As a small business ourselves, we know just how hard it is to gain attention on social media. Add a worldwide pandemic to the mix forcing many businesses to temporarily close, then it has just added more pressure to everything.
Whether through a business page or personal page, we can all help their social engagement and the only costs to this is our TIME, which we have a little more of these days. Many of these might seem obvious points you know well but, we are asking you to do that little extra with some additional tips to make more from this and ensure their pages are top of the feeds, and top of everyone’s minds when they need that product or service next.
Here’s how you can support small business on social media:
FOLLOW/LIKE A PAGE
If you have other accounts swap over to those other channels too to follow them on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and more! In the long term, you will probably learn more about their business, services and products, that you didn’t realise and appreciate, even more, to keep using them moving forward.
ENGAGE FULLY
Liking a post is fine, but to really help you need to do much more. Facebook has more reactions so you can be more specific and we recently shared their caring emoji in response to the current COVID-19 situation. However, the real benefit is with a comment. This has much more value for a business in terms of social media algorithms to get noticed.
Lacking any ideas for what to say? Try an emoji or two: 
. Maybe comment that you hope they are okay and missing visiting their shop.
Facebook reward you for this personally too, by becoming a TOP FAN. Emma has quite a few Top Fan Badges – most notably for Yorkshire Tea!
Sharing a post win you extra brownie points!
As a business, be consistent in posting and encourage comments by asking questions. Then, ensure you regularly check back for replies and use these to start conversations – putting the social into social media.
LOCATION
These check-ins make the post more visible, beyond your network of followers and are very useful for businesses relying on local custom.
Here are a few more specifics for each network to think about.
Building on the likes, there is another option many businesses are asking for using the Community feature to invite their friends.
Here’s how to do this on your phone:
- Go to the business page you are supporting.
- Scroll across the top to find COMMUNITY and click
- Click on INVITE FRIENDS
- Click ALL or select who would be interested in this business. That’s it, an invitation lands in their notification and they can choose to like and follow the page too, but having come from a trusted source people are more likely to accept.
I know many of my clients feel uncomfortable about this, feeling it’s too pushy, but you can start with your trusted friends and remember it costs nothing for you to ask.
Leave them a review: A recommendation is the most successful buying trigger and whilst it is lovely to see people’s posts in local groups shouting out a local business and lovely service, writing it on a business’ review section means it is there for people to find easily when they are checking out a business, plus your friends will still see the post to share your recommendation.
For your business accounts; have you seen the handy notification that someone has liked a post, but they aren’t following your page yet? It encourages you to INVITE them to like the page. It’s one click and it works so give it a go.
Support Small Business Sticker we shouted about last week when it was launched and is Emma’s new favourite thing to do! There are so many great businesses to shout out.
There is a slight frustration to all of this when there are still so many great little businesses you want to support on social but they don’t have any social to do any of this! Maybe they are just not on your preferred channel to make the most of the likes of Instagram’s Support Small Business Sticker. Time to get creative! Just make sure you give enough information to be able to easily search and find them.
TOP TIP: To attach the account they need to be a business Instagram account. It’s really easy to swap from a personal to business profile but actually, I’ve found so many small businesses still working on the personal format. Swap, there’s no cost and you will see your post insights, plus a whole host of other benefits. Here’s how to change it.
Head to our stories as I continue to support small businesses and let’s support one another. #SmallBusinessLove