@blogactionday12 #PowerOfWe #BAD12 Those Twitter user handle and hashtags represent Blog Action Day 2012 discussing the Power Of We – internet blogging community action, bringing thousands of bloggers together to discuss a single topic on October 15. The topic this year is “The Power of We” which is about how bloggers, social media and individual action can affect change through social media and blogging.
Blog Action Day 2012
Think a bit about how your business touches people and lets use that daily interaction to bring positive change to our communities. WebSite101 has participated since 2009 discussing how small business in connected to the issue of clean water, food and world hunger (see “Related Posts” below) and our sister site It’s a Money Thing participated in 2008 when the theme was Poverty.
This year we come together as a blogging community to emphasize the ability of a group of individuals to focus attention on the ability to make change by gathering around a single goal – whether that is to elect a president or focus on injustices around the world.
So as we look at the “Power of We” I’d like to suggest that small business people can support local issues in their community by focusing attention on the number of jobs created by small business.
Small Business Contribution to US Jobs
It’s worth noting that when the economy turned nasty bitter in 2008 that thousands of people lost their jobs and that crisis offered some who had been wanting to start up their own small business the needed push to jump in and begin a micro-enterprise to serve their own community or just to fulfill a dream of an entrepreneurial spirit. Unfortunately it doesn’t always go well – according to government data, 170,000 small business were actually killed by that same economic crisis.
The dream means building another source of jobs, another contributor to the economy and new fuel for the U.S. economic engine. Let’s hear those success stories – not the failures that network news likes to focus on.
One of my favorite television programs is “Shark Tank” where a panel of venture capitalists listen to a pitch from an entrepreneur and then compete to invest in those ideas they believe represent winners. Great ideas emerge from little guys starting out on big dreams and the sharks, as they are affectionately known, see opportunity where ideas meet investment capital.
One trend that has been very clearly visible on Shark Tank has been small business people who strongly support the “Made in America” and supporting their own communities. This chafes the VC’s as they attempt to push the entrepreneurs to move manufacturing and materials sourcing overseas – but many have held strong, even to the point of turning down funding from the sharks because they INSIST they will keep it both local and Made in the USA.
Small business is a great place to be when it works as we intend it to. Let’s make it work. Let’s also work to educate our own communities to the value of shopping small business and teaching everyone how valuable it can be to support the local economy by participating iin Small Business Saturday.
That is the Power of We for small business. Not just work for the individual business owners, but work for the communities we support, employees we hire, the little league teams we sponsor.Local Community Retail and Service businesses can exercise that power together by supporting that same community.