It is difficult to start and grow your own business, especially in a big city where you have to fight for your visibility between great internationally known brands. The truth is that big cities have a large population as potential customer base giving you plenty of opportunities and variety to grow your business (Fallon, 2014).
It is also important to underline that a lot of people in big cities prefer to purchase in local businesses. Nowadays people are more and more interested in shopping in second hand shops, local and organic shops, even if surrounded by international companies. So if you think twice, a big city is probably a great place to start developing your entrepreneurial dreams. Moreover, there are some specific businesses that are more likely to succeed nowadays like eco consulting, restaurants and dog walking, between others (Fallon, 2014).
Focusing on restaurants, or food service businesses, it is important to keep in mind what customers are looking for. People will always have needs, and food it is definitely one of them. People will always need to eat, so your business should not be too influenced by the crisis if managed wisely. As a local business you need to build your network from the beginning, focusing on excellent customer service and value offering. These factors will help increase word of mouth and social networks communications, which are key elements that will help you to succeed. You have the opportunity to get closer and integrate in the community. Moreover, talking to customers will help you understand what they want and work in that direction. You have to start by creating a small community in a big city.People from that neighbourhood, people that commute just to get your services/products or even friends that visit you, are precious clients that you don´t want to lose. One of the most common and efficient things to do is to make these clients engaged with your brand, and here is why social media has a big role in your business. It may seem like it´s a waste of time, especially if you aren´t connected with social media personally, but an article written by Hurst (2013) says that:
“Britons spend and estimated 62 million hours each day on Facebook and Twitter, according to a new survey on a social media habits”.
As outlined by Entrepreneur Magazine (2015), the secrets that increase your influence and make a difference in your business strategies in social media are:
1 – Produce quality content – Make sure you are sharing your own thoughts and opinions what makes your content unique! It is also very important if your social media pages are visited in more than one country or even globally make sure you post at regular times trying to be visible and compatible with all time zones.
2 – Be open and engaging – It is important that you participate in comments and debates. If people make comments or questions always try to answer and make people engage with you as well as the brand. It is also important that you comment on relevant comments or posts of other pages.
3 – Focus on a specific niche – If you are generalist and you talk about everything in your page, you will eventually lose some followers that are not interested. But if you specify in a specific niche, you will gain followers that are interested in that niche. No matter what you talk about, you need to stand out from the crowd, and the better way to do it is to own a particular subject.
4 – Use social media to build your business and vice versa – It is important to engage and build your pages in social media. Focus on using social platforms to broadcast your products news and ideas, and use the resulting visibility to market it further.
5 – Embrace each social network´s unique culture – The best users embrace each culture individually rather than sharing identical content across platforms. For example always use Hash tags in Twitter and share important information on Facebook.
To conclude, it is important that entrepreneurs bear in mind that a social media presence is no longer an optional part of the marketing plan!
References
Entrepreneur Magazine, (2015). 5 Social Media Rules Every Entrepreneur Should Know. [Video] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/EntMagazine [Accessed 11 April 2015].
Fallon, N. (2014). 7 Small Business Ideas for Big Cities. Business News Daily [Online] Available at: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5965-business-ideas-big-cities.html [Accessed 11 April 2015].
Hurst, P. (2013). Britons spend 62m hours a day on social media – that’s an average one-hour for EVERY adult and child. The Independent, [Online] Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/britons-spend-62m-hours-a-day-on-social-media–thats-an-average-one-hour-for-every-adult-and-child-8567437.html [Accessed 11 April 2015].
SFGate, (2015). Absorbed device users oblivious to danger. [Online] Available at: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Absorbed-device-users-oblivious-to-danger-4876709.php [Accessed 11 April 2015].