Hey there, fellow small business owners! By now, we hope you all know how powerful social media can be for your business. We frequently talk about how to make this tool work for you, but how do you know it’s working? Social media sometimes feels like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall, with some posts getting two likes while others explode with engagement. It can be hard to know how to improve! This is where your analytics come in to save the day. In this post, we’re going to talk about what social media analytics mean and how they can help you take your marketing to the next level, while having some fun along the way!

If you’re a small business owner, you know that networking is essential for growing your business. But attending the same networking events week after week, sipping the same boring coffee and trying to strike up conversations can get tiring. This is where speed networking comes in to freshen things up! These events are designed to create opportunities for quick, meaningful conversations that help you expand your network. But with only a few minutes to make an impression, some people can be intimidated. That’s why we’re going to share our favorite networking tips and tricks, be it traditional or speed networking. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a newbie to the game, read on to learn how to make the most out of your next event.

Today, it seems like the whole world is online. It’s easy to forget that things like print media exist! We do our marketing online, we do our networking through social media, we even take meetings over Zoom rather than go to a local coffee shop. Before the pandemic, we used the World Wide Web as a tool. Now, it seems as if we’re using the internet as a crutch. Here’s the good news though: with everyone online, printed branding materials have room to make more of an impact. Something like a postcard has never been obsolete, but that invitation to your business’s event will make more of an impact now that people only get negativity in their mailbox. Let’s talk about how to make printed marketing work with your marketing plan.

Social Media is a great way for small businesses to connect with their audience and build a community around their brand. If you’re not already using social media in one way or another, you’re most likely missing out on huge opportunities. Out of 8 billion people in the world, 4.9 billion of them are using social media as of January 2023. That means one in three people worldwide are on social media platforms. And it’s free! What better tool to use to connect with your clients? But with so much noise on these platforms, sometimes it’s tough to get your content noticed. That’s where contests, polls, and Q&A sessions come in.

Do you ever feel like your marketing plan isn’t giving you the results you want? You may feel like you’re doing all the right things and spreading the word in all the right places, but you’re not getting any traction. You could be feeling this way because your strategies aren’t coordinated with each other. Most small business owners are on the lookout for ways to make their marketing more effective and the best way to do that is to have all your marketing streams work together towards a single goal. Let’s talk about how you can start marketing your business on purpose.

In this digital age, social media has become an essential tool for small businesses to reach and connect with their ideal customers. We focus on it fairly frequently at Flourish because it’s a great cost-effective tool to market your business! But social media marketing shouldn’t stop at your weekly sales post; Social media should also be used as a customer service tool. Just like you can comment on a friend’s post or send them a message, your followers can do that on your business page. Did you know 1 billion messages are exchanged between people and businesses every month on Facebook Messenger? How long has it been since you checked your company’s DMs?

Most entrepreneurs start their business with a big idea to meet a need or serve their community. The business begins with passion and focuses on developing the products and services the company offers. Because of this, branding can often become something on the to-do list because you can’t operate without a logo. This may be hard to hear, but as important as it is to serve your community, you can’t do that without the strong foundation of an intentional brand. And just because branding is so crucial to your business doesn’t mean it can be effectively created from something like a Canva template. A company’s branding is so important that it probably should be developed by a professional. Let’s talk about exactly why this is the case.

The holidays are a busy time for almost everyone. There are countless parties, hours of shopping, and somewhere in there you’re supposed to take care of yourself and do all the things you do any other time of the year. For most of you, there’s the additional craziness of running your business during the holidays. It can be very easy for business owners to get overwhelmed with finishing the year, so we forget to plan for the upcoming year. This is your sign to deliberately make time to think about and set goals for your business come January. Like so many things, it’s better to do it on purpose rather than to just react to what happens to you. Let us walk you through all the steps you need to take to prepare for 2023.

Here’s a not-so-controversial opinion for you: social media is dumb. It may be surprising to see us write that since we so often emphasize how important social media is for your marketing plan, but it’s true. However, marketing is all about meeting your customers where they’re at, and most people are on one form of social media or another. So it’s helpful to look at sites like Facebook, Twitter, or even TikTok for what it is: a tool. It just so happens that the way you use this tool is by posting 80% polls, questions, or memes and 20% industry-related things. But we’re seeing some recent data showing how a particular kind of post can drive traffic to your website. Enter: memes.