Small Businesses Need to Stop Renting and Start Owning Social Media
The journey of starting and running a successful business is draining. We take on the burden of, what seems like, endless liabilities. We rack our brains trying to figure how to make enough to keep our business(es) afloat. Through hard work and determination, we make it work.
On top of other problems, we have to worry about “leaches”. When we decide to commit to a service or product we expect an outcome. When results do not pan out, that service or product we paid for (or paying for) becomes both $$$ and time consuming.
There are a lot of things we do as business owners that drain our finances and time. One, I would like to focus on, is advertising.
Why create a business profile online?
The main reason you need to create a business profile online is because of promotion.
It’s evident the direction of marketing is switching online, with the amount of traffic now.
Your business has a chance to be seen by people that would never of found you otherwise. By opting to not create your online profile, you are missing out on connecting with more customers!
Best of all, it doesn't cost you anything.
But be careful! the online world, social media specifically, is not for YOU. It is for consumers. Consumers can be anyone. So, in other words, your business is marketing in a world controlled by a large group of people with no particular identity.
Mainstream Social media is for consumers not businesses
If you take Facebook, Google, Yelp, Youtube, TikTok etc. These are all consumer-driven platforms. Traffic and content is controlled by ‘the people’. This is why your advertising results are unpredictable online. You are not in control of the environment.
Small businesses don’t really have an environment for themselves online. We could join business/professional networks like LinkedIn, Alignable, BNI, or Chamber of Commerce but these platforms miss out on the Direct to Consumer (DTC) aspect that networks like Facebook or Google provide.
My 10-yr cousin has no business joining professional/business networks but yet he’s on Facebook, Google and TikTok to find nearby businesses.
There are NO networks where small businesses could maintain control of their environment but still connect with mainstream consumers.
Business as Usual (BAU)
BAU is a social network for businesses to create promotion for each other. Unlike Facebook, Google, or Yelp, where small businesses are marketing in constant competition, BAU makes promotion easy by allowing small businesses to collaborate in advertisements to grow together.
At the end 2020, during the height of the pandemic, I felt disconnected from the world and businesses I loved so much. So I founded and created BAU to help bridge a gap.
Physically, I couldn’t go to my favorite local spots, but yet I wanted to maintain connection with those people who operate them. Current social media, doesn’t offer much of that connection with businesses.
There are no online platforms where I, as a consumer, could stay personally connected and communicate predominantly with businesses/business owners.
Mainstream platforms focus, primarily, on consumer interactions because they’re built FOR consumers. So I sought out to create BAU, a social network FOR small business, where consumers could engage and stay connected with their local businesses, even in the midst of a pandemic. Visit www.joinbau.com to check us out.
Maintain Sovereignty
It’s time to finally take control of your online marketing results, as a business owner. This means to stop looking at your “competitiors” as your competition. We all want to acheive the same things, so why not help each other? Together, as independent businesses, we should pool influence to stop struggling with advertising. Getting the word out about your business shouldn’t be so hard, if we help each other control the environment.
