Here’s 4 simple ways you can help small businesses without spending a cent.

1. Like or Follow their social media pages 

If you are on any social media platforms (like Facebook, Instagram or Tiktok), it costs nothing to like someone’s business page but the more likes a person has on their business page, generally adds to their reputation and it helps them reach more people when they are promoting their products or services online. If you haven’t already liked my pages, please do! Here are my Facebook, Instagram,  YouTube and Tiktok pages.

2. Like their posts or even leave a comment

I don’t know how many times someone has said to me “oh, I saw that on your Facebook page” and yet they didn’t ‘like’ it on Facebook. It’s easy to just quickly click ‘like’ and it makes such a difference to the amount of people who get to see the post. Owners of business social media pages can get weekly or monthly updates on how their posts and pages are performing. The posts with the most interaction gets shown to the most people.  If a post isn’t ‘liked’ shortly after it has been put up, Meta don’t seem to push it to the top of people’s streams so less people get to see your post. So liking a post or putting a smiley face in the comment bar (or even tagging a friend) means that Meta thinks it’s interesting enough that others might want to see it too. Your like will keep a post being seen by someone else who might end up buying the product.

3. Leave a review

Recommendations rate highly when it comes to making choices. So, if you already have used a service or bought a product, take two minutes to write a review. Not only will this help other consumers make good choices, but google love to see activity on business web pages. So, for example, if they see that one toy shop has lots of activity happening on it and another doesn’t, next time someone googles ‘toys in Ireland’ they will put the shop that seems to be the most active higher on page 1. Also, when you are reviewing, try to use the title of the item you are reviewing. So, for example, if you are reviewing ‘Go Genuis Football Game’ it is better to write for example ‘we loved the Go Genius Football Game’ instead of ‘we loved this game’. The reason for this is that google only reads words and the more times a word or set of words appear on a page, the more certain google can be that that page is about that item. This way, when someone googles the words ‘Go Genius Football Game’, google will see this combination of words listed several times on this page and direct people there.

On my website, if you want to write a review on a product you have purchased, simply

– Find the product on my website

– Scroll to the very end of that page

– Click the grey ‘write a review’ button on the bottom right hand corner and bobs your uncle!!

4. Tell your friends

If you are on twitter, google plus, instagram, pintrest, linkedin and the many, many other social media platforms become a follower of the businesses you are supporting and re-share the stuff they post or tag a friend who might be interested.

Even if you aren’t on social media, name drop businesses in conversations and help spread the word about small Irish shops.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this. I know a lot of you are already supporting my business in this way and I really appreciate it. These small gestures make a big difference to my business.

xx Suzie

www.toysandgames.ie