Hello world, it’s been a minute. Actually, it’s been a year! As businesses throughout the country start to reopen in various states after over a year of COVID-19-related closures, it’s finally time to come back to life! Dust off your shelves and dust off your social, we want to help you prepare your business for a smooth, successful, and clearly communicated reopening.
You have business hours. Now tell them to us. All of us. Everywhere!
Having accurate, reliable, and up-to-date hours listed online is step one to getting back in business. You’d be surprised, shocked even, at how many businesses have outdated or conflicting hours posted on Google, Yelp, Apple Maps, and their own website. Here’s a little checklist of must-update places to list your hours:
Google My Business
Yelp
Instagram
Facebook
Your website
A note on listing hours on your website: make sure anyone visiting your website can find your hours and location immediately. Perhaps it’s right on the landing page, the header, or the footer in a legible size font—if it’s easy to find, it works. Whatever you do, don’t make your customers work to find them!
Paper Dosa has hours, address, and phone right on their homepage.
Let the world know
Don’t be shy, let us know you’re open again! And let us know multiple times. On Instagram, take advantage of all the sub-platforms - posts, stories, IGTV, Reels, Guides, and Live - to get the word out. You could get creative and come up with an entire reopening campaign if you have the capacity. (Download our handy dandy Campaign Creation Workbook if you need some help with this!) It’s a fantastic time to put in the extra legwork to remind your audience you’re there, you care, and you’re ready to jump back into biz. If you’re posting frequently on Instagram (and we hope you are!) it can be handy to have a post that is clearly about your updated hours—such as a graphic that says “hours” on it— so users can easily find it when they glance at your profile page.
Make sure the world can find you, too
Another one on the list of obvious but super common mistakes: business not using geotags. If you’re a business, you need to use a geotag in every post. A geotag is an electronic tag that assigns a geographical location to a photograph or video, a posting on a social media website, etc. If you’re a brick-and-mortar business, you should be using your own geotag. This is one of the top ways audiences find new profiles to follow. It’s next to effortless and so valuable. Using location-related hashtags is another free and easy way to connect with new audiences. Since you can use up to thirty hashtags per post, absolutely use your town or city’s hashtags.
Always take advantage of geotags!
Freshen up
You don’t need an entire rebrand to give your social media presence a little freshen up. Whether you’re going back to business as usual or have new products, offerings, or perspectives for your audience, use this time to communicate your innovation. People feel alive, hopeful, and excited, which is a fantastic energy to build upon. Let your audience know the history of your business, why you started it or became involved, what your mission is, and what you hope for the future.
You can also freshen up simple things in your social media strategy. Maybe this is a good time to start using a planning software such as Later to plan out a visually beautiful grid. Maybe this is time to commit to a certain number of posts per week. It’s like that new school year vibe, get into it!
What about that bio
We mentioned that including your hours in your Instagram bio is paramount for your audience to be able to find you. What else should be in your bio? If your Instagram username is your business name (@businessname), we recommend changing your display name to something that describes your business. For instance, since our Instagram username is @simplysocialnm, we use our display name to write “Micro Influencer Marketing” which describes our business. If your username isn’t your exact business name, however, we do recommend that the display name be your business name. If you’ve been offering limited services such as delivery or curb-side and are now fully open, add that detail in your bio so people can quickly scan it for everything they need to know.
Rock’n’roll
With these straightforward steps, you’ll signal to your audience that you’re ready for new days ahead! While it’s easy to put social media and internet presence to the side when you’re trying to keep a business afloat (pandemic or no pandemic, it’s always a lot of work!) we promise that the reward is worth it. So rock’n’roll, post your hours, we hope to see you IRL!
