Why your social media isn't getting you sales
If you've ever posted on Instagram for your business, watched the post sit there awkwardly with three likes (one of them from your mum), and decided social media doesn't work for you, this episode is for you.
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Stop being disappointed in your social media. Your goals are the problem.
Most small business owners come at social media all wrong.
I know because I meet them. At networking events, in school pickup, in my DMs, in real life when someone finds out what I do and immediately confesses. The script is almost always the same:
"My business coach told me I should be on social media."
"I was posting every week and I didn't make a single sale."
"I just want to show off how good my stuff is."
"If I could just go viral, then maybe…"
"My competitors are all over social media, they look so successful."
And then the kicker: "Honestly, I think social media just doesn't work for my business."
Look. I get it. I really do.
But (we know I love a but 🍑) here's what's actually going on.
You and your audience are on social media for completely different reasons
There's a gap. A huge one. Between why you, as a small business owner, are posting on social media, and why humans, including you when you're off the clock, are scrolling it.
Think about your own behaviour. When you pick up your phone and open Instagram, are you doing it because you're hoping to find a great bookkeeper? A new accountant? Someone to do your tax?
No. You're sitting in the doctor's surgery and you've been told to be there at ten, but you know full well you won't be seen until 10: 40. You've got forty minutes to fill, no current magazines (the Better Homes and Gardens is from 2004), and looking at the other patients is creepy. So you scroll.
Or you're on the train. Looking at other people on the metro is even creepier now that the seats face each other. So you scroll.
Or you're checking what your sister-in-law posted about her holiday. Saving recipes you'll never make. Looking at a Pinterest board for your kid's birthday party. Watching reels of huskies behaving badly (please send these, my own two huskies are a daily disappointment to me).
What you are absolutely not doing is hoping a small business will appear in your feed and convince you to spend a thousand dollars with them in the next thirty seconds.
So why is your post going to land any differently with anyone else?
It isn't.
The whole "I'll post twice a week and the leads will roll in" model is built on hope. And hope, as the saying goes, is not a strategy.
This is the bit where you'd expect me to tell you to give up on social media entirely. I'm not going to. Stay with me.
What organic social media is actually for
Here's what's really going on when social media works for a small business.
Someone meets you at a networking event. Someone recommends you in a local mums' Facebook group. Someone googles you because they saw your name on a sponsor banner at the local rugby. Someone sees you at school pickup and asks what you do.
Then they go and look you up.
They google you. They land on your website. They see the little Facebook and Instagram icons in the footer. They click through to your social media because they want to know more about you.
And what they find when they get there is the actual job of your organic social media. It is a trust checkpoint. Not a discovery tool.
They are stalking you. The good professional kind of stalking. They're checking:
Is she still in business?
Is she actually posting, or did she give up two years ago?
Does she know what she's talking about?
Do I like her?
Does she seem like a real person?
Is there anything here that looks like it might actually help me?
If your page has good content sitting there - posts that show you helping someone, behind-the-scenes stuff that makes you feel like a human, the occasional reel where you're filming in your car or while feeding your dogs warts and all - they'll feel reassured. They'll reach out. They'll buy.
If your page is empty, or it's been six months since you posted, or every post is a thinly veiled ad with no personality, they'll click off and keep looking.
The Facebook groups thing
There's a whole separate strategy that involves showing up in the right Facebook groups, helping people, and being recommended. That's its own conversation for another day. But the point is: even that strategy works because once someone hears about you, they come to your page to check you out.
The Facebook group gets you the recommendation. Your page is what closes the deal.
What about going viral?
I'm not going to tell you it never happens. It does.
But here's the thing nobody mentions when they post screenshots of their one viral reel: viral reach is rarely your ideal client. It's a thousand strangers from countries you don't service watching for three seconds and never coming back.
Even if your viral pool does contain ideal clients, the chances of them buying from you off the back of one cold reel are slim, because they don't know you yet. They haven't done the stalking. They haven't built any trust with you. They're scrolling. They will keep scrolling.
If you do go viral, great. Use it. But don't build your strategy around it.
The shift
If you stop expecting organic social media to be a sales machine and start treating it as the place where people verify you, a few things happen:
You stop being disappointed. Because your goal is no longer mythical.
You start posting differently. Less "buy my stuff" and more "here's how I actually think." Less polished sales graphics and more behind-the-scenes. More you. More real. Less Grey Suit.
You take the pressure off every individual post. Because you're not relying on any one post to magically find a stranger and convert them. You're building a body of work that does its job when someone arrives.
You feel less like you're shouting into a void. Because you understand who you're actually talking to. The person who heard about you. The person who's followed you for six months without ever commenting. The person who might need you in November, even though it's May.
The reality check
Less than ten percent of your followers see any given post you put up. That's the average across platforms. It's a hard pill.
But it also means that if you keep posting, eventually that follower who showed enough interest to follow you in the first place will see something, and remember they liked you, and that the timing might suddenly be right. They'll stalk you, see you're still active, click through, and reach out.
That's how it works. Not magic. Not virality. Just consistent enough that when someone comes looking, you're there.
So. Have a think.
Have a think about why you're on social media for your business.
Have a think about why you, as a regular human, are on social media when you're scrolling.
If those two things don't line up, the problem isn't social media. The problem is the goals you've set for it.
Shift the goals. The disappointment goes away. The posts start doing something useful.
And then you can stop telling me at networking events that social media doesn't work. Because it does. You were just expecting it to do a job it was never built to do.
