Why the Cranleigh Boutique’s 100,000 likes are a small business sensation

You may think that a social media strategy is a luxury – something for large businesses who can afford to employ dedicated teams. But you’d be wrong.

First, it’s worth recounting the story I’m referring to. Some weeks back we learned that the Cranleigh Boutique hotel near Lake Windermere in the Lake District, has won an award for the best use of Facebook, namely for amassing 100,000 ‘likes’ over an 18-month period. The judges described it as a “really smart” campaign, and when you consider that they were up against the oeuvre of Evian, Aldi and VisitEngland – all of which already have immense consumer visibility – you realise just what an achievement it is.

To cap off the achievement (and in an initiative which formed part of the reward necessary to help gain those ‘likes’), the hotel then announced that it was allowing sole use of the hotel for a competition winner, over the course of a whole weekend, a prize worth more than £8,000.

This story is remarkable first and foremost because of the sheer scale of the numbers. This is an independent hotel in the Lake District, presumably with limited budgets like most other small businesses, and yet it has acquired numbers of followers on social media that would rival the reach achieved by a full page advertisement in The Independent. Better than that, the coverage doesn’t end with a single blast like it does with the newspaper advert – the business gets to keep talking to those fans week after week, with images, interesting articles or offers.

If you take a quick look at the Facebook page in question, it is obvious that these are engaged fans, too. Each post has hundreds if not thousands of ‘likes’, and a ton of comments and shares.

Granted, social media is not within the grasp of everyone, as far as technical proficiency is concerned. Hell, even publishers – supposedly media gurus – would struggle to put together such an effective campaign that draws this kind of attention. But it is irrefutable proof that small business owners should not brush over the social media revolution as being ‘something for the young people’, or indeed something requiring an expensive marketing agency.

You can make inroads and build a huge audience locally and nationally. And even with a more modest 10,000 likes, for instance, there is no doubt that this will improve occupancy, increase RevPAR and add more money to your bottom line.