Businesses Have Been Duped Into Social Media

And it’s time to intentionally build platforms with them in mind.

Photo by Free Walking Tour Salzburg on Unsplash

There’s never been a more important time to help businesses. During the pandemic, 30 million small businesses in the United States alone are in dire need to stay open and have adapted to sell online. But in times of crisis comes new opportunities, and we’ve seen businesses pivot into new possibilities.

Business Model Pivots in Response to COVID-19

Even though we’re more connected than ever before, we are disconnected to what’s still open and what services are available in our neighborhoods and cities. It highlights the inability of businesses to reach people nearby using the tools currently available. So why are 140 million businesses spending time and money on social platforms?

My co-founder, Brandon Braswell, and I have extensive media experience and worked with over 500 business owners, nonprofit organizations and marketing executives for brands around the world, and the general consensus is that social media is a ‘ necessary evil.’ If that isn’t a cry for help for a better solution, we don’t know what is. It’s time we started thinking of better ways to amplify and connect businesses to attainable consumers and provide them with a service that allows them to focus on running their businesses.

Businesses were coerced into being content creators.

The greatest fallacy of social media was to convince us that we should all be content creators. Businesses are paying a toll with their time and money to compete on feeds with celebrities, influencers, your family & friends and cat memes. These platforms have convinced them that if they don’t post regularly, no one will know they exist. When frankly, the saturation on these platforms is making it almost impossible to even remember what we just saw from one swipe to the next.

Businesses shouldn’t have to keep churning out content to stay relevant or to be found by customers. There are only so many posts of a latte and avocado toast a local bakery can capture. Then we ask them to compete in the same feed for attention as Chrissy Teigen….ah, this isn’t an even playing field. Have you seen how adorable her children are? It’s that easy to get distracted on these feeds and not give these businesses a second thought.

We need to get businesses off the content trap of social media, because they do not have the time or resources to waste on continuously creating content that is practically dead on arrival. We should be optimizing content that currently exists and leveraging video to accelerate conversion for businesses.

Businesses are paying too much in their time and profit to compete on current platforms.

Every single business is going to need a video presence moving forward.

The questions we should be asking is where will that video live and how will it reach people? Video is the future of search and e-commerce, and we need platforms that distribute this content efficiently and effectively, across every device.

What we’re doing at BRIDGE: Building a platform that optimizes video distribution for businesses to reach attainable customers and drive conversion on their content across mobile and OTT devices — on screens around the world.

Businesses don’t need likes…they need conversion.

Social metrics are as valuable as monopoly money. Likes and impressions may give a confidence boost, but it doesn’t keep the lights on. Businesses need conversion, not just clicks. But this has been the foundation of bad ad models like CPMs and the ‘spray & pray’ mentality when it comes to digital ads. This is a post for another day.

Businesses should be positioned in local marketplaces that stimulate engagement and local connection and commerce, and video is the fastest way to get people to see something and accelerate trust to purchase. There is so much content available right now, it’s just not reaching us when we actually need it. We could be filtering video through search, maps and calendars — utilities we use everyday — and optimizing all this content to be distributed across desktop, mobile and TV.

Video drives engagement. Engagement captures data. Data powers personalization & recommendations, which leads to conversion. These are the metrics that matter.

BRIDGE pairs businesses with viewers and accelerates conversion with video.

What we’re doing at BRIDGE: Using short form video to power local marketplaces and capture engagement signals to power personalization and recommendations, soon to be known as algorithmic commerce (a-comm). Professor Scott Galloway predicts the evolution of e-commerce is a-comm powered by video. Put a pin in this. We’re positioning BRIDGE to capture more engagement signals than Netflix and TikTok, with the reoccurring revenue model of B2B SaaS, and without selling your privacy and the destruction of democracy.

Local networks are greater than social networks.

Whether you’re at home or abroad traveling, people look to locals to help inform them of what’s going on and what to do. We are constantly seeking out information and recommendations for what’s nearby from actual locals.

Local has become synonymous with trust.

So why are we positioning businesses on platforms that are proliferated with misinformation and privacy issues? The fact is that you can start a business today and easily setup online payments. But the moment you start marketing your business, you will start with zero followers on social platforms and on the last page of search. There’s still a chasm between businesses reaching attainable customers.

BRIDGE sits on top of online payments and plugs businesses into local marketplaces.

Imagine being able to start a business and having 10,000+ ‘followers’ (read: locals in your city actively searching) to be able to sell your product or service. This can all be possible using tools built for local discovery.

What we’re doing at BRIDGE: Serving local businesses by plugging them into a local marketplace using video to connect, market and sell to people nearby. Our platform will give viewers a reliable resource to tap into a city and connect to what’s around them, wherever they are in the world.

TL;DR — If I can leave you with this…

Many businesses are coming online for the first time because of the pandemic and will bypass building websites and opt for innovative solutions that can plug their ‘ digital storefront’ directly into local networks — across desktop, mobile and TV.

Businesses deserve better tools to help them stay in business, especially during this time. Without our local businesses to keep people employed, our economy will not survive. We need platforms that aren’t so saturated and noisy so we can actually find what we’re looking for, see it simply and buy online — locally. We are giving the current platforms outsized weight and attention when we all deserve a more efficient and effective way to connect to what’s around us. There’s a better way if we build with intention and everyday utility to stimulate local connection and commerce.

Intention + Proximity = Attainable Customers

Attainable Customer + Video = Accelerated Conversion

We should be building platforms that optimize for this NOW. There’s a huge opportunity to build a connected ecosystem between mobile and OTT to optimize video distribution across all screens. That’s what we’re focused on at BRIDGE, as we build local marketplaces powered by video to help bring our cities into the future of search and e-commerce.

Those who move early and build a platform now will inherit the audiences and consumers of tomorrow.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss how we’re building the future of how people will connect locally around the world with BRIDGE and ways we can and should be utilizing video to connect people to what’s around them and stimulate our local economies.