For small business owners who want to increase brand awareness, there’s a massive opportunity to reach consumers showing interest in shopping small. They can do this by networking with other small business owners and asking the community and fans via social to support their business.

The pandemic pushed people to support local businesses like they never had before, but consumers want to know the story behind the business, what makes the business vulnerable, how it struggled or overcame a situation. By being vulnerable and honest, there’s a huge opportunity to reach consumers who want to shop small. Try networking with other small business owners and plug each other’s causes, highlight inspirations, and note the hardships that both have overcome. By establishing a partnership with another small business, the cross-promotional social opportunities become endless and are mutually beneficial to both parties.

Utilizing hashtags to encourage engagement and increase brand awareness among social users allows for a larger number of impressions and more of an opportunity for User Generated Content. Hashtags provide additional context and branding edge to posts, boost and kickstart engagement when used as a discovery tool and build community. It’s important to be strategic with hashtags, though, as a recent study found using 10 or more hashtags can reduce engagement by 68.2%.

Small businesses should also consider connecting with local influencers or local personalities to help promote their product, service or story via social media. Whether it be through content creation to utilize the company’s own marketing materials or through organic social posts, influencers, specifically on the micro-scale, have spent copious amounts of time building trust, loyalty and overall credibility with their audience. This makes them a go-to source for all things having to do with their specific niche. It’s taking word-of-mouth marketing to an entirely new, and more cost-efficient, level.