2025 has proven to be a year of overwhelming information. From ever-changing economic policy creating significant supply chain, pricing, and consumer uncertainty to rapidly advancing AI technologies flooding communication platforms. 2025 has been a wild ride and yet, we’ve heard stories of remarkable resilience from our small business community. Our purpose at Bricks Need Mortar is to facilitate and support collaboration and innovation amongst brick and mortar small businesses. We work to raise the visibility of each participating business and this community as a whole, through advocacy with policy makers, in partnership with other organizations and community organizations and directly to consumers with marketing. We work to forge a community of practice by facilitating connection through our Shop Talks and through engagement in numerous forums to ensure that the brick and mortar small businesses that make Portland inspiring are seen, heard and represented. Below are key efforts and accomplishments where Bricks Need Mortar served this community. 1.- Launched 2025 with New Office of Small Business Shop Talk We invited Mitch Daugherty, manager of the new Office of Small Business (OSB) to our first Shop Talk meeting of the year to hear the concerns and needs of our brick and mortar small businesses. We learned about OSB’s mission, purpose and offerings for Portland’s small businesses. We continue to work closely with Portland’s OSB to ensure that Portland’s brick and mortar’s receive access to all available resources. 2.- Lobbying for Small Business Support for Extreme Weather Events For the past 2 years, Bricks Need Mortar has worked to address the negative impacts of extreme weather events on our brick and mortar small business community. BNM organized a group of small business owners to testify in support of HB 2125, a bill that would make it easier for small business employees to access unemployment in response to extreme weather events. 3.- Pulse Check Shop Talk with Travel Portland We worked with Travel Portland to cohost a retail session to learn more about Travel Portland’s efforts to support retail. In break out groups, we captured needs and ideas to inform our partnership with Travel Portland and how to best support the small brick and mortar community with available resources. 4.- Maker Retail Tour Seeking to amplify Portland’s unique maker community and its significance in the Portland narrative and economy, we partnered with Travel Portland’s Visitor Center to organize and produce a Maker Tour pilot. In attendance were Travel Portland Visitor Center staff, Downtown sidewalk ambassadors and concierges on a tour of iconic maker businesses: The Joinery, Oblation Press + Papers, Orox Leather, and New Deal Distillery. We will continue with our next Maker Retail Tour in 2026. 5.- Social Media Best Practice Workshop Small Shops Big Heart ’s social media strategist, Jo Ann Lorraine, presented best practices for social media planning and strategy. View the presentation materials and/or the recorded replay here. 6.- Upleveled Small Shops Big Hearts Marketing We’ve updated our Small Shops Big Hearts social media strategy to ensure more effective amplification of our small business community and Bricks Need Mortar members. We’re highlighting members with dedicated reels and neighborhood carousels. Additionally, we’re extending further reach of member content by sharing their posts and reels to IG stories. 7.- #pdxunites partnership with Unitus CCU turns 5 We continue to work with Unitus CCU to amplify the importance of our small businesses with weekly giveaways of $100 gift certificates throughout the year and multiple weekly giveaways doing the holiday season. This year Unitus CCU stepped up to support giveaways in conjunction with our Portland Hometown Pride Holiday campaign. 8.- Portland Hometown Pride  Seizing on Portlanders’ massive rejection of the “hell hole” narrative, BNM created the Portland Hometown Pride campaign to further inspire Portlanders to choose to shop small and local this holiday season. In addition to partnering with Unitus CCU with special giveaways, we partnered with Travel Portland on a series of collaboration reels to highlight No Sales Tax neighborhood shopping adventures. 9.- Shop + Stay Portland Holiday Our team responded to the challenging economic realities presented in the “doom loop report” by creating a campaign leveraging our sales tax free status to attract visitors to Portland to do all their holiday shopping. We partnered with Travel Portland, Prosper Portland, Unitus CCU, Lime, and local hotels to designate Portland as THE West Coast shopping destination. 10.- We Are Here Turns 6 Over the past 6 years we’ve conducted surveys to provide small businesses with peer data and use that data to advocate for this community in pursuit of public policy and healthy environment essential to the success of your business. Our next survey will be out soon. Make sure your voice is heard. 11.- Launched Bricks Need Mortar Substack  In order to advance the needs of our brick and mortar community with innovative strategies to support Main Street, we launched the Bricks Need Mortar substack. Providing thought leadership, we offer keen observations on economic realities and provide reasonable and achievable remedies so policymakers and other stakeholders can gain a better understanding of the importance of this community and work towards delivering what this community needs. 12.- Discover the Heart of Portland Small Shop guide Turns 5 We created and produce Portland’s singular evergreen shopping guide highlighting our city’s small and independent shops. Made possible through our partnership with Morel Ink, we print 20K copies distributed at Travel Portland’s Visitor Center, Travel Oregon’s Visitor Center at PDX airport, participating small businesses, area hotels and with other partners. These guides are a community tool to circulate consumers throughout Portland to explore our incredible, diverse and unique retail shops.

