Behavior Recognized Is Behavior Repeated - Episode 12

If you want more businesses to participate, sometimes the best thing you can do is stop asking and start recognizing the people who are already doing it.

For Chambers, Main Streets, tourism organizations, and other community anchors, highlighting simple wins can make participation feel more achievable, demonstrate real value, and give other businesses an example they can actually follow.

Recognize the Behavior You Want Repeated

Years ago, I heard a simple phrase in a job training that has stuck with me for more than 25 years: behavior recognized is behavior repeated.

That absolutely applies to community participation.

If you have businesses doing something you want more people to do, recognize them.

• Highlight businesses taking positive action
• Share their success publicly
• Explain what they did and why it matters

You’re promoting that business, but you’re also showing everyone else what participation actually looks like.

Make the Example Achievable

There’s a catch. Your superstar businesses may not always be your best examples.

If someone is incredibly creative, charismatic, or sophisticated with their marketing, other business owners may look at what they’re doing and think, “That’s great, but I can’t do that.”

Instead, recognize simple actions other businesses can realistically repeat.

• Highlight a business that connected its Google reviews
• Feature a member that added upcoming events
• Recognize someone using cross-promotion
• Celebrate improvements that only took a few minutes

The goal is to lower the bar and make the next step obvious.

Turn Recognition Into Promotion

This gets even more powerful when recognition comes with a little promotional love.

Let’s say a Chamber member claims their Locable account, connects their Google Business Profile, and adds a logo. Now their Google reviews can appear with their directory listing.

Share it.

“Check out Brian’s Pizza and all of these great five-star reviews. By the way, if you’re a member, you can connect your Google reviews too.”

That one post accomplishes a few things:

• Promotes the participating business
• Drives traffic back to your website
• Demonstrates a member benefit
• Shows other businesses exactly what they can do

Now you’re not just telling people there’s value in participating. You’re showing them.

Keep Showing What Participation Looks Like

You have to repeat this.

People are busy. They’re scrolling. They may see one example and never connect the dots.

So when another business does something worth recognizing, share that one too.

Maybe the library connects its calendar so upcoming events appear on its directory listing. Share it and explain that other organizations can do the same thing.

Maybe a board member adds your cross-promotion tools to their business website. Recognize them and show other businesses how they can participate too.

• Share examples once or twice a week
• Keep the explanation simple
• Show different ways businesses can participate
• Remind people that these tools and benefits are available to them

Copy, paste, repeat.

Make Marketing Feel Less Mysterious

A lot of basic marketing feels complicated when you don’t know where to start.

Getting more reviews, improving Google visibility, generating referrals, promoting events, or growing catering might sound like big marketing projects.

Often, they aren’t.

When community organizations highlight ordinary businesses taking simple actions, those actions become less mysterious.

• Show what another business actually did
• Keep the next step small
• Explain the benefit
• Help them get started when needed

Nobody has time, but everybody has 15 minutes.

If the thing you’re asking someone to do takes less than 15 minutes, and they understand why it matters and how to do it, participation becomes a much easier ask.

Build Recognition Into Your Process

Recognition shouldn’t depend on remembering to do it whenever you have a spare minute.

Make it part of how you onboard and support members.

When someone joins, renews, sponsors something, or gets more involved, have a simple process for delivering the benefits you promised.

That might include:

• Add them to your directory
• Include them in your newsletter
• Share them on social media
• Help them connect reviews or events
• Interview them for a short article
• Introduce them to cross-promotion opportunities

Locable’s Deliverables Tracking tools can help organizations manage these steps, and our free New Member Onboarding Checklist for Small and Rural Chambers and Associations gives you a starting point if your current process mostly lives in someone’s head.

Next Steps

Look around your community and find one business doing something you wish more businesses would do.

Recognize them.

Share what they did, promote their business, and tell everyone else how they can do it too.

Then find the next example and do it again.

You don’t need an elaborate campaign to start changing behavior. Sometimes you just need to catch people doing something right and make sure everyone else sees it.

Pro tip

👉 Next Steps

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