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5 Tips for Social Media in 2021.

Traders- Hints & Tips

Time to check over your socials, ready for your customers to discover you! Use our 5 Top Tips to get social media savvy in 2021…

It’s time to get your Social Media in tip top shape for the year! Social Media is a fantastic way to promote your small business, but it can seem intimidating and the algorithm updates are EXHAUSTING.

It’s true that promoting a business on Social Media takes a lot of hard work and consistency, but there are simple ways to get your Social Media channels in shape. So here goes explaining them all!

1. Shake up your Bio

It’s super important that we keep moving forward and regularly checking the information we give in our Facebook ‘About’ section, IG Bio, Twitter bio, Linked In profile, Pinterest… the list goes on! All of your information should be up-to-date, easily readable and informative.

Here are a few ideas that we’ve tried, heard or read about:

  • Your Bio should be snappy – nobody wants full paragraphs to read. State what it is that you do OR want to be known for.
  • Emojis can help split up text on your Instagram bio, and hint at what you create / do.
  • Your Bio should include a clear link – make it easy for people to find your products. This could be a Linktree, or a link to your Etsy shop, website or similar. This is your ONE link, use it wisely!
  • Advertise an offer or unique selling point to entice your audience. E.g. “sign up to our newsletter and get 10% off your first order”, “Free UK postage” or similar.
  • It’s advisable to keep your URL/handle and Social Media page names either as your business name or as close to it as possible. For example, our Instagram handle is @peddddleuk – make it easy for customers to find you once they type your business name in a social media site’s search bar.

2. Use Clear Links

Your links should be managed wisely AND should make your customers’ journey much easier. A link is a ‘Call to Action’. What do you want your customers to action? Do you want them to find out more about your business? To shop from you? To visit you at a market? Decide where you want to direct them to, then provide links to make it easy for them.

We suggest you create a page on your own website (Click here for a link to our website hosted link page, as an example), OR use Linktree (there are alternatives but Linktree is a good FREE version).

You may be shouting ‘what is Linktree?’ or ‘why do I need lots of links?’. The simple answer is that it makes it easier for your customers to find you, shop from you, and interact with you! Make it as easy as possible for them to shop from you, find your website and sign up to your Newsletter – they can easily get fed up if they have to trawl through lots of other pages.

If you can keep your ONE Linktree / website hosted link page up-to-date then you know that your customers across all platforms are being kept in the loop with what you’re up to. You can then just use this one link on all of your social media platforms and in your About/Bio sections, as it will provide customers with everything they could possibly need to know!

Below are some great examples of our Pedddle member’s Bios that use Linktree. See how clearly they’re laid out, so the customer can easily spot and click on exactly what they’re interested in?

Linktree examples, Pedddle

Top Link Tips:

1. Have all the links you need labelled really clearly.
2. Use Linktree to categorise your products e.g. ‘Shop Prints’, ‘Shop Stationery’, ‘Shop T-shirts’, ‘Sign up to our Newsletter’.
3. Have links to other social media pages so that customers can easily like your Facebook / Twitter / Instagram & more.
4. Link to your blog.
5. Link to your ‘about‘ page on your website (if you have one), so customers can find out more about the background of your business and brand.
6. Link to your Pedddle page if you have one.
7. Link to your product of the month. Do you have one? You should! It’s a great way of telling customers what’s hot and indicating they should buy.
8. Link to sign up to your newsletter. Do you send a regular newsletter to your mailing list? If not, read our blog on Email Marketing.

3. Check your contact details

Take a moment to check (across all platforms) that your links go exactly where they state they will. Is your email address up-to-date? Have you included the correct Facebook URL handle? Do you mention any dates (for example, Christmas sales) that have now expired?

Do you have the ‘contact’ button on your Instagram page? If not, you may not be on a business account! Head into your settings and make sure you’re on a business account, not a personal one, so that you have all the right functions.

4. The 20/80 rule

The rule is – 20% selling / 80% sharing.

It is suggested by many experts that your social media should be 20% selling, i.e. sharing products with a clear goal for your customer to buy them.

80% should be sharing – you, your inspiration, your passion. Let people know and engage with you – or at least the bits you want them to see (you do need to have boundaries!). People will buy from you if they know, like and trust you. This is about building trust and knowledge in you and your business.

How often should I post?
Some of the biggest accounts we follow post just once or twice a week. Some post every day. The best thing you can do as a small business is be consistent and be engaging. Get other people to interact with you and comment on your posts but also GO AND INTERACT WITH OTHERS! Like, share and comment, and they will do the same in return.

Our blog on using Instagram in the current climate might be useful.

If time is a problem, post less and spend 20 minutes a day liking, commenting and interacting with other people’s posts to get your reach up, and watch your engagement improve!

5. Engage, Engage, Engage!

We are repeating ourselves here, but it’s SUPER important.

You need to interact and comment on other people’s accounts to make the most significant impact on your own accounts. IG and Twitter are very good examples of this – the algorithm favours people who spend more time on the app, and are interactive with it. Watch stories and comment on them, like, share and comment on posts. Also, just an emoji won’t do – the algorithm has been proven to favour comments of 4 words or more, so the longer your comments are, the better.

Facebook makes it slightly more difficult to do this than Instagram, but there are other ways you can get engagement. Polls are a great starting point (although are apparently being removed for business pages!). Put videos out if you feel confident enough to. People love to nosey into other people’s worlds!


We hope this has been a useful read!

We are about to launch our YouTube Challenge and complete 100 videos about little questions you may have about different aspects of business. Link here and subscribe to our channel in anticipation for the launch!