WWe are extremely proud of this important work, learning from what works and building upon those efforts. In 2026 we will further our engagement with policy makers, local, regional, State and Federal. There is a lot at stake and we plan to build further partnerships to improve the environment where small businesses operate. We will continue to push for greater efforts to keep crime trending downward, encourage policies that promote more equitable economic opportunities for our small, brick and mortar businesses and to encourage more innovative efforts to activate empty storefronts and draw shoppers into downtown and throughout the city. We look forward to returning in the New Year to work beside you to make Portland a place where small businesses and this community can thrive. Wishing you a peaceful, happy and healthy end of the year! Sarah and The Bricks Need Mortar Team

Thank you to Jo Ann Lorraine for her info rich overview of Social Media for 2025. It was great having so many of you on the call and actively engaged.

3 TAKEAWAYS FROM Bricks Need Mortar’s Social Media for 2025:

1. Know Your Audience & Meet Them Where They Are: 
   Figure out where your ideal customers spend time and adapt content to their platform behaviors.
   
2. Align Your Content with Platform “Micro-Cultures”: 
   Each platform has a series of written and unwritten rules. Spend time on each app as a user (or hire someone who gets it). Recycling the same exact post across platforms rarely works the way you want it to. 
   
3. Prioritize Goals & Be Strategic with Resources: 
   Track your metrics monthly or quarterly (not daily!) to spot trends and pivot without burnout.

And if you missed the call, view the Replay here!

As promised, Jo Ann has provided written answers to all the questions that came up in the final minutes of the call.

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What is the expected investment to hire an expert/outsource this job?

If you need supplemental support the monthly cost to contract someone would sit somewhere between $750 and $2000, depending on your needs.

If you were looking to contract someone to fully manage your social channels tip to toe, you should expect to invest between $1000 and $5000, depending on your specific needs and the contractor’s experience managing social media. 

Things like frequency of posting, types of posts, data analysis, number of social media channels to manage, etc. can affect the amount a manager will charge for the job. 
Keep in mind that some social media professionals prefer to either manage the channels (planning content, data analysis, goal settings, audience engagement, etc.) or create the content (design, video editing, etc.). Some, like myself, will offer to bundle both jobs into one service. Be sure you know what your potential hire’s services are and whether your expectations match what they can offer.

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For a team of 1 what would be your recommendation for the frequency and type of content on Instagram?

I would recommend you aim for at least one permanent post (e.g. grid posts on IG) a week and sprinkle in some temporary posts (e.g. stories on IG) a week as well. This will keep your account alive in the algorithm. 

Typically, video content will take you far if you’re just looking to post something general. But I do recommend thinking about what you want to say and who you are trying to speak to specifically in the post and deciding what format (short video, single post, carousel post, daily series of posts, etc.) gets that message across best.

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Can you address Posts vs. Stories on Instagram?

