The Banner Brings Back ‘Business Spotlight’

The Banner recently launched a Facebook group, McKenzie Businesses Thrive Together, as a meeting place for businesses to exchange ideas, products and work together to achieve goals.

It is not intended to be a “wants and needs” group, but a place to have an open line of communication between business people so that we may all grow and succeed together. When one does well, we all benefit. By choosing to invest in each other, we all thrive. By actively working together, we will become more resilient as a business community.

In keeping with the mission of this group, we at The Banner thought it was worth taking another look at a concept we tried out several years ago, the Business Spotlight.

We would produce a feature story about local businesses, their owners and staff to print in the paper, and to reciprocate, the business would make a small purchase (advertising or printing) from The Banner.

One issue in the past was that highlighting one business per week can leave other businesses feeling ignored, looked over and impatient for their time in the “Spotlight.”

Fortunately, the increase of social media as a business tool (and the creation of the Facebook group) should facilitate the communication that will be needed for us to tackle this endeavor with transparency and organization and give every business the opportunity to take advantage of our “Spotlight.”

We are hitting the ground running with this effort and have begun scheduling publication dates. If you would like your business to be featured, please contact The Banner at your convenience.

Although we are assigning dates by publication in the print edition, this is a “digital-first” initiative. For each Business Spotlight, the feature will be released on our website and social media platforms in advance of the publication date.

Like any other business, The Banner exists because of loyal customers. In order to honor that loyalty, some weight will be given to long-term, consistent customers when scheduling businesses.

For example, expect our first Spotlight to feature a loyal Banner customer. Then, rest assured that we will mix in businesses that may not have utilized our services in the past.

This is a daunting task, but we believe that our community, our businesses and the real people behind them deserve our best effort. So please be patient with us as we get this thing off the ground, and hopefully, it will be a boon to our community for years to come.