Yep, I said it. I am an online digital specialist for rural and regional businesses, and I am so over the internet.
It didn't always feel like this. When I started in social media seven? Eight? Years ago, it felt like social media was a gift for rural businesses; it was new, and it was exciting, and it was an area that a lot of rural businesses hadn’t explored yet. For the first time, we were able to show up in the same feeds that big city brands were showing up in, and you didn’t need a huge budget; you just needed something worth saying and the guts to say it.
That was the whole pitch, and for a while it was true.
Then the rules changed, and kept changing.
Organic reach dropped, platforms wanted you to spend more money with them. The algorithm started rewarding volume over value, and now who knows what it is doing. Posting once a week wasn’t enough, and then posting once a day wasn’t cutting it either. Now it’s Reels, or Trends, Stories, Lives, and content made to keep people scrolling rather than actually help them.
Add in the rise of AI (do not get me started on AI-generated graphics), and the internet is filling up with content that no one actually wrote and no one really reads.
It has become a full time job to stay visible online, and most rural business owners already have one of those.
When I closed Local Social Co…
I couldn’t keep selling social media management in good conscience. The landscape had shifted so far that I didn’t believe the service was giving small businesses what they were paying for.
That’s an uncomfortable thing to admit when it’s the premise of your business, but I would rather have said it than keep selling something I no longer believed in.
Tired is not the same as giving up.
Honestly, rural businesses cannot afford to give up on showing up online. If someone outside of your local 50km can’t find you, you don’t exist to them. Your online presence is often the first thing people see - they stumble across you on Instagram, someone texts them your Tiktok, they find you listed on a Google search, they see your post shared on Facebook.
I’m not saying log off and forget your details. I’m saying stop playing a game that was never designed to win, because I am.
What you can do instead.
Own your contacts. Your email list belongs to you; your followers belong to the platform.
Post less but say more. Honestly, one genuinely useful post beats seven forgettable ones.
Be findable, not everywhere. Get your Google listing, website and contact details right before you bother worrying about the latest trending audio.
Talk like a person. We can tell when you’ve copy and pasted directly from ChatGPT with no tweaking at all.
Measure what matters. Likes don’t pay the bills.
The internet still matters; it just isn’t everything.
The best rural business marketing I’ve seen has never been the slickest. In fact, when I think about some favourites from recently, it's the light-hearted, funny content and the content that made me go “hey, that was helpful” that stand out. It’s the people and businesses that show up honestly online when people go looking.
I’m still a digital marketer; I still believe in what good digital can do for a rural business. I am just done pretending more noise is the answer.