Generally speaking, I like to use permanent posts (e.g. grid posts on IG) for the most planned and polished content, announcements, etc. 

Temporary posts like stories are great for link sharing, raw BTS footage, resharing your announcement posts or posts from other accounts. I have one rule for story posts on my managed accounts and it is that I don’t exceed 6 story posts within one 24-hour cycle. I’ve found users often feel overwhelmed and/or lose interest after tapping through 7+ of your story slides.

Could you talk about shadowbanning? / Follow-up: So shadowbanning is usually IG’s reaction to “bad behavior”?

So there are two reasons your social media accounts may get flagged and hidden by the platform. 

1. You are posting too frequently (4+ times a day), liking and commenting too fast (I’ve seen people flagged for this, believe it or not) using too many hashtags that are irrelevant to your content (e.g. using #CleanGirlAesthetic on a post about lawncare just to boost your reach). This is considered “bot-behavior” and the platform may shrink your account’s presence to protect users from irrelevant bot-run accounts. To counteract this, post and comment less, use only relevant hashtags (5 at most).
   
   
2. When a platform hides your account because they find your content “controversial” or “inappropriate” or “too political” – whatever those may mean to the powers that be – this is what people are generally referring to as “shadowbanning.” This typically happens to individual activist accounts or social justice minded business accounts, unfortunately. You can tell this happens when your engagement drops drastically (more than 50% over the course of 1-2 posts). Working your way back from this is a tricky line to walk and I imagine it will get even trickier in the next year. Thus far, I’ve seen two strategies work relatively well: 1) engage your audience with an honest plea for assistance (asking them to overly engage with your ask post to reset your metrics) and 2) encourage the community you’ve built to follow you on your other platforms so the messaging you put time and energy into can still be seen elsewhere. If the platform becomes too much of an interference in your messaging or you find your values just don’t align with their framework anymore, encourage the community you’ve built there to migrate with you to a new platform that better supports your messaging.

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What is the current best time of day /week to post generally?

As a general rule, for accounts looking to reach a west coast audience, posting between 9-11am will serve you well. You’ll get folks on their morning scroll, and your content has a high chance of circulating throughout the rest of the day. 

However, I would recommend looking into when your specific audience is most active. For example, on Instagram there is an analytics asset on your Professional Dashboard that will tell you what time of day your account’s followers are most active. One of the accounts I run has followers that are most active between 5 and 7pm on weekdays. This account’s goals prioritize current follower engagement over reach to non-followers so we post content almost exclusively during that time. 

I also really recommend testing different time slots, seeing which audiences you reach, and adapting your plan to this. I’ve found a lot of success putting some time into testing time slots, different audience demographics might be active at entirely different times.

And if you missed the call, view the Replay here!

This month marks 5 years since Bricks Need Mortar conducted our very first survey reflecting the health of Portland’s brick and mortar small business community. We invite you to review past surveys here.

This report captures respondents’ experiences and realities operating small brick and mortar businesses in 2024 and expectations, changes and needs going into 2025.

Please note the following take aways:

• Commercial lease rates and NNN vary widely and are key factors in the success and sustainability of small businesses
• Although still high, crime continues to trend downward
• In store sales continue to significantly out perform online sales
• Economic policy and weakening consumer confidence are great concerns that require immediate action
• Community collaboration remains a key to the survival and success of our small businesses and economy

Bricks Need Mortar collects and shares this information to:

• Ensure that small businesses understand where they stand in line with peers
• Provide insight to policy makers to work together to foster an environment where small businesses, the economic engine of our city and state, can thrive

Please support this essential work. Become a Member Today!

Bricks Need Mortar went into the 2024 Win Big campaign with new strategies to address the unique challenges of conducting business in an election year. As election years can signal uncertainty, sales can be stagnant and even dip. 

We saw an opportunity to highlight the value of small businesses reminding Portlanders that small businesses offer inspiration and comfort and can be a place for refuge and camaraderie post-election.

