Keep the Connection Alive
COVID19 is hitting small businesses like a freight train. The struggles for small business owners were always aplenty, but now they feel insurmountable. With so much up in the air, it's hard to wrap your brain around it all. Whether you're a small business that's able to work and still profit, or you've had to close up to protect the well-being of your staff and customers, there's one thing you can do to stay in touch with your customers, and that is to maintain your social media presence. Plus, it’s free. People are obsessively on their phones, and you need to be right there with them. I know its time-consuming to find pics, write copy, whip up effective hashtags, and try to make it all seem effortless, but you need to try. Let me explain why.
The Facebook/Instagram algorithm is tricky. I don't fully understand the ins and outs of it, but I know if you stop interacting with your followers, you disappear from their feed. Poof! Gone, and it's hard to come back and rebuild it all. Last summer, I was in a small biz rut. I wasn't motivated, and I stopped posting. I'd go weeks, sometimes a month, without fresh content. I wasn't liking my followers' posts, and I wasn't watching their stories. I didn't have the energy for it. These are all the little ways you plant your seed and stay in their algorithm's good graces.
Once I was out of my rut, I started posting again, but quickly noticed I wasn't getting the traction I had before. I've been digging myself out of the algorithm black hole for a while now. The progress is slow-going, but momentum has picked up. This is why it's essential to carve out a few posts once a week, not every day, and interact with your followers regularly. It keeps the juices flowing! Here's a little tip, when it comes to posting, it's about quality, not quantity. When a post has time to run for a couple of days without interruption, it gets more traction. If you post every day, it starts to work against you because the post doesn't have time to breathe and gather as many likes. Once you post a fresh post, Instagram stops focusing on yesterday's posts, puts the attention on the new post; therefore, yesterday's post doesn't get to reach its full potential. So, what I'm trying to say is, space it out and don't feel pressure to have something up every day.
If you're a small business owner that's noticed your likes have gone down over the last six months, now is the time to win them back. People are on their devices 90% of the day, and traffic has noticeably increased. I've seen the uptick, and the analytics are super fun to watch! A post that would have received 45 likes before now gets 100+. Take this time to rebuild your following and interact with them while they're home re-watching Tiger King for the 3rd time. Jump in the game and start having a "like-a-thon" with your followers. If you find yourself bored on the couch, pick up the phone, start scrolling, and tap-tap your way into their hearts and homes. Make thoughtful, relevant comments on their posts of their kids, dogs, food their cooking, etc. Post funny content that will resonate with them, or that they'll share with their followers. Stroke their social media ego, and you'll start to see the momentum pick up.
