As a small business, we're huge supporters of supporting other small businesses. We love sharing and commenting on other businesses' posts. What exactly can you do to help support small businesses like us and others? There are quite a few things you can do to support small businesses without even spending a dime! Do you know all of them?
Here are 5 ways you can help support small businesses:
1 - Share, like and comment on all social media posts.
This is super important as social media is a huge reach tool for small businesses. The more people see posts from small businesses, the more likely they are to come in and shop! Liking a post can help show platforms like Facebook and Instagram that people like the content they are seeing and may push it to more people. Commenting also helps to show others the content. Sharing helps spread the word! You tell your friends about all these small businesses in person, so why not show them all the amazing businesses on social media too? Sharing helps posts get seen by more people and the more people that see our post, the more likely someone is to come in and buy.
2 - Subscribe to our newsletter
You might be thinking, they're promoting their newsletter again (which, if you're not signed up for, you need to!) but signing up for our newsletter gives us a 1-on-1 connection with our customers. We can't do this on social media because unfortunately, I do not own Facebook or Instagram. This means that not all the time is our content being seen by important people like you! However, we can send you emails weekly directly from us to you. It's a way for us to directly connect with you. If you're not signed up for our newsletter yet and you want to know about everything new, get signed up! Plus we send you a free gift on your birthday. How awesome is that?!
3 - Spread the word
We talked about sharing social media posts. What about face-to-face? Share about us to your friends, and talk to them about all the awesome stuff you just bought from this cute little shop. What about that amazing food you ate at that restaurant? Word-of-mouth recommendations will always be the best way to share about small businesses. You can even do better by forwarding your weekly newsletters to friends and telling them to check us out. Or forward your VIP invites to your friends and invite a plus one.
4 - Leave a review
When you go to buy a product online, what's the first thing you do? Probably look at reviews! Reviews are super important for small businesses to let people know how good the customer service is, the product selection, pricing, etc. Reviews are a great way to tell people about your experience with the business. Let people know you're happy and you love to shop or buy from small businesses! This is very similar to word-of-mouth but with a public review.
5 - Spend some money
This one isn't free but it's worth a mention. Spending money at a small business is the biggest way for you to support your favourite small business. I'll be pretty straightforward with this and a lot of people don't like to talk about it, but I believe it needs to be said. Money pays the bills, pays employees to be there and money dictates if businesses continue to stay open or close. Each year, when it comes time for the renewal of our lease, we look at numbers AKA money numbers. This tells us if people like what we're selling, like what we're offering and if it's still worth the time and investment to keep our doors open. With our business especially, every $1 you spend with us, 100% of it stays within the community. With our business being 100% handmade, the money we make goes directly back to vendors to keep doing what they love.
I also understand that sometimes money can't be spent on anything extra. It's why the other tips above are so handy and helpful for a small business especially if you can't shop right now. Spread the word, share the love and show someone your favourite local business where they can be supportive too.
How many tips did you know? Do you do some of these daily/weekly? We would love to hear your thoughts.
