Marketing Full Stack: This Week’s Social Media and SEO Tips

Welcome to Marketing Full Stack, the weekly round-up from me and the Loving Social Media team. It’s packed with practical social media and SEO tips for small businesses, opticians and healthcare brands.

Written by Garry Kousoulou FBDO, dispensing optician and founder of Loving Social Media. Last updated 5 November 2026.

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Hey there, it’s Garry and the Loving Social Media team. I’ve been a dispensing optician for more than 36 years. I was also the first optician in the world to use Facebook for business, something Meta later featured in a case study. I built my own practice, Good Looking Optics in Enfield, from scratch with no existing patients. So everything we share here comes from doing it ourselves, not from a textbook.

What does marketing full stack mean?

When we say marketing full stack, we mean looking after every layer of how customers find you and choose you. That’s your social media, your place on Google, your website, your reviews and the people behind it all. Most businesses get one or two layers right and leave the rest to chance. A full stack approach means every layer works together.

This week’s marketing full stack tips

Every week the team sits down together, shares what we’ve spotted, and picks out the bits that will actually help you win new customers. Here’s this week’s round-up, with a simple action for each tip so you can put it to work straight away.

Dare to be different

On social media, the businesses that get noticed are rarely the ones copying everyone else. When I started posting about my practice on Facebook, nobody else in optics was doing it, and that’s exactly why people paid attention. The same is true today. If every practice near you is posting the same stock photo of a pair of frames, the one that shows the real faces behind the counter will win.

Try this week: post one photo or short video that only your business could make. Introduce a member of the team, show a patient (with their permission) picking their new glasses, or share a story from your day.

Alex’s tip: link your blogs together

Internal links are the links in your blog posts that point to other pages on your own website. Google uses them to understand what your site is about and which pages matter most, and readers use them to keep exploring rather than leaving. It’s one of the quickest wins in SEO, and most small businesses ignore it.

Try this week: open your three most popular blog posts and add two links in each one to a related page on your site, such as a service page or another article. Use words that describe the page you’re linking to, not “click here”.

Anna’s tip: keep making YouTube Shorts

Shorts aren’t just quick, snappy videos. They can show up in Google search results as well as on YouTube, which gives you another way to be found by people searching for what you do. They also cost almost nothing to make: a phone, good light and something useful to say.

Try this week: answer one question your customers ask all the time in a video of under a minute. For an optician, that might be “How often should I have an eye test?” Then post it as a Short with a clear title.

TikTok keeps getting longer

TikTok started life with 15-second videos. Over time it has stretched that to minutes rather than seconds, and it keeps testing longer uploads. It’s a clever way to keep people watching for longer, and if you found it hard to put your phone down before, good luck now!

For a business, longer videos mean room to explain properly. A quick clip grabs attention, while a three-minute walkthrough builds trust. The best accounts use both.

Instagram polls in the comments

Instagram has been testing polls inside the comments of Reels and posts. They’re a lovely, easy way to start a conversation with your customers and to get your customers chatting with each other, which helps more people see your content. Between polls, hashtags and GIFs, Instagram is starting to feel a lot like Twitter used to.

Try this week: ask a simple question with two answers, such as “Round frames or square frames?” People love giving an opinion, and every reply tells Instagram your post is worth showing to more people.

Is anyone still using X?

Speaking of Twitter, it’s been a while since it became X, and we’ve noticed fewer of the people we know using it. It doesn’t feel the way it used to. Do you still use it? If not, what made you stop? Tell us in the comments. We’d love to know.

Your team is part of your marketing full stack

Here’s something I’ve learnt the hard way in my own practice. There’s no point filling your diary with new patients if you don’t have the clinicians to see them. Good marketing creates demand, so make sure your team is ready for it. If you run an optical practice and you’re short of an optometrist, specialist recruiters like Need an Optom place optometrists and other clinicians with practices across the UK.

Get out and meet your industry

Some of the best marketing ideas I’ve ever had came from a conversation at a show, not a screen. As the creator of 100% Optical, I’m a big believer in getting the industry in one room. 100% Optical is the UK’s biggest optical event, held at ExCeL London, and the next show runs from 27 February to 1 March 2027. If you work in eye care, it’s well worth a day out.

Awards belong in your marketing full stack too

Awards are one of the most underused marketing tools a small business has. A shortlisting gives you something to post about, a reason for local press to mention you, and a badge that builds trust with new customers. That’s why I set up the Enfield Business Awards, to shine a light on the people who make a real difference in our borough. You can read how the 2026 ceremony went in the Enfield Dispatch’s coverage.

Try this week: look for one local or industry award you could enter, and put the deadline in your diary.

Let us handle your marketing full stack

If you’re reading all this and thinking, “How on earth do I keep up with it all?”, that’s where we come in. We look after the technical side of your marketing full stack so you can get on with running your business.

Our newest service is VRSB, our Video Repurpose Solution for Blogs. It turns the videos you’ve already made into blog posts that help you get found on Google. In fact, this article started life as one of our weekly videos.

Want to find out more? Fill in the form below and one of the team will call you back.

Thanks for reading this week’s Marketing Full Stack, and have a brilliant week.

Garry