The Reality Check
The internet has a way of playing tricks on our heads. At some point, everything became about these massive, almost imaginary numbers. We chase millions of followers and thousands of “impressions,” but if we’re honest, most of it is just a digital fog that doesn’t mean much in the real world.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I just posted a piece on locallybiz about why we need to stop trying to reach the “four corners of the earth” and just look at the people right in front of us.
We’ve forgotten what numbers actually look like:
- If you have 5 people in your living room, that’s a party.
- If you have 20 people in a room, that’s a full-on meeting.
- If you have 100 people, you’re standing in a lecture hall.
Since when did reaching five or ten real people become a “small” thing?
The digital world is endless, but it’s also thin. We’re obsessed with “scale,” but we’ve lost impact. For most businesses, the real value isn’t found in some obscure corner of the internet—it’s local. It’s about building an identity where you actually live. You have a much better chance of building a real relationship with those five neighbors than you do by shouting into a digital void where the odds are rigged against you anyway.
The problem is that the “town squares” of the past are gone. The platforms that promised to replace them have mostly just closed us off or made us pay to be heard. Most people are great at what they do, but they’re exhausted by the “options” and the noise of the internet.
I wrote this because I think we’re being fooled into chasing a global reach we don’t actually need. Sometimes, the best way to grow is to stop looking out and start looking in.
We’re working on a way to help businesses do exactly that. Read the full post here.