We worked with The Mayor’s office to officially proclaim the 2nd week of November “Independent + Small Shop Week” partnering with retailers like Powell’s Books to amplify the importance of shopping, small, indie and local. 

We added a new element – small shop trading cards to increase a pride in Portland, highlight individual businesses and create a fun new way to cheerlead our small businesses.

Even in a year where we saw a significant decrease in public and sponsorship funding, this approach paid off. This year’s Win Big campaign saw an increase in participation and significant coverage, more than doubling the media coverage over the previous year.

We are grateful to all those sponsors and partners who supported this year’s Win Big campaign and all the customers who showed up for Portland’s small businesses in 2024!

Of the past 5 years, in many ways 2024 was the most challenging for our small businesses. For many small businesses cash flow was highly erratic and unpredictable and runways exhausted. With limited bandwidth, small businesses continued to innovate and operate with limited resources and with little assistance while costs of labor, real estate, inventory and raw materials soared.

Our purpose at Bricks Need Mortar is to facilitate and support collaboration and innovation amongst brick and mortar small businesses. We work to raise the visibility of each participating business and this community as a whole, through advocacy with policy makers, in partnership with other organizations and community organizations and directly to consumers with marketing. We work to forge a community of practice by facilitating connection through our Shop Talks and through engagement in numerous forums to ensure that the brick and mortar small businesses that make Portland inspiring are seen, heard and represented.

Below are key efforts and accomplishments where Bricks Need Mortar served this community.

1. Collaboration with Travel Portland For our May 2024 Shop Talk, we worked with Travel Portland to conduct their first ever retail focused Pulse Check, where we heard from Travel Portland CMO Greg Newland on their efforts to drive tourism and foot traffic. Importantly, Travel Portland listened to and acted on the needs of the small businesses, resulting in updated marketing materials and social strategy.

2. Retail Shop Tours From the Travel Portland Pulse Check, we worked with Travel Portland and Pacific NW Experience to organize and deliver familiarization tours. In August we worked with Travel Portland Visitor Center to bring their staff, Downtown sidewalk ambassadors and concierges on a tour of NW 23rd Ave Bricks Need Mortar member retailers. In October we worked with PNW Experience to bring tour operators and other visitor facing professionals on a tour of Bricks Need Mortar member retailers on Mississippi Ave. We are planning on more tours in 2025.

3. Lobbying for Small Business Support for Extreme Weather Events After the devastating early 2024 winter storms that shut down businesses, we set to work to find relief for small businesses. We worked with Oregon Rep Nosse and Portland Office of Government Relations on LC 1946 for UI for extreme weather events! This is a massive accomplishment initiated by Bricks Need Mortar. And we just received word that this has now been submitted in time for pre-session filing and is now now HB 2125. We will be working with Rep Nosse and Portland’s Government Office of Government Relations to get this much needed relief for small businesses and their employees who are impacted by extreme weather events. We will continue to work on this bill through 2025.

4. Independent + Small Shops Proclamation We submitted the Independent + Small Shops Proclamation and worked with Mayor Wheeler’s office to sponsor this effort. This was strategically designed to create visibility for our small businesses and reminding individuals that small businesses provide community, inspiration, comfort and connection post election and well in advance of the holiday shopping season. The Proclamation was announced with a press conference with Mayor Wheeler and several community small business owners, who shared their passion and commitment to Portland. This was well attended and received significant news coverage from OPB, PBJ and local news outlets.

5. Hosted and Facilitated Community Session with Commissioner Carmen Rubio With persistent engagement with Commissioner Rubio’s office, we organized a Shop Talk listening session, with the Commissioner tasked with overseeing Prosper Portland, Venture Portland and support of small businesses. Commissioner Rubio, a front runner for Mayor, sat through a meeting that went overtime to hear every single attendee share their concerns, needs and hopes for the year ahead.

