Ruston Social Media Business Plan

1. Executive Summary: Our business, Ruston Public Relations, aims to help businesses create and maintain a social media presence and/or website. We created this business to follow our passion for technology/design by providing a social media presence or website for small and family-owned businesses around Ruston and surrounding areas that have not yet established themselves in digital advertising. As past and current employees of small businesses, we have seen firsthand how to maintain a website/social media platform. Many business owners would rather spend their time working and maintaining their businesses than trying to figure out ways to advertise their businesses online.

2. Background, Mission, and Operations of Business:

Background:

Advertising has taken many forms throughout history, from word of mouth to newspapers, and to billboards, but something new has completely changed business advertising: social media. Social media platforms allow people or groups to share comments, pictures, videos, and thoughts instantly across the globe. Social media has taken the world by storm over the past 20 years and has become part of daily life for over 4.5 billion people (Dean, 2021). With social media being such a powerful tool to connect to people, businesses are changing their advertising tactics to advertise through social media. Many companies and businesses that are advertising through social media are large companies that have designated advertisements on social media platforms like Youtube, FaceBook, and Instagram. An example of this is an ad before a youtube video or an ad between regular posts on FaceBook or Instagram. However, smaller businesses may not be able to afford a long-term advertisement campaign or have the expertise to correctly advertise on more prominent social media

Ruston Public Relations will create accounts on major social media platforms and actively manage social media accounts that can be personalized by the company. One of the biggest issues we see with small and family-owned businesses is the disconnect between the owners and social media users. The average age of male business owners is 43.8 and the average age of a female business owner is 43 (Zippia, 2022). Whereas social media is typically targeting younger people, over 88 percent of people between the ages of 18 to 29 use social media (Faverio, 2022). Having the average age of business owners a decade older than the targeted age group of social media, older business owners may not be able to use social media proficiently. Another concern we have is that business owners may not be able to create posts that draw in and connect with younger generations which would cause them to miss out on the majority of social media users. Ruston Public Relations is composed of people who grew up with social media and we feel like we can effectively connect with younger generations as well as create appealing accounts and posts that will successfully advertise a company and its products.

Ruston Public Relations targets small and family-owned businesses because these businesses often do not have the personnel to correctly run a social media account. Having a social media account that