Love a Local Business FAQs

by Betsy Eshoei on July 20, 2009

Updated February 1, 2012

The Love A Local Business competition lets fans, including customers, vendors, employees, and the community, determine who deserves some love – in the form of small business grants. Please read below for answers to common questions.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Where can I apply for my business to win?
Post a vote for your business on LoveALocalBusiness.com

Where can I review the Official Rules?
Please review the official rules for complete details.

How are the winners of the Love A Local Business small business grants selected?
Votes are like raffle tickets – the more votes a business has the more chances they have to win.

At the end of the month, one business is randomly chosen from all of the votes posted since the start of the contest.
While both fans and businesses may vote, the owner of the randomly selected business must also have nominated their own business during the contest period in order to be eligible to win an Intuit Grant.

If I’ve voted for my business before, can I vote again? Will I break the rules if I vote for myself twice?

If you voted for your business prior to April 1, 2012, you can and should vote for your business again during this contest period. Each time a new contest period starts on LoveALocalBusiness.com, you can and should vote for your business again. The current contest period runs from April 1 through April 30, 2012.

You will not break the rules if you vote for yourself twice. If you accidentally vote for yourself twice (or more often) during a contest period, your duplicate votes are removed from consideration in the random drawing. Only your first vote for your business during a contest period remains valid.

How often can my fans vote for my business? How often can I vote for my business?
Each person (whether a business owner or fan) may post one (1) vote per business during the contest period, which is currently April 1 - April 30, 2012. Duplicate votes from the same email address, or telephone number for text votes, are not valid and are not included in the random drawing conducted by our contest administrator, ePrize. Each person may vote for multiple businesses during the contest period.

How will I know if my business has won?
An Intuit representative will contact you by telephone and email. Your business name will be added to our website’s listing of winners. You will also be contacted by ePrize, our contest administrator, who will send you the required documents to be verified as an official winner.

How do I get more votes? How do I increase my chances of winning?
Visit The Winner’s Playbook page for ideas and tools to help you get more votes from your fans, including banners and badges you can embed on your own website or blog to encourage your fans to support your business, automated sharing via your social networks, and our newest tool, Text2Vote, a free service from Fanminder which allows your fans to vote for you from their mobile phones.

I’m trying to access the custom banners and badges for my business, but the site is sending me in an endless loop. Please try this:

Go to the Winner’s Playbook
If you are not already logged in, click “Use my Intuit Login” on the right side of the screen
After logging in, return to the Winner’s Playbook and click on “Get Custom Banners” on the left side of the screen
This should allow you to see the embed codes for the customized banners and badges you can place on your own website or blog

How many small business grants have been awarded in the Love A Local Business sweepstakes?
We’ve already awarded over $1,000,000 in small business grants. Learn about previous Love A Local Business grants winners.

I don’t have a physical address – just a PO Box – can I still compete?
Yes you can still compete. When voting for your business, please provide the physical address of the post office or mailing facility where your PO Box is located. This allows your business to be mapped to a location.

I couldn’t find my business. How do I get my business to show up on the map and in search results?
Try these suggestions:

Use the postal abbreviation for the state rather than writing out the state name. I.e. “IA” instead of “Iowa” or “CA” instead of “California”. (This has been submitted to our engineers to correct and allow both the abbreviation and complete name.)
Try an alternate spelling, e.g. Howard’s Furniture and Howards Furniture, YoYo Yoghurt Shop and YoYo Yogurt Shop.
If that doesn’t help, and you are trying to nominate your own business, make sure you are using the form found on the “I’m a Business Owner” tab. Search for your business in Step 1, then in Step 2, select “complete a manual” nomination. This allows you to add your business to our Intuit Business Directory database — and be found when your fans try to vote for your business.