6. Facilitated small business support from PEMO We worked to provide support for disenfranchised small businesses in the SW end of downtown, who were experiencing significant and reoccurring crime and dangerous activities. We facilitated and convened meetings with PEMO to ensure these businesses were seen, heard and for their safety and livability needs to be immediately addressed.

7. Conducting 5 Years of We Are Here We have conducted 5 years of surveys to provide small businesses with peer data and use that data to advocate for you in pursuit of public policy and healthy environment essential to the success of your business. Our next survey will be out soon. Make sure your voice is heard.

8. Actively Engaged in Stakeholder Groups Bricks Need Mortar has engaged in nearly every stakeholder group tasked with addressing Portland’s economic recover. It was important to us to ensure that brick and mortar and retail enterprises are included and prioritized in Recovery and Economic Development efforts from Reimagine Portland to Governor Kotek’s Task Force Visioning Group.

9. Provided Professional Marketing Education Session Bricks Need Mortar responds to the needs of small businesses by identifying experienced professional service providers and hiring them to conduct learning sessions like the Small Business Marketing Best Practices session with Ryan Haskins. We continue to build our roster of experienced and knowledgeable professional service providers and provide you with high value learning opportunities.
   
   
10. Fostering a Community of Collaboration There is only so far that we can go alone but together we can go far. It is this philosophy that drives us to lift this entire community as a whole. This year we partnered with Powell’s Books to drive their thousands of customers to visit other small businesses during the holiday season. We came together as a community to support Portland Center Stage, donating 10% of membership to this essential arts organization, sponsoring the Liberace & Liza production and providing Bricks Need Mortar members and all of their employees with free tickets to every 24-25 PCS Season production.

These are just our top 10 Accomplishments for 2024
We look forward to returning in the New Year to work together to make Portland a place where your business and this community can thrive.

Wishing you a peaceful, happy

and healthy end of the year!

Sarah & The Bricks Need Mortar Team

As we come out of an uncertain year the one certainty is that the path to fully reopening The We Are Here 2023 survey explores employment, crime, revenue, solutions and needs for reporting Portland brick and mortar small businesses. Businesses include restaurant, retail and service sectors.

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As we enter a new year with new challenges, it’s important to make note of our accomplishments and how we can build upon them to make the greatest and most meaningful impact moving forward.

Bricks Need Mortar was born from the pandemic to bring our small businesses together in community over competition, to increase visibility and be seen by both, policy makers and customers. We advocate for smart policy and much needed supports for this community, the backbone of our economy.

As a support organization Bricks Need Mortar’s mission is to provide wrap-around support for your small businesses beginning with increased visibility to your small businesses. It can be easy to overlook our accomplishments as our focus is on you. Wrapping up another difficult year, we take note of our achievements to build upon them and best serve you as we continue to forge forward in 2022.

1.- Launching Shop Talks  – As we emerged from years of pandemic restrictions, the desire for in person connection directed us to convert some of our monthly programming to in person meetings. Shop Talk is designed to bring our brick and mortar small businesses together to discuss common concerns, challenges and opportunities. 

2.- Travel Portland President’s Award – Travel Portland acknowledged Bricks Need Mortar and founder Sarah Shaoul for efforts to advance Portland Community through pursuit of partnership and initiatives in support of Portland’s small business.

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3.- We Are Here 2022 Look Book and 2024 Look Forward Survey -Each year we survey Portland’s small businesses to get a read on the health of this community. We share with you so you can see where you stand in relation to your peers and we share with policy makers to help them understand the priorities and needs of Portland’s small businesses. This directs our programming and further supports our advocacy efforts.

4.- Fighting Small Business Crime -The We Are Here Survey revealed the shocking statistic that 79% of our small brick and mortar businesses had been broken into and/or vandalized in 2022. This propelled us into engagement with PEMO, Public Environment Management Office, to connect businesses to resources for addressing crime and improving conditions and accessing resources to limit and address crime. We also engaged with ORCAOR, Oregon Retail Crime Association, to ensure that small businesses are included in efforts to identify and prosecute those engaged in organized crime. Bricks Need Mortar was invited to speak on Think Out Loud to share the small business crime data we collected, increasing our visibility as a small brick and mortar coalition.

