Booting up: How BBI is helping Black businesses grow their online presence

It’s more important now than ever before that businesses develop a strong brand presence online if they want to compete.It’s something that became very apparent to the Black Business Initiative (BBI), which addresses the unique needs faced by Nova Scotia’s Black business community, during the pandemic. “One area that people are coming to us for support is specifically tech integration,” said BBI’s Senior Marketing Manager, Monica Mutale. For the past nearly 30 years, the organization has been supporting Black-owned businesses, meeting them where they’re at with training and programming. Lately, the area of greatest need has been helping entrepreneurs not only establish a digital presence but also how to market their businesses online, said Mutale.“One of the challenges that BBI had to respond to was, ‘How do we equip people to increase their online presence? How do we teach them how to use social media if they’ve never used it before,’” she said.“One thing that I think is unique about the Black community is that we really are a community, so there are a lot of family run businesses, there are businesses that are promoted in more traditional methods. But when you’re faced with a pandemic, when all of a sudden everyone’s storefronts are being shut down, you can’t just promote your business by putting up a poster at a local church, which is actually a way that people do advertise in the Black community.”She said while many competitors began launching their online stores and ordering systems—and were suddenly able to ship around the world—many BBI clients wanted to learn how to keep up.And so, doing what they do best, BBI started offering training.This past year, BBI selected Strategy Up to offer a program on marketing in the new digital era, which was fully funded by the Department of Labour, Skills and Immigration. Marc Zirka, the boutique consulting firm’s CEO, said working with BBI has been extremely rewarding.“It’s really amazing to be able to support and to help,” he said. “Personally—and at Strategy Up—we love to support all the members of our community, so working with BBI and supporting Black-owned businesses here in Nova Scotia was really one of our objectives.”Zirka is originally from Lebanon but left his home country in 2005. He said he’s keenly aware that creating a community is about learning from others with diverse backgrounds. “It’s not just ticking boxes and saying, ‘Okay now we have diversity.’ It’s really working together and trying to help each other,” he said. “I learn a lot from the participants, and I just believe that adding different perspectives from different cultures from different backgrounds would only enrich our relationship—and even elevate the quality of service in our market.” As part of Strategy Up’s engagement with Black-owned businesses during the Black History Month, the company organized a series of three free webinars with Microhills, Taya-Ties and Fumes Rolling Papers & Accessories to discuss their business journeys and successes along the way. If you wish to support Black-owned businesses this month and beyond, you can check out BBI’s Black Business Directory, which was historically a document but is now available online. “It’s a great resource that you can go in and search businesses. We want to have that database for people to be able to easily access, and I’m really excited that it’s digital for the first time," said Mutale.To find out more about what BBI offers, check out their website. And to hear our full conversation with Mutale, listen to All Hands on Tech Episode 15: Booting Up Black Businesses wherever you get your podcasts or here. https://youtu.be/dLYNKq3oEqo