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How small town businesses can market to remote workers and turn them into new customers

By Becky McCray 1 Comment

A person is working on a laptop from a rooftop deck

With the rise of remote work, more people move to small towns even temporarily to work remotely. Small town businesses have the opportunity to tap remote workers as new customers. Why remote workers are hard to market to New residents who work remotely can be hard to find: they aren’t all working at the same […]

May 15, 2023 Filed Under: marketing, rural, trends Tagged With: co-working, customers, marketing, remote work, rural, small town, zoom towns

Survey of Rural Challenges 2023 results

By Becky McCray

Survey of Rural Challenges

To find out what rural people felt were their biggest challenges, SaveYour.Town and SmallBizSurvival.com surveyed 315 rural people from the US, Canada and Australia between November 2022 and January 2023. The results make up this fifth edition of the Survey of Rural Challenges. Download the PDF Report Survey of Rural Challenges 2023 by debworks Top conclusions […]

May 8, 2023 Filed Under: economic development, entrepreneurship, rural, Survey of Rural Challenges, trends Tagged With: diversity, issues, rural policy, Rural surveys and polls, Survey of Rural Challenges

Rural and small town ideas from the OU Placemaking Conference IQC 2023

By Becky McCray

Kids playing on a chalked map of their community

Recently I attended the OU (University of Oklahoma) Institute for Quality Communities (IQC) Placemaking Conference This was the 10th annual event. There were 600 people attending from 40 counties in Oklahoma and 6 surrounding states. I attended the 2017 event along with my colleague Deb Brown. The focus was inevitably on big cities, but I […]

April 5, 2023 Filed Under: community, economic development, rural, trends Tagged With: conferences, Institute for Quality Communities, placemaking, rural, rural urban connections, University of Oklahoma

Rural tourism trends say small towns are still cool

By Becky McCray

Slide text: Times are changing. Putting new destinations on the map: rural towns, countryside, and back to cities. A domestic rediscovery. Blended travel creates longer stays and workcations. Brighter light on wellness.

But you already knew that Tourism Currents, experts on social media for tourism, wrote about 5 travel trends to blog about right now, and there’s a lot for rural communities to latch onto there. 1) Wellness Travel Sheila says, “where people can go to relax, detox, relieve stress, get a massage and spa treatments, eat […]

March 27, 2023 Filed Under: economic development, entrepreneurship, rural, tourism, trends Tagged With: rural culture, small towns, tourism, Tourism Currents, travel

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