I can’t find the business I want to nominate? What can I do?
Try these suggestions:

Use the postal abbreviation for the state rather than writing out the state name. I.e. “IA” instead of “Iowa” or “CA” instead of “California”. (This has been submitted to our engineers to correct and allow both the abbreviation and the state name.)
Try an alternate spelling, e.g. Howard’s Furniture and Howards Furniture, YoYo Yoghurt Shop and YoYo Yogurt Shop.
If that doesn’t help, in Step 2, select “complete a manual nomination.” These votes are valid, but may not show up on the map immediately. Make sure to let the business owner know about this competition. They must also nominate themselves to be eligible to win an Intuit Hiring Grant. Also, after they nominate themselves (as described in the question above) their business will be automatically added to our database, which makes it easier for other fans to find them, vote for them, and share comments.

I’m a business owner, and I can’t complete the Intuit Login registration process because the “create account” button is not highlighted.
This indicates that there is an unresolved error message. One or more of the fields should be outlined in red. Click on a field that is outlined in red to see an explanation of the error. Common errors include screen names that are already taken or using an email address that is already in our system. If your email address has already been used, you can retrieve your password, then sign in to complete your nomination.

I’m a fan trying to vote for a business I love. The website won’t accept my vote – or – I’m stuck at Step 3 because the “vote” button isn’t clickable.
These are some typical problems:

The comment was copy/pasted into the box. (Try either clicking somewhere outside the comment box so that the character count will update; or refresh the page, start from Step 1 and type your comment directly in the box rather than copy/paste.)

Try shortening your comment by 5-10 characters – we’ve seen that some punctuations, such as ” ‘ & $ results in inaccurate character counts that cause problems with submissions.

No comment has been posted

Your comment exceeds 250 characters

How do I enable Text2Vote? How do I help my fans use Text2Vote?
You can register and set up Text2Vote by visiting The Winner’s Playbook page and clicking on the “Text2Vote” link. Text2Vote is a free service from Fanminder that can help you get more votes.

There are two (or more) listings for my business with different spellings. Do all the votes count for my business? Can you combine the listings to show all the votes together?
The votes all count for your business, even if there are slight misspellings in the name or address. But, remember that votes are like raffle tickets – each vote increases your chances of winning, but having the most votes doesn’t guarantee you will win.

We can also merge your listings if you would like (although it’s not necessary for winning)! Having one listing means you can see all your great comments together on one listing, and that they will all show up on your custom banners. If you want your listings merged, just send an email with your correct business name and address to LoveALocalBusiness@Intuit.com, with the subject “Please combine listings.”

Can an online-only business win? Or a non-profit?
Yes and yes. Online-only businesses and non-profits can win. We let you determine if a business is local and if you consider it a business.

Why are my fan counts on The Pulse lower than everywhere else on the site?
The purpose of The Pulse is to let small business owners monitor their status in the monthly grant competitions. It is different than an all-time fan count of nominations on LoveALocalBusiness.com. Nominations from fans that posted in a previous contest period are no longer valid for the competition, but they are still meaningful comments about your business.

Help! Someone posted a negative comment about my business. How do I remove it?
First, the good news. You could still win a grant based on their comment – now wouldn’t that be sweet revenge? Second, click “report abuse” so that it gets added to our review tool. Third, if you want to make sure it is reviewed quickly, send an email to lovealocalbusiness@intuit.com with the subject line “Urgent! Remove Negative Comment”

I found out about Love A Local Business through a social game and submitted a nomination, but I haven’t received my game incentive.
Please email support-intuit@socialvibe.com for steps to try and solve the problem. If you are still having problems, please add a comment below.

None of these FAQs answer my question. Often your issue is the same that others are experiencing, so please watch for email updates from lovealocalbusiness@intuit.com for service alerts that may answer your question. (Consider adding the email address to your safe senders list to make sure messages are not caught by your spam filter.) If your issue remains unresolved, you can email lovealocalbusiness@intuit.com. It is most helpful if you include which browser you are using (IE8, Safari, Firefox) and screenshots depicting each step of what you are doing. You can get screenshots by simultaneously clicking CTRL-ALT-PrintScreen on the page then pasting them (CTRL-V or right click-print) into an email or attaching a Powerpoint or Word doc with the screenshots. We will try to respond within 3 business days.