In this instructional video, Polly Barnfield, OBE, demonstrates how detailed, community‑focused social‑media posts can act as digital shop windows that convert online interest into physical footfall for local shopping centres. Using the launch of the Yorkshire Cancer Research shop at Cravencourt Shopping Centre in Skipton as a case study, she highlights the use of carousel images, tagged partners, human‑interest quotes, event dates, opening hours and clear calls‑to‑action to create compelling posts. She then outlines a practical workflow: using the platform’s “Engage” tool to filter local businesses by location and engagement, liking and commenting on high‑engagement posts as the shopping centre’s official account, and positioning these interactions as digital sign‑posts that encourage reciprocal follows and potential collaborations. The video concludes with a call‑to‑action for viewers to click the help button for further assistance.
Chapters
Today we're looking at how giving detail on social media can drive physical football. This is Cravencourt Shopping Centre based in Skipton. And as you can see, they use social media very much as, you know, a kind of digital shop windows. They like to show people what is going on, whether it's new products or whether it is quite literally in store or any events that are going on in the area. Now, what they've done here, here is this was them launching a brand new store. So this was the Yorkshire Cancer Research shop. And as you can see, the image itself is lovely. I think it shows everybody kind of all gathering together. They've used a carousel, just all the different images here. You can see they've had a whole ribbon cutting. They've invited the deputy mayor, they've invited down the chief executive at Yorkshire Cancer Research. So, you know, they've invited, I guess, all the people who would want to be involved with anything launching with regards to charity. And it says here, the new Yorkshire Cancer Research shop was officially opened here and tagged themselves in the. Tagged in the cancer research. And then it goes into lots of detail, which is really, I guess, the essence of this post. So it tells us where the funds go. It gives us a really lovely quote as well from Councillor Bentley. She's again going into a lot of detail herself. Again, just saying, you know, I've been diagnosed with cancer myself and I've lost several members of my family to it. So it's a cause that's very close to my heart. And I think that really kind of gives you that human factor, you know, I think everybody can identify with that. And then it explains again, even the shop in Skipton, how it's run by manager Mary Martin, and it's got a team of dedicated volunteers and it's run like a small department store. And then it goes into detail about when it is open as well. So it's just a great way to showcase store. It gives us a real sense of community by bringing this into their event. There's lots of detail in there, there's dates, there's times, and I think given the kind of human factor behind it, and really tugs on the heartstrings as well, and would make me essentially look at this digital shop window, read the detail and really want to go down. So that drives physical football. Now, if I was the shopping center, one of the things that I'd want to do is I would want to make sure that I was engaging as much as I could with businesses in my local area, because the more you do that the more you drive people you so I would go to maybe I'd go to Engage and then choose locations. I've chosen skip in here and you can obviously choose here different business categories if you particularly want to look at you could look at shopping centers. You could look at health and fitness for example. But what I've done here is I've just looked for anybody any business that's getting a lot of engagement on social media. So it's best posts I've toggled here to put to local and then what I would then do is I would be going okay, this is the local tennis center that said 42, 48 engagements. So I would like like it. I would comment on it as the shopping center. Just so you know, it's a little all it is is like a little digital sign post back to you. It's like leaving your business card. And then people who are following this and watching and watching it might think oh I didn't know about that shopping center or I haven't looked at them in a while or I don't follow them much, more likely to follow them back. And you never know, it might also lead to business collaborations as well. Now as always, if you've got any questions at all, click on the little blue button. We love to help. Open.
