I moved to Bowen from Sydney 3 years ago and worked in Cannonvale for the first year, it's no secret that the Whitsundays is a tight community. A lot of the processes in my system I came up with while reseaching the way people are doing business here. What I really wanted to offer people was a way to keep doing business the way they always have and not be concerned of the change that will come by going digital.

I totally understand that interacting with customers in the real world and generating work by word of mouth is a huge part of how business is done around here, but it is by no means enough to rely on. By taking care of just certain parts of your workflow that can be made digital and automated you can have more time to focus on offering the personal service that makes this community so great.

Working together

Moving from the City to the Whitsundays as a web developer I was faced with a different situation than I anticipated. There is very little digital activity going on here, a huge portion of small businesses, and even larger businesses, dont even have websites. When we first got here we struggled to find info on not only businesses and services but informtion about things going on in the community online. It really comes down to joining community pages on Facebook and aimlessly looking for things.

So my initial thought was Awesome! This will be like shooting fish in a barrel, all I need to do is convince people they need a website, like every business does in 2024, and I'll have endless work. This wasn't the case... I worked breifly at Angel Signs in Cannonvale as a graphic designer and got to meet a lot of new businesses starting up in the area. I spoke to everyone about their plans and I realised that majority of the new businesses coming to get sinage done for their stores and cars etc. had no budget at all for digital.

Spending $5000 just to have a basic website that nobody knows about isn't enough to warrant the cost when you have so many other things to pay. This is because there is alot more to it, having a presence online that actually works for your business and brings in customers isn't as easy as just building a website. It requires dedicated time to maintaining your digital activity and knowledge about what to do. Just having a Facebook page or basic website won't achieve much other than being a destination for people who have specifically gone looking for you, not the best investment for marketing a new businesses in the area.

So this is a unique situation for me. The community needs a digital pressence but not in the conventional way that would suit businesses in the city all trying to out do each other. Rather than going all out and having a website to show that your company is the best, there has to be a way for the community to work together, like it already does, but online. Without the need for everyone investing even more time focusing on digital growth, when they already have no time left running their businesses. And the business hub was born.

Facebook Community Pages

To be blunt, just using Facebook isn't the way to go. The biggest problem with Facebook is that people just post things and move on. So to get that information to potential customers you have to rely on the fact that the post appeared in their feed when you posted it. And that they were interested in seeing the post at that exact moment, if they scroll past it or dont make it that far down their feed and miss it, then the information is lost. If people want to know about your business they have to specifically go to your profile and scroll through your posts to get whatever information is on offer. Not the best way to comminicate who you are and how you do business to potential customers.

And then there is community pages. Sharing content to the community pages here as your only form of marketing is not ideal. I'm on the community pages and let's face it, the majority of the content on there is lost dogs, people selling stuff, scammers, visitors asking for information, people complaing about things in town or wanting to know if it's worth moving here. This is not the best place to be marketing your business information. The hub will allow us to have a dedicated platform for everything business going on in the community. Real information that is readily available for everyone who needs it. This will strengthen the community and allow us to network like never before.