Social media is its own currency when it comes to businesses and catching the eyes of new customers. We’ve all been there before. We find a brand we love on Instagram while scrolling the explore page. Then, we purchase from them, become loyal customers and share our purchases on our personal accounts, shouting them out.
With everyone staying home right now, becoming a local micro-influencer and sharing what local stores and products you’re loving not only gives your favourite businesses a boost, it also allows our community economy to continue running successfully while those stores may not be seeing as much foot traffic in stores.
We teamed up with BNL Media Consulting to provide four helpful tips when it comes to supporting the local businesses you know and love during the times when it’s most important. Essentially, we’re giving you the details on how to utilize these apps and become a micro-influencer in one day.
“Everyone is a local influencer and has the power to help drive the local movement through their own personal Instagram and Facebook accounts,” explained Megan Shallow, the CEO and Founder of BNL Media Consulting.
When you click on Instagram, what do you focus on? Your feed, scrolling other’s photos or watching stories? We all spend time scrolling and browsing the explore page on Instagram, but you may not realize how in-depth the page actually is. Users can use the search bar to categorize their searches by Top, Accounts, Tags and Places.
To begin your search, use keywords such as “gardening,” “photography,” “kitchen design,” or any other keywords of interest. Instagram will bring up the most relevant accounts based on your search history, the types of accounts you engage with the most and your location.
The Top category focuses on the most popular accounts, not necessarily local ones, the Accounts tab is similar.
When using the Tags category, localized hashtags can help you find local businesses. For example, using Kelowna in a hashtag will narrow your search down to community businesses. It all depends on what you’re looking for. A hairstylist? #hairkelowna. Coffee Shop? #coffeekelowna.
Now that you can find local businesses on Instagram, you can support them. The best way to do that is to share the content you create and get the business involved.
Perhaps you’re out at a local brunch spot that has blown you away and you want to share your experience on Instagram. Whether that’s a post, story or reel, you can tag the business in multiple ways.
Add a location and use the business’ geotag, mention the business’ account in your story or caption, tag the account in your post or make use of their niche hashtags to support them.
People think the most important thing to do is to add the company’s hashtag, but it’s actually not! While a hashtag is helpful for others to find your content, the company may not be following or browsing it. By tagging them specifically in the photo, story or reel, you’re ensuring that they get notified that you’ve tagged them! Then, they’ll be able to reshare your content on their profiles.
When making posts on Facebook, you’re looking at the same idea as Instagram with the location tag, business tag and niche hashtag.
Facebook recommendations are an excellent way to support the local businesses you love. When people ask for recommendations for a specific service and you know of a great local place that provides it, leaving a quick message showing your support and tagging them goes a long way.
Each of these techniques to find and support local businesses on Instagram and Facebook are connected. The main purpose is to give people easy access to information about local businesses.
By tagging businesses and posting photos or videos, you’re giving the local businesses exposure to tons of different accounts and people they previously didn’t have access to or didn’t know who they were.
BNL Media Consulting is passionate about creating community connections for businesses through the power of social media management via Instagram and Facebook. They are known for their power to drive the #supportlocal movement through their social media management skills and they help businesses all over BC scale through the power of community connection.
They believe a business’s social media is not only a direct revenue source, but the most powerful referral growth engine a business can have. Local businesses rely heavily on strong referrals as their marketing budgets are always much tighter than big corporations.
Therefore, we as community members have the power in our mobile devices to help be the best connectors we can to ensure our local business community continues to thrive no matter what happens.
Since BNL is so passionate about what they do, they put together an extended social media guide and want to help you #supportlocal by offering one lucky BC resident a chance to win $250 in cash to dedicate to local businesses!
All you have to do is read the contest rules and fill out the form to be entered into the draw and receive the social media guide.
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