What's the Headline for Your Small Business Revolution?

Small business owners in the next town over from mine are third in line to receive $500K in a nationwide social media contest, and folks here are kind of freaking out. Amesbury, MA, has ranked in the top five of Small Business Revolution - Main Street, and local residents, along with those of Alton, IL; Bastrop, TX; Siloam Spring, AK; and Martinez, CA are voting online daily through February 20 in the hopes of snagging the $500,000 prize to re-energize their local business scene. As you can imagine, competition is FIERCE.

I bring this up not because I want Amesbury to win (I do) or because I think you should, too, (although I wouldn't say no!) but because there's an awful lot of people-energy invested in this contest, and I think it's telling. In this age of globalization our local communities are looking for any opportunity to "root, root, root for the home team" - and that is a massive asset for small business owners everywhere.

You don't have to own a boutique on Main Street in a cute New England town to benefit from this basic human impulse. You just have to share your business story in a compelling way. Thanks to social media, as well as crowdfunding, that's not necessarily hard to do. 

How do you share your business journey with the customers that matter to you? What's the "headline" - can you sum up your story in one sentence?