Easy & FREE Way to Help Your Local Small Businesses

Are you a proponent of SHOP LOCAL and SHOP SMALL BUSINESS? Are you always looking for ways you can support local neighbors and friends without breaking the bank? Here is one way you can help that only takes a few seconds and is absolutely FREE.

Support their online presence. What does that mean? It means helping them market to the area by engaging with their business online and there are many ways to do it. Here are a few to consider:

FOLLOW them on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, etc.

• The more followers a page has, the more the social media company will "suggest" that page to others.

LIKE their social media posts

• Did you know that even though you are following a page, the app/site (think Facebook) may not show you their posts? Especially if you haven't "liked" those posts that they have shown you in the past. However, the more likes a post gets, the more priority it is given to show to others.

• This is SO IMPORTANT to small businesses trying to share information and market their products/services! They can be putting a ton of energy into creating posts/blogs/reels/videos that they post but are hardly seen by anyone because of the algorithms and lack of engagement. So LIKE LIKE LIKE everything you think is worth showing to others, whether because it's funny, educational, beautiful, or could be of help to someone else.

COMMENT on their posts

• Have you ever noticed that a lot of business posts ask you to "drop a comment" below? That's because a comment helps rank that post even higher than a "like". The more comments, the more that post will be shown to others, & the more it's shown, the better the odds are that it makes it to the right person that business can help.

SHARE their social media posts

• This is similar to liking the posts, but sharing would be the "on steroids" version. When a post is shared by multiple other pages/people, it gets a top priority in being shown to others, plus it reaches a MUCH broader audience that could help grow the businesses following significantly. Sharing a post for a company you want to support could literally be the biggest impact in that company's revenue for the year, you never know!

REVIEW the company on any of the platforms

• Did you know reviews not only impact the consumer looking for services or products but also influence whether a business is even shown in the first page, two or even 10+ on search results?

• I'm not saying you should go out and review a company if you haven't interacted with them at all, but if you have benefited from them in any way, share that. Even if it's based on learning from their sharing of information on their website or a wonderful community support/interaction they had, or you really respect the owner for a certain quality they possess - this is an AMAZING way to help them with minimal effort and zero out-of-pocket expenses.

I hope you take a few minutes to engage on social media today and make a small business owners' week by giving them a shout out!