Your feed is not a broadcast, it is a reference. Most of the people who matter look at it once, after somebody has given them your name.
Here is the thing nobody says out loud about small business social media. Your followers are mostly not sat waiting for your next post.
That sounds brutal. It is actually good news, because it means the game is not the one you have been trying to win.
The people who matter to your business do not scroll past you every day. They get your name off a mate, or they find you on Google, and then they tap your profile once and give it about six seconds.
That six seconds is what your socials are for. Everything else is a bonus.
What actually happens in that six seconds
They do not read your captions. They do not scroll to the bottom. They look at the top of your profile and the first nine squares, and they make three decisions.
- 1Is this the right business? Do the pictures obviously show what I was told they do.
- 2Are they still going? When did they last post, and do they look active or abandoned.
- 3Are they any good, and what do they cost? Nobody says this bit out loud, but the look of the grid puts you in a price bracket before they have seen a single number.
Then they either message you, or they go back and look at the other name they were given. That is the whole funnel for most local businesses, and it takes less time than boiling a kettle.
Why posting more does not fix it
When a feed is not working, the usual advice is volume. Post daily, do more reels, be consistent.
But if the first nine squares are a mess, posting thirty more times just gives you a bigger mess. You are adding to the pile, not fixing what the pile says about you.
Three good posts a week that look like they came from the same business will do more for your enquiries than daily posting that looks like four different companies. We would rather see somebody post twice a week for a year than five times a week for a month and then stop, because the second one leaves a profile that looks abandoned.
Make the top of your profile do the work
- Say what you do and where, in the bio, in plain words. Not a slogan. People search these platforms like search engines now, and your bio is part of that.
- One link that goes somewhere useful. Your website or a page that lets them book or enquire. Not a link to a link to a link.
- Pin three posts. What you do, proof it works, and how to start. That is the whole sales pitch, and pinned posts are the only part of your feed you fully control.
- Put the good stuff in the first row. Your best work, not the bank holiday graphic.
- Make sure it looks like one business. Same fonts, same colours, same feel. This is the one that moves the price bracket.
What to actually post
Keep it simple. Work you have done, the thing you get asked all the time, and the odd bit of you or the team so people can see there are humans behind it.
Finished work is the strongest thing you have and most people underuse it. Every completed job is a post, and it does two things at once. It proves you can do it, and it shows the standard.
What to stop doing is the filler. Motivational quotes, national doughnut day, the graphic that says happy new year. It costs you time on a Sunday night and it does nothing for the six seconds.
The honest bit about time
Most business owners do not have a content problem, they have a time problem. The work is done, the photos are on the phone, and turning them into something decent is the bit that never happens.
That is fine, and it is worth being realistic rather than committing to a plan you will drop in March. Fewer posts, done properly, on a rhythm you can actually keep.
If even that is not happening, it is worth handing off. We do the graphics for a fair few businesses for exactly this reason. They send the photos over, we make them look like them, and the Sunday nights go back to being Sunday nights.
