Getting Traffic to Local Directory

I live in a university town and this week we are opening a business and community directory.

We are installing a Classified adverts blog from PremiumPress and Coupons Blog from the same people. Will be advertising in local press offering Free Classified advertising for local businesses as well as members of the community.

Believe it or not - we are using XsitePro for the main directory and... on another bonus site the Directory theme from Premiumpress as a bonus listing on a national directory for advertising with us.

Today we were brainstorming on ways to generate publicity and we came up with starting our own mini film festival using Kodak zi8 or Flipcams.

We will be asking different businesses in our community to sponsor cash and good/services as prizes.

We will host the end results on our site and then ask the community to vote.

The winner will get about $5.000 plus various prizes.

Would love to hear suggestions from others that have business/community directory sites.

We have also just given 70 local community groups a free listing and are offering them all more free pages on our blog.