Hands up who wanted a general election for Christmas?! Deffo not me. In fact I find myself actively turning the telly off whenever there is a shot of a news reporter stood outside the Houses of Parliament with some prat in the background shouting something about the EU. Brexit doesn't make me worry about my business either, I am a small biz operating from wherever my laptop takes me, and in that respect I am very lucky to have low overheads and have designed a lifestyle business that works around me and my family. I've said it before and I'll say it again...small businesses are the backbone of the UK economy. It's us that can scale up and down to respond to economic shifts, it's essentially small businesses that pulled the UK out of recession. End of the economics lesson...! ;)
The dream of running your own business is real, it's the hustle that's sold separately. For the last few months I have been concentrating my efforts on a massive online marketing push. Being a horse riding instructor by trade, this doesn't come as first nature and it's something I've had to work on. I've had to seek out what I think is important to the visibility of my online business and I have done a few online courses, been for talks from Google and been hammering social media too.
Christmas really can be the pinnacle of sales for a small business, this is the time when the orders and sales roll in, the money is made & there is honey in the pot for breathing space for the next few months. We ALL know someone who is running a business, I know I try to support and buy small whenever I can, especially at Xmas, but here are some really simple tips to help small businesses......
- Buy some stuff off them so they can make some money! (that's the obvious one!!)......
- Help boost them on social media: share/like/love/comment/interact on their posts. This helps boost their visibility. On average, posts will only be shown to about 10% of their actual followers. This is FB’s way of getting more money out of small businesses to encourage them to pay to boost their posts. Help them do it for free!
- Tag friends in their posts...you see something they are selling that a friend may love? Tag that friend and make them aware of the fab little business you know about.
- Write them a review if you have previously bought from them. You can do this on their website, or as a Google review, or even on their platforms like Etsy or notonthehighstreet.com. It shows that previous customers have bought and loved what they are selling, and they can read it themselves.
- Send them any photos of their products you may have 'in action' so they can share them on social media. This shows 'social proof' and your pictures can help them, essentially, sell more stuff as it shows they are being used and loved by those that bought them.
Just 5 small pointers there, so if you're in the ad break of TOWIE later, pop on your socials and get interacting & writing reviews! Each sale however small, is appreciated & makes a difference to supporting a dream and the hours of hard work that goes into a small business.
