If you’re running a shop local campaign you want to do more than just offer a list of participating shops. You want to capture the uniqueness of each merchant and communicate it to potential buyers. To do this most effectively, you’ll need social media.
Get the Social Word Out
You don’t need to do all of these to have a successful buy local campaign but if you’re already active on the social media site why not throw a little love to your participating merchants?
Instagram and Pinterest
Ask each participating business to send you their favorite image from their business. It could be a delicious food, beautiful object, or a delighted face of a customer. Post it to a sharing site using a hashtag for your group, their business, and whatever they’ve sent over. Add a caption like, “Doesn’t this look good?”
Share what your merchant is known for. “Best bean burrito this side of El Paso” and then include a shortened version of their URL. Hopefully your audience’s curiosity as to who offers the best will inspire them to click.
Use open-ended questions to get people to share their opinion with you. A good question might be, “If you were stuck on a deserted island and you could have one local business with you, what would it be?” The question is a good one because it factors in audience likes and practicality. Another good question is, “If you could buy anything from a local business, no concern about cost, what would it be and why?”
These questions invite contributions, which means the opportunity for engagement. Greater engagement leads to more people seeing your posts in their streams. Plus you might just start a fun debate with questions like these.
YouTube
Don’t forget video. A quick in-house production is fine. Interview your merchants on what’s new at their store, ask people out on the streets about their favorite local businesses, or compile the images your merchants sent you earlier and add a soundtrack for an easy-to-make video montage.
Follow your local businesses so they know you’re interested in them. It also increases their follower counts.
In addition to the above suggestions on how to make your local businesses stand out on social media, share your merchants’ social media shares. Everyone loves to see their content being enjoyed, agreed with and promoted. You can do all of that with a simple retweet.
Image via Pixabay by kropekk_pl
