ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – A local small business owner is sounding off after President Joe Biden signed a bill that could lead to a nationwide TikTok ban.
Leila Bedoian owns The Local St. Augustine, a hip retro-style motel on Anastasia Island.
“When we were designing and creating the property, we wanted to make it something people were excited to share,” Bedoian said.
She says TikTok is critical to their business.
“So, not only on social media do I talk about my hotel, but I talk about the local community and why you should come to St. Augustine. It’s such a beautiful city with so many cool things to do.”
In 2021, Bedoian transformed a roadside motel from rundown and forgettable, to something vibrant and sharable. A year later, it’s been voted the number one roadside hotel in the country by USA Today.
She says that would have never happened had she not been actively posting about her business on TikTok.
“All of the sudden I look down and one of my TikTok’s had gone viral with one million views, and eventually garnered four million views. My website traffic went from 50 users a day to thousands of users a day.”
Researchers at Oxford Economics say last year, small business use of the social media app in Florida supported 17,000 jobs and generated almost $370 million in federal, state and local tax revenue.
“TikTok is critical to my business because I am not only able to have brand awareness and connect with my audience, but the search function on TikTok and the algorithm, I’m always getting in front of new people,” Bedoian said.
Finding another free way to reach thousands of customers will be difficult if not impossible to do, she tells us. She feels that Congress is choosing to ignore the local small business owners like her, that will be left in the dark should the social media app get banned in the U.S.
“For me, I’m not really spending a lot of marketing dollars, advertising dollars, it’s all organic. So, I would have to figure out how to get that much brand awareness organically without spending a lot of money,” Bedoian said.