Shop Local Delmarva A Private Group

The start of a new day, it is one of the coolest things about seeing the sun come up over the horizon out on the water. Well we are kind of kicking off a new day with Shop Local Delmarva now a private group.

This wasn't something that we wanted to change but after getting hundreds of members joining from all over the world we knew this wasn't going to work. We still had control of who could post and could limit that but just trying to keep up with the volume of that many additional activities isn't something that we thought would be beneficial to anyone. And honestly our group has grown to a much larger audience in our local area than many places distribution list and reach. That is why so many places are posting here and asking questions here.

The biggest difference with this change is that our posts will only be seen on our group and not off of our group. Well that just means that if people want to know what is going on they will have to join and follow the rules. I am a member of quite a few groups and the public groups right now are getting overrun with bot accounts and fake profiles. I could show just how many request we had from people from China, India, Indonesia, etc. in the first few hours that FB made the change to the groups. A number of other group admins made the change in advance and made their groups private. I wanted to wait it out and see if it was as bad as we anticipated and it was far worse.

When this change was first announced many, many months ago by FB I strongly considered moving the group to a private group then. After doing a poll with our members and reading several comments it swayed the way I was thinking and I thought it might be OK staying public. I really wish I had made the move back then. It certainly would be saving us a ton of work on the admin mod end right now.

So what is the big deal with allowing anyone to be a member if they can't post on the group? Well they are fake numbers. We have never been into having loads and loads of members? We decline more member request than so many groups even have. So if we wanted members that didn't share our values we would just approve anyone that wanted to join all along. Now having to review each and every comment someone wants to make when they join but haven't been approved is just silly.

What this means going forward is we will simply will continue to grow our group with local, kind, people and businesses on Delmarva. We will continue to urge our members to share wonderful positive feedback about our local businesses and our community. We will still be a safe place and now even safer from bickering and arguing and name calling and politics and all of the other stuff you see online and in other groups. We will continue to promote our goal in supporting our local businesses and our community. You may think that this will slow down the exposure that we have. But I am really optimistic that it is going to do the exact opposite and in fact increase it. Think about it this way. How many people sit on the sidelines to see what is going on but don't join. Now if they want to see what is going on they will have to be a member. Many public groups that changed to private actually exploded with membership request. One large one I am on has 250k members. Well we are just over 15k members today. I can guarantee we will grow. And if you own a local business don't you want to put your message in front of 15k people that want to support your local business?

What Can You Do

Help us grow our group with more kind, local people just like you. I am not sure how all of the changes will play out in the end but I am positive in order to keep our group focused on what we have started out to do this was the only way. And if you know of a business that is trying to get the word out ask them if they put it on Shop Local Delmarva.

David

Shop Local Delmarva

And don't forget our Supporters, Partners, and Sponsors.

You may notice certain businesses are highlighted and standout not only in the directory but we highlight them on our Facebook Page as well as our group. This ever growing list of businesses help us promote  a lot of great things in our community. Many of our blogs which you can find right here are focused on our community and our local businesses.

Many of these businesses are helping us promote other local businesses. Which really is what Delmarva is all about. I am asked quite often how a business can be part of Shop Local Delmarva. If you are part of our group you are part of Shop Local Delmarva. If you like the group and like the concept of a digital type of media that we share blogs, videos, highlights and features and want to be part of it we would love to have your support. You can find out more information here. All of our supporters, partners, and sponsors are on the rotating banners on most of our blogs just like this one.

If any of our supporters, partners, or sponsors have upcoming events we encourage them to let us know so we can help them promote them as well.

The whole idea of Shop Local Delmarva is all about our local community supporting local businesses, and our local businesses supporting our local community. It goes round and round.