How to support local business recovery via social media

Maybe* is committed to supporting local recovery across the UK. We help local businesses get to grips with social media so they stay connected to customers and attract new ones from across their local area, and even further afield.

Every week we make a stop off in a town across the UK to sniff out the best in social media. This week we’re off to Penzance and St Ives, where businesses' social media use is just above the UK average. We'll explore what Penzance and St Ives' best looks like and how businesses are clearly communicating new restrictions to their service.

Maybe* Place Insights allows you to benchmark the social media activity, posts, engagement, sentiment and conversation topics of all businesses within your place. When you know what the local conversation sounds like in any town or place, you can replicate the successful tactics no matter where you are.

How many businesses in Penzance and St Ives have social media accounts?

Maybe* Place Insights shows us that 46% of businesses on Market Jew Street Penzance and 36% in St Ives have social media accounts. This is significantly higher than the national average of 28%. Take a bow!

Explore Maybe* Place Insights

How many businesses in Penzance and St Ives create social media content everyday?

Of those 46% of Penzance businesses, 35% of them are active every day. But at weekends this drops as low as 26%. In St Ives less businesses are active every day. The average is 22% across the week. 

How many posts do businesses make and how engaging are they?

Penzance businesses create an average of 300 pieces of social media content per day. Whereas in St Ives, businesses are creating about 150 posts a day. In Penzance engagements average about 6,000 per day, whereas in St Ives its posts drive about 10,000 engagements per day.

While Penzance creates more content, its engagement averages 20 per post. In St Ives, the average engagement per post is 67. St Ives posts less but its content works harder and more efficiently engages customers. That's social media at its best, well done St Ives! 

What is Penzance and St Ives’s best social media content?

We’ve used the Maybe* Best Post in a Place tool to find Penzance’s best post on Wednesday November 12.

Local artist and print maker Sophie Harding uses Instagram to target an audience interested in interior design, with her bold and colourful work.

What conversations do Penzance and St Ives’s businesses create?

Christmas is taking over in Penzance and St Ives, sitting right at the centre of the towns’ conversation. The Cornwall place hashtag also features as do topical conversations around Remembrance day. The #shoplocal conversation is also in there and due to the second lockdown, some conversations about working from home, as well as DIY are starting to creep in again.

In the sentiment stakes, St Ives is a little more positive than Penzance. Both dipped on Sunday 8, but this is down to conversation around Remembrance Sunday, and a slightly more somber tone. At the moment it's imperative to be upbeat and inspire customers to shop local with you where they can and stay connected.

Key takeaway

Maybe* Place Insights aims to inspire more businesses to take up social media on a daily basis. When one business thrives, others can follow suit by participating and engaging in the local conversation. Use the hashtags #stayconnected and #shoplocal either in your own content, or listen and participate in them to reach more customers and learn from other businesses like yours.

Maybe* is a social media management platform that helps organisations make social media work better for them. We provide easy to use engagement tools, smart insights and reports that rock.