At GROWL, we know the power and potential for small businesses to grow by using social media, and there is no better time to harness its potential than on Small Business Saturday! The American shopping holiday celebrates and supports small businesses by shopping locally during the year’s busiest shopping season. With 130 million Instagrammers tapping to learn more on shopping posts every month, the opportunity for small businesses to strike is now.
Social media has been a valuable tool for small businesses for some time now, from driving awareness to building connections with your audience. Perhaps the most important initial step for businesses to take in their social media journey is to ensure their page is a business page/account. This will save time in the long run and offer valuable insights into your business performance on the platform. Then, make sure to post – regularly. Establish how your business will communicate, what kind of posts, and how often. This will help build a strong organic presence that you can build upon later.
Small businesses have a unique opportunity to connect with their audience in a way that is difficult for larger brands to accomplish. Interacting with the audience through contests on social channels will boost engagement and create a unique experience for your followers that they won’t forget. As you continue to build a strong relationship with your audience, you can utilize user-generated content (UGC). When customers buy your product, encourage them to share their social media experience, tag your page, and use the appropriate social hashtags. UGC helps to drive the brand awareness small businesses need to increase reach.
Once you have built a strong presence by posting organic content regularly and engaging with your audience, you may want to utilize paid social ads to really drive awareness further and encourage conversions. As the business owner, you are in control of whom you want to sell to. You can set the specific demographics for your ad so you are sure to reach the right audience.
Facebook and Instagram shops allow any business to build out their own social storefront for free. This enables business owners to customize their shop to fit their brand – keeping their brand consistent across platforms. Setting up your social media shop is critical for driving online business on Small Business Saturday.
This feature lets people discover your shop through their newsfeed (stories, paid ads, etc.) or the new shop tab on each respective platform. Set up your shop across Facebook apps, and your products will be eligible to appear in popular shopping destinations. Like in-store shopping, customers can contact you directly with questions about your product while allowing further relationship building.
With countless e-commerce partners, you won’t need to worry about compatibility with the social shopping platform. If you haven’t already selected an e-commerce platform, now is the perfect time to find one that will help grow your business in unison with these features through social media.
This year, take your business to the next level by maximizing social media for Small Business Saturday. Need help getting set up on social media shopping channels? Contact the GROWL Team today!