Category: Social media

Before I became a Regional Director for Get Ahead, I spent years as a Buying Director for major UK retailers and then ran my own social media agency, with a specialism in Pinterest for business. I’ve used these platforms commercially. I’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and what’s simply not worth a busy business owner’s time. This series is my honest perspective on each one. No strategy guides. No content calendars. Just a straight answer to the question you’re probably already asking.

Is LinkedIn Worth It For Your Business? Yes! The Metaverse? Let’s Talk About That!

We’ve reached the penultimate post in this series, and for once the verdict comes quickly.

LinkedIn: yes. Unambiguously, for most business owners reading this, yes.

The Metaverse: no. And the story of why not is actually more useful than the verdict itself.

Let’s do LinkedIn properly first – because it deserves more than a one-word endorsement – and then we’ll take a brief, honest look at what the Metaverse hype cycle taught us, and why it matters for every platform decision you’ll make in the years ahead.

Why LinkedIn is different from every other platform in this series

Every other platform we’ve covered has come with a significant caveat. Facebook: yes, but only if your audience is there and you engage through Groups. Pinterest: yes, but only for visually aspirational businesses willing to invest long-term. TikTok: yes, but only if you’re genuinely prepared to show up on camera consistently. X: probably not, unless your business runs on real-time commentary. Reddit: possibly, but only with patience and zero promotional intent.

LinkedIn is the platform where, for most SME owners, the answer is simply yes – without a long list of conditions attached.

Your clients are on LinkedIn. Your referral partners are on LinkedIn. The people who might recommend you to others are on LinkedIn. It is the professional network, and for businesses that grow through relationships, reputation, and trust – which describes most of the SMEs I work with – there is no substitute for showing up there consistently.

What good LinkedIn presence actually looks like

The mistake most business owners make on LinkedIn is treating it like a CV. A static record of credentials and achievements, updated occasionally, used mainly to receive connection requests and occasionally browse job listings.

That’s not what LinkedIn rewards. What it rewards is consistent, personal, and useful presence. Posts that share genuine thinking. Commentary that demonstrates expertise. Responses to other people’s content that add something rather than just agreeing. The occasional personal post that reveals something human about who you are and how you work.

LinkedIn rewards consistency and personality above polish. A post that sounds like you, published regularly, will outperform a perfectly crafted piece of corporate content that appears once a month.

The businesses and business owners that get the most from LinkedIn are not necessarily the most prolific. They’re the most consistent. They show up regularly enough that their name becomes familiar to the people they most want to reach – and familiarity, as we discussed in the context of community earlier in this series, is what shortens the sales cycle.

What to post about? Your expertise. Your observations. The questions your clients ask you repeatedly. The things you notice in your sector that others haven’t said yet. The occasional honest reflection on what running a business actually involves. None of it needs to be groundbreaking. It just needs to be genuinely yours.

The mistake that undermines LinkedIn for most SMEs

The single most common LinkedIn mistake I see from business owners is inconsistency. Posting intensively for a few weeks, then going quiet for a month, then posting again when something feels urgent. The algorithm notices. More importantly, your audience notices – or rather, they don’t notice, because you’ve disappeared from their feed.

LinkedIn’s algorithm strongly rewards regular, consistent engagement. An account that posts twice a week reliably will almost always outperform one that posts daily for a fortnight and then vanishes. Rhythm matters more than volume.

The practical implication for time-poor SME owners is that LinkedIn is one of the platforms where having consistent support – someone to help you maintain a presence even in your busiest weeks – delivers disproportionate returns. The content should still sound like you. But the consistency doesn’t have to depend entirely on you finding the time.

A brief reflection on my own approach

LinkedIn is where I do most of my own professional showing up. I post regularly – usually around the Get Ahead content I’m involved in, the conversations I’m having with business owners, and the things I notice about how businesses are using their time and resource. It’s not a polished strategy. It’s a habit. And the habit, more than anything else, is what builds the kind of presence that generates warm inbound rather than cold outreach. 

If there’s one thing I’d say to any business owner reading this: start smaller than you think you need to, but start consistently. Two posts a week, every week, that actually sound like you, will do more for your business than ten posts a week that sound like everyone else.

The Metaverse: what happened, and what it tells us

In 2021, Meta announced that the future of social connection was the Metaverse – a fully immersive virtual world where people would work, socialise, attend concerts, and conduct business through customisable avatars. Mark Zuckerberg showed the world his virtual office. Analysts predicted trillions in economic activity. Brands rushed to buy virtual land. Business owners were told they needed a Metaverse strategy.

By 2023, Meta had written down billions in losses on its Reality Labs division. The virtual world was largely empty. The avatars, which notoriously had no legs in early versions, became a meme. The urgency evaporated almost as quickly as it had arrived.

What went wrong? Fundamentally, the Metaverse proposition failed the most basic test: it didn’t solve a problem people actually had. People weren’t clamouring for a virtual office. They weren’t desperate to attend meetings as legless avatars. The technology existed before the need – and in the absence of genuine demand, even the most lavish investment couldn’t manufacture it.

