Is Your Business Showing Up on Social Media? | Get Ahead
Is Your Business Actually Showing Up on Social Media?
I’ve been watching social media change for a long time. And lately, something has shifted in a way that feels different from previous cycles of platform hype and algorithm updates.
The feeds are full. But the people, increasingly, are elsewhere.
What I mean by that is this: the volume of content being published across every major social platform is growing. But the proportion of that content genuinely written by a human being, in their own voice, about something they actually think, is shrinking. AI-generated posts. AI-rewritten updates. AI agents responding to comments on behalf of people who aren’t really there. The mechanics of presence without the substance of it.
For SME owners trying to work out where to invest their limited time and energy, this creates a real problem. The conventional answer (be on every platform, post consistently, follow the algorithm) has never been less useful. Because the question now isn’t just which platforms work. It’s which platforms still reward the kind of presence that actually builds a business.
That’s why I wanted to share a series that one of our Regional Directors has just completed. Because it asks exactly the right question, and answers it with a level of honesty and commercial experience that I think is genuinely rare.
Seven platforms. One question. No waffle.
Vicky McKenna is Get Ahead’s Regional Director for Oxfordshire. Before joining us, she spent years as a Buying Director for major UK retailers and ran her own social media agency, with a specialism in Pinterest for business. She has used these platforms commercially. She knows what drives real results, and she knows when something simply isn’t worth a business owner’s time.
Over seven posts, Vicky worked through every major social platform and asked the same question each time: is it actually worth it for your business? Not a strategy guide. Not a list of tips. A straight answer, backed by real experience.
Here’s what she found.
| Platform | Worth it? | The verdict in brief |
|---|---|---|
| For the right business, yes | If your best customers are over 35, don’t write it off. Forget the Page and focus on Groups | |
| Yes – for the right sector | A visual search engine with months-long content longevity. Misunderstood by most, underused by almost everyone | |
| TikTok | Yes – if you’ll really show up | The flattest playing field in social media. But it asks more of you than any other platform |
| X / Threads | Probably not – with exceptions | X has changed. Threads is still finding its feet. Most SMEs have better places to be |
| Possibly – with patience | Rewards genuine expertise like nowhere else. But there’s one rule you cannot break | |
| Yes – unambiguously | The one platform where the answer needs no caveats. Show up consistently and genuinely | |
| AI & Social Media | Help and hindrance | A tool for consistency, not a replacement for voice. The 20% that still sounds human is the 20% that gets read |
| The pattern | The question behind all of it | Where are your customers, and what does it genuinely cost you to show up there? Apply that to every platform, including whatever comes next |
Why this matters, and what it has to do with Get Ahead
The thread running through every one of Vicky’s verdicts is something I believe deeply about how businesses grow.
The platforms that reward you are the ones where you actually show up. Not a scheduled post, a generated caption or an agent monitoring your notifications while you’re somewhere else. You, with a genuine point of view, present and consistent, over time.
The platforms haven’t changed. The humans have left. And for growing businesses, that’s both the problem and the opportunity.
That’s a Vicky line, and it’s a sharp one. But it also captures something that sits at the heart of why we built Get Ahead the way we did.
Every business owner I’ve ever spoken to knows, somewhere, that they should be showing up more consistently: on LinkedIn, in their community, in the conversations their clients are already having. What stops them isn’t lack of understanding. It’s lack of time, lack of bandwidth, and the very real mental load that comes with running a growing business while trying to be visible in all the right places.
That’s the gap our Regional Directors and Virtual Experts fill. Not to replace the business owner’s voice, but to make it possible for them to show up consistently, even when life and work are demanding everything they have.
Vicky’s series is a brilliant example of what that looks like in practice. Seven posts, honest verdicts, real experience, and a body of content that will keep working for the business owners who read it long after it was written. Exactly the kind of presence, in other words, that she’s been advocating for all along.
Read the full series, or go straight to whichever platform has been on your mind.
Social Media – Is It Worth It?
Vicky McKenna’s seven-part series, Is It Worth It?, is an honest, platform-by-platform verdict on social media for growing businesses.
Vicky McKenna is Get Ahead’s Regional Director for Oxfordshire. If you’d like to talk to her about your business’s social media presence, or anything else, you can find her here.
