While driving down the road tonight, I was looking on both sides of it. I realized that there are so many places here I have yet to discover, and things I want to do. I love to find new places to shop, little mom and pop stores, and little companies. The problem is, everything is buried behind everything else. There are only a number of stores, restaurants, cafes, and shops that line the streets. Shopping centers are buried behind other shopping centers, and more shopping centers. There is so much cement that I cannot see it all.
I noticed that is the big difference between a smaller town like Lubbock, Texas, and the Dallas, Texas area. Buildings and places in Lubbock are spaced out, easy to see, and mostly easy to find. Here in Dallas it is a maze of buildings and logos. I honestly, would hate to live in New York. I love media so much, but there gets a point for me where too much becomes noise and nothing but noise. I love the variety of new places here to experience, but I feel like I can't find them all on the same medium, so I have to look different places.
For instance, is every business in the phone book yellow pages? The answer is no, trust me. After searching the entire yellow pages for a certain business, I go to the internet. Limited information is there, and definitely not much of it for mom and pop places.
This lead me to thinking that smaller businesses need a bigger role in the social media and media worlds in general. Perhaps if they had a few tweaks to their Web site, a nicer Facebook page, more publicity somehow, that they could still compete with bigger businesses. So many small businesses do not have any kind of advertising. If someone sees Jimmy Johns, they just say, "Knock Knock, Jimmy Johns!" People know who that is, for the most part. I think businesses should invest in media, especially catchy jingles. There is nothing worse than getting a jingle in your head and it sticking there all day. However, it does stay with you when the subject arises!
So, the bottom line about my babbling is this: I think smaller businesses should invest more in new media and social media, and there should be an easier way to figure out what all there is to do in a town with so much noise. There are so many advertisements on buildings shooting out at people when they drive by, it doesn't give the ones buried behind them much of a shot.