5.- #PDXUNITES We continue to collaborate with Unitus Community Credit Union on weekly $100 gift card giveaways to small, brick and mortar businesses, increasing visibility and driving foot traffic. From the beginning of the pandemic to now, we’ve helped Unitus CCU give away over $20K to be spent at small businesses.

6.- Small Business Stimulus Distribution -worked with Worksystems to expand the delivery of  federal stimulus to Portlanders to be spent only at Portland small businesses. 

7.- Paid Worker Program  -worked with Worksystems and PCC to match small, brick and mortar businesses with workers that would be paid by the program, providing an approx $5K -$12K benefit for each participating small business.

8.- Win Big 2023 + Win Big App  We continue to review, learn and adjust the Win Big Holiday Campaign, bringing small businesses together to amplify the message to shop small, while delivering a fun and rewarding experience for holiday shoppers winning over 100 prizes. We reached beyond Portland to draw more shoppers and foot traffic into Portland to play. We also invested in development of the new Win Big Shop Small App, in order to make it easier for customers to discover participating small businesses and track raffle entries. We worked with key partners Travel Portland, Downtown Retail Council and other community partners to make this effort possible.

9.- Discover the Heart of Portland Shopping Guides We continue to produce and distribute the small business specific Portland evergreen shopping guide, organized by neighborhood. Working with our Community Partner, Morel Ink, we are able to distribute 20K guides through participating small businesses, area hotels, The Travel Portland Visitor Center and Travel Oregon Visitor Center at PDX Airport. 

10.- Recommended Professional Resource Providers – in an effort to strengthen this community, through collaboration, Bricks Need Mortar has identified and vetted high value professional service providers, negotiating special rates whenever possible and learning opportunities so you have trusted professionals to turn to to help you maintain and grow your small business.

11.- Learning Sessions and Panel Discussions – We continue to program important growth and learning opportunities on timely topics like HR Session on the new Paid Leave Oregon + Oregon Saves and Bringing Your A Game for The Holidays and Beyond.

12.- Governor Brown’s Downtown Task Force – Sarah Shaoul was a solely focused voice advocating for Portland’s entire small business community participating in the Vision Committee Subgroup of Governor Kotek’s Downtown Task Force.

Photo by Kim Oanh Nguyen @photosbykim

Bricks Need Mortar founder and CEO, Sarah Shaoul, has been awarded Travel Portland’s President’s Award for leadership, innovation and support of Portland’s small business community.

The award was presented by Travel Portland President, Jeff Miller and Portland Mayor, Ted Wheeler.

Inspiring key notes were delivered by NPR host and correspondent, Ari Shapiro, and Oregon Governor, Tina Kotek.

Photo by Kim Oanh Nguyen @photosbykim

In receiving the award, Shaoul shares: 
“I am honored to be recognized by Travel Portland for work to ensure the success of our small business community. 

While I’m outspoken about what I believe in, I don’t really seek out personal recognition, nor am I motivated by that. So, I must share with you the gravity of how touched I was to be on stage be recognized for this work!

Connecting and collaborating with the Travel Portland team over the past 3+ years has truly been an honor because Travel Portland, in my own humble opinion, is doing some of the most impactful work to keep Portland the most wonderful place to live, work, play and visit!

And of course, that work is no 1 individual’s or organization’s accomplishment. As the awards event highlights so beautifully, it is the work and passion of so many that make Portland the amazing place it is!

It is truly the efforts of the hundreds of innovative, fun, creative, and inspiring small businesses who make this wonderful place where people come to fall in love with Portland.”

Photo by Kim Oanh Nguyen @photosbykim