Hi, my name is Bailey! If you read my previous introduction you would know that I work for my dad’s pet store as the social media and marketing manager. Our store is called Southwest Pet located in London Ontario and St. Thomas Ontario! We are a family-owned and operated full-line pet store specializing mainly in reptiles since 1998. Over the years I have seen the changes that social media has had on our store. In this blog, I will be talking to you about the positive and negative impacts that I have seen in our small business as well, as some information that I have researched from other small businesses.
Positive Impacts
Overall I believe social media has had a positive impact on all small businesses. There are many ways that social media can benefit your business whether it be brand awareness, sales, or using it to see what your competitors are doing you can use these tools to make your business better.
The main thing that we use our social media for is brand awareness. Benchmarkone.com estimated that 3.6 billion people use social media worldwide. Those statistics speak for themselves on how important social media is for brand awareness. Facebook is a great platform to really focus on your target audience. For example, Southwest Pet’s target audience is mainly women and men between the ages of 25 and 34. We try to approach a younger audience with all of our posts to get the best reach.
Forbes.com says according to Social Media Examiner’s seventh annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 92 percent of marketers working with small businesses (between two and 10 employees) agree or strongly agree that social media is crucial to their marketing efforts. I firmly agree with this statement based on the success we have had using social media. I made our Facebook page in 2014 and since then our sales and social presence have improved greatly. Every year Southwest Pet hosts reptile events that include reptile experts, sales, and giveaways. These events are always successful. One of the only ways we promote these events are on social media we always draw in large crowds from as far as Toronto coming to see us. Without social media, we would not be able to reach people from out of town so easily.
Negative Impacts
The biggest negative impact I have noticed personally with Southwest Pet is, not having enough employees and time to have a large social media presence. Being a small business, especially during COVID, everyone was struggling. This was a time when you needed to have a large social media presence to stay relevant and still make sales. It was also a time when a lot of people including us had to lay off employees. This made being on social media daily a struggle. We overcame it by scheduling posts each week although it was harder to keep up with comments and inbox messages.
One thing that is huge on social media is negative comments. Being a small business negative comments can strongly affect your business. As a pet store, people can be extremely critical of the care that we give to the animals. At Southwest, we pride ourselves on proper animal care but that does not mean we do not still get negative comments. I believe commenting in a professional informative way is the best way for other people on social media to make a decision for themselves.
To summarize I believe the positives outweigh the negatives and Social media is a crucial part of being a successful small business. Do you agree with my points? I would love to hear in the comments your thoughts on the impacts that social media has had on small businesses and, any experiences you may have had that relate to it.
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 
This is a great post, Bailey! Social media can definitely have a huge impact on small businesses. It can be tough when you don’t have enough manpower to keep at it consistently but it is the best way to engage with your target market. Scheduling is a great way to get content out when you don’t have a lot of time to be online. I am looking forward to seeing how this class helps your pet store 🙂