In this video, Polly Barnfield explains how small, local businesses can expand their social‑media reach by collaborating with complementary businesses and using tagging, resharing, liking and commenting. She illustrates the approach with a real‑world example: H & L Bath Bombs, a family‑run home‑based bath‑bomb maker from Bradford, met another bath‑bomb vendor at a Comic‑Con event, tagged them in a post, and received a reciprocal tag. This mutual exposure introduces each brand to the other’s audience. Barnfield advises businesses to search for local complementary accounts via the platform’s location feature (e.g., selecting “Bradford” under the “Engage” → “Location” menu) and to actively engage with those accounts—liking, commenting, sharing, or simply tagging them in relevant content. The overarching message is a mindset shift from competition to collaboration, positioning cross‑promotion as a low‑cost, high‑impact growth strategy for independent businesses.
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Today we're with one of Bradford's Green street pioneers, H and L bath bombs and we're looking at how collaborating with other businesses can drive engagement and reach on social media. H and L are family run home based business making bath bombs and they went along to an event recently where they met another business who made similar products. They chatted to them, they really liked them and rather than seeing them as another competitor, they instead saw it as an opportunity for two businesses or two similar businesses if you like, to align. So they tagged them on social media in this post. So we went to Comic Con event and we bumped into another bath bomb store that are extremely friendly couple and we'd love to work with them at some point. And then they tagged them in and they're showing the picture as well with their card on it, which is lovely. And as you can see they have responded back in kind as well. So if I was then a potential customer, I would love to see two small independent businesses operating like this. If I was the other business I would have taken that post and reshared it and done exactly the same thing. But tagging in another business means you're likely to reach their audience as well as sharing with yours. And ultimately it's about two small independent businesses supporting each other. So this is about people collaborating rather than competing. So it's just a really good way. So if you have, I don't know, a local complimentary business in your area. So it might be that you're a publisher and there's a local florist and you might get your arrangements from them. There's no harm in tagging them to say, you know, that you've got them. It might be that you're a pub and there's a restaurant down the road that does a completely different thing to you and you know they've got a really strong Instagram, then it would just be about doing a little comment, doing a, like doing a share or it might just be doing a bit of engaging on their feed. But tagging them in something just means that you're going to come up to their customers, they're going to come up to your customers. And less of the sort of competitive nature is much more about collaboration and looking at how you can all work together to grow your reach. So if I was these guys, I would want to be looking at finding other businesses that I could work with. And what better way than looking at the maybe location section of the platform? So you go into maybe you want to engagement, then you go into engage, you click on location and these guys are based in Bradford so what I would be wanting to do is click on Bradford and then these are all of the businesses that get really high engagement on social media in Bradford so what this means is if they are going to this pub for example I would want to be as them as H L I'd want to be liking and commenting on this I might say that looks really good or the Cuddy club sounds amazing it might be signet yarns I might want to go in here and talk about oh you know I do a bit of knitting myself because guess what if they're interested in signet yarns why wouldn't they be interested in your bath bombs as well? So it just means that you're getting a bit more engagement within your feed and it's like a digital sign goes back to you if you've got any questions whatsoever click on the little blue button. We love to help.
