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Small Business Saturday, the day after Black Friday, was created to shift attention from big box stores to the smaller mom-and-pop shops offering carefully curated product selection and gift ideas you won't find anywhere else. It's a celebration of everything that makes small businesses special.

 

To take advantage of the spotlight being shone on Small Business Saturday on Nov. 26, 2016, make sure your business is leveraging social media to get the word out.  

 

1. Use The Hashtag #ShopSmall

On Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, use the hashtag #ShopSmall to allow customers to easily find information about your business and to alert them that you're participating in Small Business Saturday. And use the hashtag yourself to search social media for other ideas for promoting your small business during this busy time of year.

 

2. Update Your Facebook Page To Show You're Participating

Many businesses now have free Facebook pages to communicate with customers and fans, which is great. You want to be where your customers are, and most consumers today have a Facebook account.

 

So take the opportunity to share information with customers and prospects about your participation in Small Business Saturday. You can announce new inventory you've just received, alert customers to special promotions, share a calendar of events and post useful tips related to your products and services. For active Facebook users, it's a way to stay in touch with your business without having to click away to your company website, which you probably don't update as frequently.

Recommended by Forbes

 

You can also download free promotional materials from American Express to use in your online marketing.

 

3. Post Videos Of Store Tours

Many retailers take the opportunity to dress up their businesses during the holidays, adding festive touches, moving fixtures around and adding new inventory for the busy season. Harried customers might miss all the time and energy you've invested in jazzing up your space, so how about giving them a virtual tour. Take a video using a camera or your smartphone and point out all the decorations you've put up may entice them to stop by in person.

 

No matter what kind of business you run, customers enjoy seeing holiday décor. So give them a peek at the multiple Christmas trees you've put up and decorated throughout your store, talk about the special murals you had painted on your front store windows, the color scheme you chose for this year's festivities or the special window displays you had designed.

 

Then upload the video to YouTube and share it on social media for everyone to see and appreciate.

 

4. Use Facebook Live To Offer Holiday Advice

Whether you run a gift shop, hair salon, restaurant, or liquor store, you have an opportunity to help your customers and prospects have a better holiday season. By offering advice on topics they're concerned with - live on camera using your smartphone and the Facebook Live app - you can answer their questions, suggest solutions and earn their appreciation and possibly their business.

 

Choose a day and time, and consider making it a regular event during the holidays - weekly is a good frequency. Then let your customers know that you're available to them live for 30 minutes or an hour at that designated time. Pick a different topic to address during each Facebook Live session, to attract new viewers.

 

Set your phone or webcam up inside your business to share a pretty backdrop and enough space to include you, too, in the frame. Then use your time to, say, offer some trendy gift wrapping ideas, if you're a stationery or gift shop. Or decorate a tree using some unconventional ornaments available in your store. Or share a cooking demonstration featuring a special dish your café is offering this winter, or suggest wines that pair well with peppermint. As long as the broadcast is in some way related to your business and potentially of interest to your target customer, they're worth doing.

5. Share Fun Photos

In addition to sharing videos, how about taking a series of festive photos to share on Instagram and Snapchat, with captions highlighting what you can offer your customers. That might be specific products, free wine and cheese while they shop, a complimentary five-minute massage, or valet parking, for example. Use photos to let customers know how you can help them.

 

These don't have to be well-planned shots - candid are actually preferred. So take out your smartphone and snap pictures of customers shopping - with their permission, of course - or your well-stocked shelves. The more colorful the photo, the more eye-catching it will be.

 

6. Announce Holiday Events

Social media is a great place to announce upcoming in-store events, such as trunk shows, special promotions, product demonstrations, or holiday charity fundraisers. Choose a day and then announce it on Facebook as an event and promote it on Twitter and Instagram.

 

Not sure what kind of special event you can offer? How about inviting a local school chorus in to sing carols on Friday afternoons, or local instrumental students to give a short holiday recital on the weekend. Partner with area music educators to provide musicians a place to show off their talents while helping put your customers in the holiday spirit.

 

You can also position your business as the source for local holiday information, by sharing details regarding local events, too. Create an online calendar of local festivities and share it on your social media accounts and your website, so that your sites become the place to turn to for up-to-date info.

 

7. Post Pretty Product Pictures On Pinterest

Pinterest is such a visual platform that it's the perfect place to share images of products you sell and inspiring quotes related to your work. You can also share aspirational photos, such as of rooms you've designed or dining room tablescapes to inspire customers looking for decorating ideas this holiday season.

 

If you're an artisan, you can make handcrafted products available on Etsy and then share the link on Pinterest, as well as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, to boost the number of people who will see it. The key with Pinterest is top quality photography.

 

8. Run Facebook Ads

In addition to posting updates on social media, which is free, consider investing some of your advertising dollars in ads on Facebook, to boost the number of people who will see your posts.

 

For as little as $10, you can appeal to a broader network than just the people who have "liked" your Facebook page. So promote the specials you're offering on Small Business Saturday, offer an incentive for stopping by, such as free gift wrapping, or spotlight an upcoming in-store event.

 

With Small Business Saturday quickly approaching, the immediacy of social media can help make the difference between a typical Saturday and one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

-Forbes Online, November 22, 2016 

1. Local Character and Prosperity

In an increasingly homogenized world, communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.

 

2. Community Well-Being

Locally owned businesses build strong communities by sustaining vibrant town centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, and contributing to local causes.

 

3. Local Decision-Making

Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.

 

4. Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy

Compared to chain stores, locally owned businesses recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community.

 

5. Job and Wages

Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.

6. Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship fuels America's economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.

 

7. Public Benefits and Costs

Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.

 

8. Environmental Sustainability

Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.

 

9. Competition

A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.

 

10. Product Diversity

A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

 

-Stacy Mitchell, Institute for Local Self-Reliance