Overview
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, small business employ more than half of the workers in America’s economy. In 2006 – the most recent numbers available for such a study – the number of firms and establishments in the country totaled 13,623,287. Firms and establishments with less than 20 employees (By the Bootstraps own definition of a small business) was 10,806,804, 79 percent of the nation’s businesses.
The importance of small businesses and patronage of these businesses has been stressed as a key to economic recovery by the Obama administration. Yet through a nonscientific analysis of Chicago and national media’s coverage on the recession, the coverage hasn’t addressed the stories of the people behind the counter or the customers who walk through their doors.
Across the board the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Times and the Washington Post focus on the national and state policies that affect local businesses. While a quote from an owner will always appear in the story, articles don’t go beyond the who, what, where, and when of their business in relation to policy shifts. There are sections of these publications (mostly online) that address the owners themselves: how to use social media, how to apply for loans through the Small Business Administration, etc.
What is truly lacking in the coverage is hyperlocal profiles of area businesses and how they are dealing with the recession. That was the role I hoped By the Bootstraps could perform during the 10-weeks I ran the blog for the Interactive Publishing class.
Readers learned about businesses they may have never heard of, the difficulties of running a business in a recession and learned about the economy in what I hope was an engaging and relatable way. By highlighting these businesses when other prominent media providers relegated profiles to fluff, their importance to Chicago’s way of life and economy came through.
The results I received from my survey were encouraging and leads me to believe a blog like this is viable outside of the confines of a class project. If I had the opportunity to continue By the Bootstraps, I would want:
- To expand readership from 61 unique viewers to at least 150.
- To increase readers’ interaction with the site. While I know the average time spent on my site was 2:44, only one person left a comment. I want readers to get comfortable with myself and my site, sending me ideas, asking questions, etc.
- To be a part of the Chicago Now blog community. ChicagoNow.com currently has 79 blogs but not one covers Chicago businesses, a glaring absence for the community that considers itself the city’s “online town square.” By being a part of ChicagoNow, By the Bootstraps would reach over 1,000 Chicagoans, become a lot more Tweetable.
- To increase the symbiotic relationship between By the Bootstraps and businesses it covers
If I want to have a better idea of how to expand my readership, I have to recognize what makes up the current audience. By the Bootstraps readers are:
- Mostly women between the ages of 18-24
- lives in Chicago
- Highly educated
- Receive most of their news on the recession and its impact from online newspapers
- Shop mostly at Mom and Pop stores in their area
- Don’t use social media that frequently
To continue meeting my audience’s needs and to meet my own goals, I plan on offering the following:
- Customized, engaging layout and look
- Longer feature stories separated from the blog’s typical content
- Separate profiles by business type
- Separate personal profiles from business analysis and article links
- Reach more viable Twitter users (no bots or annoying advertisers) and increase my tweeting frequency
- Tweet coupons and discounts from area businesses with a social media presence
- Create maps to featured neighborhoods in Chicago, plotting the businesses there
- Use Yelp widgets to have users search for reviews of the business and find one that allows users to write their own reviews through the widget