{"id":282219,"date":"2020-10-22T14:24:11","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T04:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=282219"},"modified":"2020-10-23T18:03:10","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T08:03:10","slug":"facebook-group-spawns-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2020\/10\/22\/facebook-group-spawns-website\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Group Spawns Website"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Jenn Donovan has now launched a website as a companion to her popular Facebook group (Photo: Supplied)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

October 22, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Buy From A Bush Business” – a Facebook group that came into its own during COVID-19 – is celebrating its first birthday on October 31.<\/p>\n

During the past 12 months, the group founded by Jenn Donovan to support small rural businesses has grown from no members to an impressive 285,000.<\/p>\n

And quite a few of them are in the South Burnett …<\/p>\n

Jenn, who is married to a farmer, lives in the NSW Riverina and runs a marketing business.<\/p>\n

\u201c#Buy From the Bush was a hashtag that people were starting to know about but didn\u2019t know how to get involved with,” she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI lived and was working in drought country \u2013 years of drought had hit these (and many other) towns hard.\u00a0 It was coming up Christmas and no one was looking forward to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know as an ex-retailer, that if farmers don\u2019t have money, towns don\u2019t have money \u2013 so no one really expected a good Christmas in their business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenn decided that a Facebook group, where people could just post themselves, was the way to go.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She celebrated when the group reached 5000 members, then 10,000 members and then 25,000 members.<\/p>\n

She had no idea\u00a0it would rise to 285,000 and continue to grow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no idea how much money has been traded in the past 12 months, but it must be in the 100s of thousands \u2013 possibly millions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Jenn and a team of volunteer admins now spend hundreds of hours each week approving posts, answering messages and taking phone calls from members who aren\u2019t tech savvy but want to be a part of the community.<\/p>\n

She has now set up a companion website, www.spendwithus.com.au<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0where regional and remote businesses can promote their goods for a small fee.<\/p>\n