BROOKLYN — The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce is bringing in Google to get the borough’s mom-and-pops online.
In the new year, volunteers from the tech company and staff from the Chamber will team up to consult with small business owners in Brownsville, Canarsie and East New York to teach them how to market themselves on the Internet, they said.
That’ll include tutorials on online tools like Yelp and Google Maps, social media and how search engines work.
"Ninety-seven percent of the people use the Internet to search for goods and services, but less [than] 50 percent of the businesses in New York are online,” said William Floyd, head of external affairs for Google, in a statement. “Businesses that use the web grow up to 40 percent faster so, if you want your business to succeed, you need to use all the digital tools available to you.”
Google is also contributing $25,000 to the Chamber for its “GoDigital!” campaign, which is part of a larger effort to connect businesses with services like access to low-cost health care and loans, by traveling to high need areas in their “Chamber on the Go” mobile van, said president Carlo Scissura.
“We actually go out to find them,” he said of the business owners they'll target. “We’ll be going out into neighborhoods — particularly immigrant and low-income neighborhoods — and helping them really access whatever they can in terms of online opportunities.”
With Google’s help, the group hopes to reach at least 100 businesses when the project starts in 2015.
News of the partnership was first reported by Crain's New York.
