National Small Business Week – Positive Review Week

May 2nd 2022, BRANDON MS – This week is officially National Small Business Week. National Small Business Week 2022 (May 2 – 6) celebrates the resiliency and tenacity of America’s entrepreneurs who are doing their part to power our nation’s economic comeback. This a a time to CELEBRATE and SUPPORT our area’s LOCAL SMALL BUSINESSES.

We know many citizens in our area want to support local businesses, and some have asked “what can I do to help?”. Brandon042® would like to establish that Small Business Week is Positive Review Week here in the Brandon area. Here’s YOUR opportunity to help small businesses. If you’ve had a good experience with a local retailer, restaurant, or service provider, PLEASE take the time to write a positive review. It doesn’t take but a couple minutes, and it cost NOTHING.

We monitor many things on social media, including reviews of local businesses. It’s shocking how many reviews begin with words like “I’ve been here a dozen times in the past few months and never had a problem, but let me tell you about the horrible experience I had last night…” Really? Where are the dozen positive reviews?

We also see the following quite frequently… someone leaves a terrible review of a business, sometimes even getting personal about the location, and then we research the reviewer a little and see that it’s their FIRST and ONLY review on that platform. This sort of thing validates the belief that people are more likely to leave a negative review than a positive review. Sure, you expect a good, positive experience when you go out. But do you know what will be helpful for the community in getting and keeping good businesses? Yep, POSITIVE REVIEWS.

We encourage everyone to provide positive feedback when you have a good experience. If you have a subpar experience, please keep in mind the struggles that small business owners face today, including the obvious staffing issues. But more importantly, we suggest that you don’t owe it to the public to put that small business on blast, by making a scathing public review of them. If you’ve had a subpar experience, contact the manager or wait a day and call and ask for the manager or owner. Business owners actually care about customer satisfaction and staying in business. Local business owners typically live right here amongst the rest of us, they shop at the same places we do, many go to church with us, or have kids on our kids’ ball teams. Our point is, please make it a practice to leave a positive review, when warranted.

A great way to keep up with small businesses in our area is the Brandon042® Business Directory and the new #Eat042 concept. When you go out to eat here in Brandon, you can “tell” the restaurant that you support Brandon businesses by writing the hashtag #Eat042 on your receipt, or by checking in on social media and using the Eat042 hashtag. You can also login to www.Eat042.com and see a custom map on Google, of all the restaurants here in Brandon. You can click on “Save” or “Follow” and it’ll save the Eat042 map on your device. We’ll try to always keep the Eat042 map updated, when a business closes or a new one opens.

So please make National Small Business Week, Positive Review Week. Go ahead, leave a positive review for the last local business you went to. Thanks for support Brandon Small Businesses!

www.Eat042.com – A custom Google Map of restaurants within the City of Brandon

https://maps.google.com – Google Maps, login and create your own Google Profile, so you can leave positive reviews

Brandon Business Directory – A Directory of all businesses in the City of Brandon