By Jose Franco
The major difference between mass media and social media is this; the mass media puts the audience in a passive position. Social media puts the audience at the center and with work, could do a better job at reaching your business’s market niche. Through social media, Stoop Juice has implemented a marketing campaign that interacts with existing and potential customers. Our typical patron is interested in a healthy balanced life style consisting of healthy food options, exercise and consciousness. By posting original articles reflecting our customer’s interest on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter pages regularly, our brand’s exposure has increased exponentially.
Small businesses commonly advertise to increase brand awareness and sales (online, print, radio and television) A new recipe or the smoothie of the day are common go to's to promote healthy food choices. Instructional videos on exercise are everywhere and also promotes desired healthy lifestyle. These videos are featured in ad spots during shows their intended demographic is likely to be watching. Newspaper advertising, typically costs less per thousand readers than television, radio, and direct mail advertising. In addition, newspaper staff members will work directly with advertisers to create ads at no additional costs. Newspaper advertising can also be customized to meet your budget.
A huge obstacle to normalizing the balanced lifestyle we promote is the little amount of shows, reports and features which promote thoughtfulness, self awareness and consciousness regularly on paid media. The owners of the media are usually large corporations whose primary focus is profits. And so it isn’t so much that the media are selling your product, they’re also selling other advertiser’s products. Mindfulness can’t compete with what’s reported in the news by the complicity of the media with advertisers. Today, even at the local level, the government, corporations and big institutions know how to play the media game. They know how to influence the news narrative. They feed media scoops, official accounts, interviews with the ‘experts’. They make themselves crucial to the process of journalism. So, those in power and those who report on them are in bed with each other and only pay lip service to individuals who seek “the truth”. When Stoop Juice competes with corporations that advertise unhealthy processed food with big advertising budgets, we are pushed to the margins. Since our offering strays away from the consensus, the same media outlet we’ve used with past success are in action discrediting our sources, trashing our articles and diverting our conversation with potential customers to other entities willing to pay. These savvy ads will negatively reference actors as nerds instead of well informed or grass grazers in place of vegans to create a common enemy, a bogeyman to fear which helps corral public opinion against our balanced living message.
By mostly advertising on social media, Stoop Juice continually creates content that is available to customers whenever they become self aware and seek to start or continue a healthy balanced lifestyle. We’ve published close to 60 articles with titles such as “The Healthy 3%”, “The five triggers that promotes new habits”, “Self talk and keeping the weight off” and “Are you woke yet?” In an article titled “Self Awareness” the writer (Jose Franco) states, “Hearing or reading information that backs our beliefs feels good, validates our opinions and so we often seek it out. Many conservatives think liberal-minded individuals treat Rachel Maddow’s words as gospel. At the same time, many Liberals think most conservatives flock to Fox News and absorb almost everything said without a hint of skepticism.” We disagree with both these binary labeled views. Labeled views (liberal, Conservative) are easily packaged for people to choose external commonalities instead of being in the moment and self reflecting. A sentiment most of our customers agree with. The age of new media has produced only a handful of profitable new companies (Amazon and Google are the most notable examples). At the same time, while old media (newspapers, TV, radio) have proved more resilient than many observers expected, their business models continue to be severely undermined. we might also think that success in the future is just the natural next part of the story comforting you with a false sense of security—when really it’s rooted in work, creativity, persistence, and luck regardless of fear.
By fear, I mean the inability to create a plan of action because of all the conflicting ads, articles and reporting in the media. Why should the owner of a Park Slope, Brooklyn juice bar write content that takes time to read and understand despite knowing most people may not read it, live far from the shop and/or aren't ready to buy? This is our attempt to save people from modern censorship. Censorship no longer works by hiding information from you; censorship works by flooding you with immense amounts of misinformation, of irrelevant information, videos of people falling, SMNR and music videos, until you're just unable to focus. Most of us are flawed beings, when confronted with low-hanging fruit in the Tree of Life, we have to resist plucking it. To put it another way, If offered $50 today or $100 in a year, most people take the money and run, even though it's against their best interests. However, if offered $50 in five years or $100 in six years, almost everybody chooses the $100! Our decisions are guided by the perceived values at the moment of the decision - not by the potential final value. This is why I think so many of us are distracted by the less nutritious products with larger advertising budgets that Stoop Juice compete against. When public goods are present, everything changes. Information is an almost perfect example of a pure public good. It is completely non rival and largely non excludable. Non rivalry means that, once produced, information can be used by as many people as can gain access to it, without reducing its availability to others. The crucial development of the Information revolution has been to reduce the cost of distributing information, in many cases effectively to zero. The crucial development here is the ease with which information that promotes the public good can be reproduced and made available on social media. We’ve found the majority of people reading and sharing our free articles are business owners, managers on LinkedIn and Facebook.