This year has been tough for small business owners in general, but minority owned businesses have been disproportionately impacted by this pandemic. Today I wanted to highlight and rank ways in which you can help minority owned businesses.
Good: Following your favorite small business brands on social media, AND engaging with their posts. Likes are welcomed, but comments, direct messages and poll and survey responses are even better. These actions all tell the respective social media algorithms that you appreciate the content these small businesses are putting out, and will continue to show them in your feed. All these actions are free and take minimal time and effort.
Better: If you’re willing to go one step further than “good” actions, one of the easiest and meaningful things you can do is subscribe to a small business email newsletter. Why? Because unlike social media platforms, newsletters are not subject to algorithms, so you will receive every single newsletter published by the business. I created a special gmail account just for restaurant, shop and travel newsletters and I subscribe to every newsletter from a small business I want to support. That way they’re all in one spot, and don’t clog up my normal email. Want to take it one step further? Sharing a newsletter with a friend or family member and encouraging them to subscribe too is a way to help the small business grow its email list. Again, these actions don’t cost any money, and require minimal effort.
Best: The best thing you can do for a small business is to spend money with them. If that is currently out of your budget, the next best thing you can do is share that business on your platforms. Regardless of the size of your following on social media, you have influence. And if you share these small businesses on your social media, you’re helping increase their reach and exposure. If you buy a product from them, sharing that publicly is incredibly helpful too. And if you like your product or experience, leaving a review on their Facebook page or sending them a quick email review (with permission to use your review) will not just make their day, but also provide helpful testimony to people who are new to that brand. These activities certainly take more effort and of course, buying something involves money, but these are by far the most impactful actions to help a small business.
Now, for the self-serving part. I’ve been working very hard on my own newsletter, which is now a weekly feature highlighting Things I LUUUUURVE and new products in the shop. If you would be so generous and do me a HUGE FAVOR and subscribe to my newsletter, I would very much appreciate it.
If you would like to check out the store and see more of our color pop jewelry, you can shop it here! 10% of all revenue is donated to charity. We supported The Greater Cleveland Food Bank in Q1, and will be supporting Limitless Ambition for Q2.