I know this title sounds like click-bait, but I really do believe that live streaming and social media may have the power to help defend our countries small businesses again tech giants like Amazon and Walmart! I love small businesses and I just finished producing a beautiful, television quality, Facebook Live broadcast for a local retail store. Most small businesses, especially those in the boutique retail space, do not have time to think about producing videos, much less broadcasting live. In fact, the owner of Old Soul Decor, Krystal Reinhard, pictured below, did not even have a YouTube account when I first asked her about doing a free pro-bono broadcast for her company.
Old Soul Decor is located just a few doors down from our office in downtown West Chester and Krystal explained to me that she knows they should live streaming but it's difficult to find the time. Like many other small businesses, Reinhard has a dedicated following on Facebook with over 1,000 likes on her page, a social media feat she is proud of.
 
With everything going on in today's day and age, the rise of Walmart and now Amazon, it's a wonder how small businesses in our community stay afloat. The rise of online video and live streaming has been a blessing for our business so I really wanted to see if we could rub a little of our magic off on a local business :)

Above you can see an "inbound marketing" funnel I built modeled from HubSpot's famous "Attract, Convert, Close & Delight" motto and redesigned for retail businesses. It seems to me that too many retail stores are too reliant on walk-in customers and physical attraction items like a store-front window. While it will likely take a real human to covert and close many traditional retail customers I believe that live streaming will be a game changer when paired with localized advertising tools available from Facebook & YouTube.
 
As you can see on slide 16 of my Slideshare embedded, social media advertising has a much lower price of entry when compared to Local Radio or Television advertising. There's a lot of information to digest in this presentation and included tutorial video. In essence, I believe that people buy from small businesses because they like to shop locally and they like purchasing from someone they know and trust. Live streaming will allow small businesses of every variety to reach out to their local communities in ways that big businesses could never scale to fulfill. So I would love to hear some comments from those of you on LinkedIN who are passionate about small business!
Sincerly,
Paul Richards
Chief Streaming Officer
StreamGeeks