08/11/2026
Rant Incoming
I want to talk about small business, brick and mortar stores, and the social media environment.
There was a small business in a town near here - even smaller than Granville - that I didn’t shop at enough, but I stopped in pretty often to get fresh flowers. Yesterday they posted that they had decided to shut down the store, as of that day. It’s gone.
And this was a tiny little shop that worked so hard at social media and marketing themselves. I watched them closely to see if it worked. They posted probably 3 reels a week. They went on camera. They did the cutesy reels lip-synching to tv shows and movies that I refuse to do.
And at the end they still have less than 700 Instagram subscribers and have had to close the business.
And this is the issue that all brick-and-mortar businesses that need actual humans to come into the space, face on social media. Particularly Instagram.
The gallery I co-own has an account that has almost 1000 followers. But most of the posts I make over there, will get less than 100 views. Some will only reach a handful of accounts. Which means that not even our subscribers will see our posts, never mind the post getting pushed out to other people in the area who might be interested.
Meta - which owns Instagram and Facebook - is not interested in brick-and-mortar business because there is no ad or click-through revenue for them. Or not much. So they actively suppress our accounts. And it wouldn’t matter that much except they have so fully captured the information environment. And I don’t think paying for ads is the answer. I get ads for portrait photographers in Oregon. These people are paying for ads being seen by people who will never hire them.
Anyway, I don’t have an answer to this. I just wanted to rant as someone who fights this battle for two different businesses on a daily basis. Close down that amazon tab and go shop at your local store when you get the chance.
business
