight your team, participate in conversations, and give people reasons to keep paying attention to your business.
That's incredibly valuable.
WhirLocal is focused on building something different alongside that audience:
A visible record of your local trust relationships.
One helps you build and engage an audience.
The other helps you build and display a trust asset.
And there's no reason not to do both.
A Facebook post can create a moment of attention or spark a recommendation.
A WhirLocal Trust Network™ gives those trust relationships somewhere to live, grow, and be shared again and again.
A following helps you stay connected. A trust network makes your relationships visible.
That's why we see WhirLocal as complementary to the social platforms businesses already use, not a replacement for them.
Trust Can Become Part of Your Marketing
Now imagine that trust network becoming part of how you market your business.
Someone visits your website and can see the local businesses, professionals, and neighbors who trust you.
A customer walks into your business and sees a QR code that says:
Trust us on WhirLocal
Someone who already knows and trusts your business can scan it and make that relationship visible.
You can include the invitation in an email signature.
Share it on social media.
Put it on printed materials.
Add it to your website.
Over time, those individual trust relationships begin to form something much larger:
Your local trust network.
Who Trusts You Can Tell a Story
This becomes especially interesting as a Trust Network grows.
Imagine a roofing company being able to show that it is trusted by realtors, contractors, property managers, other local businesses, and neighbors.
Or imagine a realtor publicly sharing the inspectors, lenders, contractors, landscapers, restaurants, and other local businesses they personally trust.
Those relationships already exist in communities everywhere.
WhirLocal gives them a place to live.
As more genuine trust relationships become visible, people can begin exploring questions like:
Which businesses do local realtors trust?
Which contractors are trusted by other contractors?
Who does the business I already trust recommend?
That's where individual recommendations begin becoming something bigger:
a local trust network.
Public. Shareable. Portable.
This is an important part of the WhirLocal idea.
Your trust relationships shouldn't only be useful while someone is browsing WhirLocal.
They should be useful wherever people discover your business.
That's why we're building WhirLocal Trust Networks™ and Neighbor WhirLocal Trust Lists™ to be:
Public. Shareable. Portable.
A business can share its Trust Profile and Trust Network through links and QR codes.
A business can display its Trust Network on its own website.
A neighbor can share a personal Trust List with friends, family, clients, or their community.
A realtor can send trusted local recommendations to a new homeowner.
A business can quickly refer a customer to another business it trusts.
The goal isn't to keep trust locked inside WhirLocal.
The goal is to help local trust travel.
Not Someone Else's List. Your List.™
There's another side to WhirLocal that goes beyond businesses collecting trust.
Businesses can recommend the places they trust.
Neighbors can create their own Trust Lists.
Realtors can build lists of trusted local professionals for their clients.
Community leaders, creators, organizations, and others can share the local places they genuinely recommend.
The idea is simple:
Not someone else's list. Your list.™
Instead of depending entirely on a generic list or ranking, people can discover local places through the trust relationships around them.
And when someone asks:
“Who do you recommend?”
You already have your answer.
Could “Trust Us on WhirLocal” Become the Next “Find Us on Facebook”?
It's a big aspiration.
For years, “Find us on Facebook” became one of the most recognizable invitations in local business marketing.
We would love to see another invitation become just as natural:
Trust us on WhirLocal.
A little sign by the register.
A QR code on a service vehicle.
A link in an email signature.
A badge on a website.
A graphic shared on social media.
Not instead of Facebook.
Alongside it.
Because following a local business and trusting a local business are two different things.
And both relationships are worth building.
Use Facebook. Build Your Trust Network Too.
We're not interested in telling businesses to abandon the platforms that already work for them.
Keep building your Facebook presence.
Keep sharing stories.
Keep engaging your community.
Keep growing your audience.
And while you're doing all of that, start building something else too:
Your local trust network.
Stay Visible. Build Trust. Be Remembered.
So you can get referred more often.
About this comparison
This article is intended to help readers understand the differences between WhirLocal and other platforms. Information about third-party products and features is based on publicly available information at the time of publication and may change. All trademarks and brand names belong to their respective owners. WhirLocal is not affiliated with or endorsed by the companies mentioned unless otherwise stated.