Your business on social media: the guide

Posting is not a strategy

I see it all the time. A post now and then, no plan, and then wondering why nobody comes. Being on social media and having a strategy there are two different things. Strategy starts with two questions: what do you want to achieve, and who do you want to reach.

Three rules follow from the answers. A few posts, published consistently, are worth more than lots of rushed ones. Every platform has its own audience and its own tone, so the same content everywhere rarely works. And every post should lead somewhere: to your website, to a booking, to a phone call. More on this in the article “Social Media for Businesses: From Presence to Strategy”.

Instagram: when what you sell looks good in a photo

If your business has something that looks good in a photo (a product, a space, an experience), Instagram is one of the strongest platforms for new customers to discover you. People go there to browse and to be inspired. That is why restaurants, tourism, fashion, beauty, gyms and interior design rely on it for a large part of their visibility.

A nice profile is not enough, though. What separates a profile that merely exists from one that brings in work comes down to three things: consistency, a clear message and, where needed, advertising that reaches the right people. More in the article “Instagram: The Number One Social Platform to Advertise Your Business”.

For a small property, Instagram is often the traveller’s first contact with the place. What the traveller buys is not the room. It is breakfast on the balcony, the view, the neighbourhood. And the profile has to lead to the website and to a direct booking, otherwise it is like a beautiful shop window with no door. All of this is covered in the article “Instagram for Small Properties: How to Fill Rooms, Not Just the Feed”, and the bigger picture on bookings in the guide to your property.

A Facebook page is not a website

“I don’t need a website, I have a page with two thousand followers.” I hear it often. A page, though, is a shop window in someone else’s building, and the building’s owner writes the rules. Under the terms of service of Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, if Meta decides you have seriously or repeatedly breached its terms or policies, it can suspend or permanently disable your access. And it does not even take a breach to lose the page: it is enough for someone to steal your account, or the account of whoever else manages the page.

The law gives you some protection, but not much. In the European Union, the Digital Services Act (DSA) requires platforms, when they close an account because they judge the content illegal or in breach of their terms, to explain why, and to let you appeal for at least six months afterwards. What the DSA does not guarantee is when you will see your page again, or whether you will.

And not all your followers see your posts. A post is seen only by the people the platform chooses. If the page is lost, your followers go with it, because you have neither their email nor their phone number. A new customer, meanwhile, does not start on Facebook. They search on Google, or ask an AI tool such as ChatGPT (what we call an answer engine). Both Google and answer engines read web pages where your details are written as text. On a Facebook page, the same details are usually scattered across posts and photos.

I am not telling you to close the page. The page is the shop window that draws people in. The website is your own shop, where people find everything and where everything stays, whatever happens in someone else’s building. What is at stake, and why what you have built there is not really yours, is in the article “Your Facebook page is not a website”.

If you also advertise on Facebook and Instagram, other things have changed too: your ads are public, there are people you can no longer reach selectively, and Meta no longer accepts ads about social issues. What this means for a small business is in the article “Advertising on Facebook? What has changed in Europe”.

Likes are not customers

Between a post and a customer there are four steps. Someone saw the post, tapped the link, opened your website, and did something there: filled in the contact form, tapped the number to call, placed an order. The platform sees the first two clearly. The third it cannot know for sure, because a tap does not mean the website actually opened. And the fourth, the only one that pays the bills, the platform usually does not see. Your website sees it, if tracking is set up properly.

There is a catch here, though. Many websites have Google Analytics, the tool that counts visits. Without the right setup, though, Analytics puts all visits from social media together in one line, without knowing which post they came from. And when someone sends the link to a friend, the visit is often recorded as if the friend had typed the address themselves. The post brought the customer, but in the numbers it looks as if it did nothing. There is a way to know which post each visitor came from. It only needs setting up once, properly, from the start. The content of your posts does not change, and the visitor sees no difference.

One thing no tool can show is the person who saw the post, tapped nothing, and came by your business a few days later. That is why the most useful measurement costs nothing. It is asking “Where did you find us?” and writing down the answer. All of this is covered in the article “The post got three hundred likes. How many came to the site?”. Analytics records as a “conversion” any action that has been set to count as a success, such as a form being sent. Why a conversion does not always mean a customer is explained in the article “Analytics says “conversion”. But did a customer arrive?”.

When someone else looks after your social media

If someone else looks after your social media, the partnership comes down to a few things, and none of them is technical. Without a goal, every month looks like a success, because there is nothing to compare it with. If posts lead nowhere, followers grow and customers do not. And if the numbers come only from the platform, you see the first two steps and never the fourth.

There is also the matter of access, which usually stays in the dark until it is needed. The page is an asset of the business. When you do not know who manages it, how well their accounts are protected and which email address it is tied to, the page depends on people rather than on you. One stolen account, or one collaborator who has moved on, is enough to lose it.

If any of this is missing today, it is not a disaster. It means your social media exists without yet working for the business.

And the part this guide does not cover

The subject here was social media. The website itself, the shop all of this leads to, has its own guide: the guide to your website. And how people find you when they search, on Google and in answer engines, is in the guide to answer engines (AI). There is also a separate article on the Google Business Profile, your business listing on Google Maps and in Google search, which many people see before they open your website.