We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shannon Beckham a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Shannon thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
I came up with the idea for Jacksonville Beach Moms back in 2017 while I was serving as PTA president at my children’s school. I was working with a group of volunteers, planning community events, and I realized there were no free or low-cost options to promote our community events and I wanted to change that. We first launched Jacksonville Beach Moms with social media channels, but I quickly realized I needed a way to keep the content organized, searchable, and easy to navigate. From social media we then added a website, and most recently a podcast and set of activity books for kids.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m a former teacher so left the profession to raise a family and I’ve always been active in our local community. I’ve headed up school committees, led a Girl Scout Troop, coached local teams, and so on. I knew from the start that Jacksonville Beach Moms needed to focus 100% on what Jacksonville has to offer families. I also knew I wanted to it be completely free for users. In addition, I knew that I wanted to keep advertising rates for local small businesses reasonable so we could help promote from within our community.
I’m proud that we’ve been able to hire Jacksonville moms to write for our website, collaborated with business leaders in our community, and helped local companies spread the word about their services, products, and events.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Spring of 2020, when Covid hit was a huge pivot for us. Our team plans out content and schedules posts months in advance. All of a sudden we were scrambling to pull down events that had been canceled and information about businesses that were temporarily closed.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
If you’re looking to build an engaged audience of authentic followers on social media, then make sure you’re in it for the long haul. One of the things I’ve discovered on our journey is that there is always someone trying to sell you a quick fix to find likes, but connecting with real people gets much better results. You have to be active in your social media community. You can’t just pop on and post something and then log off for the day.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jacksonvillebeachmoms.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxbeachmoms/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JacksonvilleBeachMoms
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/jacksonville-beach-moms/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/JaxBeachMoms
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC78WVC_zThvS2AFGrdD_LZg
- Other: Podcast – http://www.jacksonvillemomcast.com/ Amazon Shop: https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AJacksonville+Beach+Moms&s=relevancerank&language=en_US&linkCode=sl2&linkId=8f46151b99de804060b518e05ef5358e&tag=jacksonvillbe-20&text=Jacksonville+Beach+Moms&ref=as_li_ss_tl Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/JaxBeachMoms?source=aw&utm_source=affiliate_window&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=us_location_buyer&utm_content=440777&awc=6220_1661877229_9484f375c656524636f260a0acfcfc9b&utm_term=0