Ok, Ok, so what on earth’s going on with St Albans Businesses, The Businesses Community St Albans, SAB, facebook groups, BizCom, groups closing, then not closing, then changing? We are all soooooooo confused!!!!
Everyone has been talking about it!
Well, first of all, let us apologise for any confusion! As with anything that changes, there is always an element of “surprise” and even we were surprised!
First of all by the passion of people, not just our members, but of many people in general – the immense support, comradery and messages we received when things changed last week.
So what has changed?
St Albans Businesses was first created as a facebook group for businesses in St Albans to get together, share ideas, collaborate and support each other. It grew and grew and grew.
There was tons of juicy business information on there that was getting lost in the facebook streams, and when we were asked to run a business event by Oaklands College we decided that it would be a fantastic idea to create a website which would become the “go to” place for all things business in this amazing city. Hence stalbansbusinesses.co.uk was created.
The new website enabled us to invite businesses to become members of this business community – to feature their businesses, share their top tips, their events, their news, their products and services – enabling businesses to be part of a team – supporting and helping each other to enable other business owners and the community to get to know, like and trust them. By sharing their expertise, meeting up at many SAB events, taking part in crazy videos and generally getting to know each other it was a fantastic way of building an incredible community.
Roll on 2 years, and many more facebook members, as well as members of the team, and we were approached to launch in other areas, Enfield and Luton being two of them.
This was very exciting for us all – it enabled our members to gain even more exposure if they wanted it – with many of our members’ products and services available on line, it proved a valuable opportunity to continue to build that know, like and trust in other areas.
Hence, we needed a slight amendment to our name. St Albans Businesses becomes The Businesses Community St Albans. To include, The Businesses Community Enfield and The Businesses Community Luton! Which also led to a completely new website – still with fantastic features for our members, including an online shop leading back to our members websites where people could make the actual purchase, continuing with members sharing their expertise, collaborating and supporting each other.
So why did we almost close the St Albans Businesses facebook group? At 4,000 members, we felt that there were lots of businesses that weren’t using the group in the way we had intended – support, comradery and actually getting to know each other. There were lots of businesses that simply wanted to “advertise” within the group and not contribute to the community as a whole – which we felt was not why we set the group up and was unfair on our members.
When we announced the potential closure of the group, many of our members contacted us to give us their feedback. They spoke. We listened. And we then adapted!
The St Albans Businesses facebook group which now has 4,000 members was then to become an extension of our quarterly publication, BizCom, which is all about the businesses meeting the community. So for not only business owners, but the community itself as well. It’s all about getting to know the people behind the businesses in St Albans. To show that we are not faceless businesses, but that we are actual people. Building an affinity with the community, why we started our businesses, what we have to offer, and building on the know, like and trust by sharing different things about the businesses we run.
So, there we have it!
We have over 250 members of the TBC Team and, at time of writing, 4,000 people in our SAB facebook group.
We will continue to work with our members to give them the platform to showcase what they do – to enable them to meet the community and to support and help each other to run successful businesses – after all, we are all people, we’ve all taken the leap to go for it, and we want to continue to build a fantastic community to help and support each other.
If you have any queries about membership with us, give us a shout at hello@thebusinessescommunity.com – or if you’d like to see if being a member is right for you and your business, why not try it out for 1 month – it may not be for everyone, but our members tell us they absolutely love being part of this community 🙂
