This holiday shopping season, consumers will no doubt be reminded to shop local and support small businesses. Rivervine Writing Services would like to go a step further and share some tips that you as a customer can do to help them succeed:

• It’s great that you Like their Facebook business pages, but the algorithms are based on the percentage of fans who engage with the post. That means if a page has 1,000 fans but the post only gets 5 likes, it will not get promoted as much as a post with 5 likes from a page that only has 149 fans. Moral of the story: Engage with your friends’ business pages. Like, share, and comment on their posts.

• On their Facebook business page, click on the three dots. Under the Follow Settings, change it from Default to Favorites. That way, you’re sure to see their posts in your news feed. The caveat to this is you can only have 30 friends and Pages on your Favorites list. But don’t worry. You still have the option under Notifications to be notified whenever the page makes posts/videos, goes live or runs special offers.

• Be sure to tag the business in your own posts, and use the Check In option when you visit their brick-and-mortar locations.

• Leave them a 5-star review on the Review tab of their business page.
• Finally, please make sure to patronize the business in real life. This pandemic has forced so many mom-and-pops to close their doors. It’s hard enough competing against big boxes and national chains, but the occupancy restrictions are crushing small businesses even harder.
Our local small businesses are what give our communities their unique identities and keep us from becoming Anytown, USA. They keep money circulating in the local economy instead of going to some out-of-area headquarters. Please help them out by supporting them on social media and in real life.
Thank you. And have an enchanting holiday season!
Gwen Clayton, Owner
Rivervine Writing Services