For SME owners, the lesson isn’t really about the Metaverse specifically. It’s about the pattern. Every few years, a new platform or technology arrives with outsized promises and credible advocates. There’s pressure to act early, to stake out territory before the rush, to build a presence while the algorithm still favours early adopters. Sometimes those bets pay off. Often they don’t. The filter that cuts through most of the noise is simple: where are your customers, and what would it genuinely cost you in time and resource to reach them there? Applied honestly, that question would have saved most businesses their brief Metaverse anxiety. It will serve you just as well for whatever comes next.

A final thought 

LinkedIn is the one platform in this series where the answer is almost always yes.

Not because it’s fashionable – it isn’t, particularly. But because it’s where your clients, your referrers, and your peers actually are. And showing up there, consistently and genuinely, is one of the most reliable investments a business owner can make in their own visibility.

As for the Metaverse: it’s a useful reminder that not every bold prediction becomes reality. The filter is always the same – where are your customers, and what does it cost you to reach them? Apply that question to everything. Including whatever arrives next.

LinkedIn is a platform I use every day – and helping business owners in Oxfordshire show up consistently and confidently there is part of what I do. If you’d like to talk about what that could look like for your business, I’m always happy to.

I’m Vicky McKenna, Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire.

Next in the series: And Then There’s AI.

If you missed Part 1 of this series discussing Facebook, you can find it here. Part 2 – on Pinterest – is here. Part 3 about Twitter is here. All things X in part 4 here. Read about Reddit here.

Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire. Former Buying Director for major UK retailers and founder of a social media agency specialising in Pinterest for business. Vicky works with SME owners to find the right support for their business – and writes about the commercial realities of social media, outsourced expertise, and growing a business without burning out.

Before I became a Regional Director for Get Ahead, I spent years as a Buying Director for major UK retailers and then ran my own social media agency, with a specialism in Pinterest for business. I’ve used these platforms commercially. I’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and what’s simply not worth a busy business owner’s time. This series is my honest perspective on each one. No strategy guides. No content calendars. Just a straight answer to the question you’re probably already asking.

Is Reddit Worth It for Your Business? 

Of all the platforms in this series, Reddit is the one most business owners have never seriously considered.

It doesn’t come up in social media strategy conversations. It rarely features in marketing advice aimed at small businesses. And for most people, the mental image of Reddit is either anonymous strangers arguing about obscure topics, or the front page of the internet – vast, chaotic, and not obviously connected to finding new clients.

Both impressions are partly accurate, and both miss something important about what Reddit actually offers a business with genuine expertise and the patience to use the platform properly.

What Reddit actually is

Reddit is a network of communities – called subreddits – each built around a specific topic, interest, or question. There are subreddits for entrepreneurs, small business owners, UK businesses, productivity, freelancing, virtual assistants, and dozens of adjacent topics. Each community has its own culture, its own rules, and its own norms around what’s acceptable to post.

Content on Reddit is voted up or down by community members. The posts and comments that rise to the top are the ones the community collectively finds most useful, most honest, or most interesting. That voting mechanism creates a very different dynamic from algorithmic platforms – you can’t pay your way to visibility, and you can’t game engagement through posting frequency. You earn it, slowly, by contributing things that are genuinely worth reading.

There’s one more thing about Reddit that matters enormously for businesses thinking about whether to invest time there: Reddit threads rank extremely well in Google search results. When someone searches ‘should I hire a virtual assistant’ or ‘how do I know when to outsource’ – Reddit discussions appear prominently in the results, often above dedicated articles and blog posts. A genuinely helpful comment posted in the right subreddit today can surface in search results for months or years. That’s a long-tail content opportunity that most businesses have never considered.

Why Reddit users are resistant to marketing – and why that’s useful to understand

Reddit communities have a well-earned reputation for being unwelcoming to promotional content. Post a link to your website in most subreddits without context and it will be downvoted into invisibility within minutes. Introduce yourself as a business owner and immediately start talking about your services, and you’ll likely be banned. The community radar for self-promotion is finely tuned, and it has zero tolerance for the corporate-speak and thinly veiled advertising that passes unremarked on other platforms.

Understanding this isn’t a reason to avoid Reddit. It’s the most important thing to understand about how to use it well.

Reddit doesn’t reward the loudest voice or the most polished content. It rewards the most genuinely useful one. For a business built on real expertise, that’s actually a significant advantage.

The businesses that build valuable presences on Reddit are the ones that go in to contribute, not to sell. They answer questions thoroughly. They share hard-won knowledge without a sales pitch attached. They engage with other people’s posts as a member of the community, not as a brand broadcasting at it. Over time, that consistent generosity builds a reputation – and a reputation on Reddit, because of how the platform works, translates into visibility that no advertising budget can replicate.

The genuine opportunity for SMEs with expertise to share

The business types best positioned to benefit from Reddit are those with deep, specific knowledge that other people are actively seeking. B2B service businesses. Consultants and agencies. Specialist knowledge businesses. Anyone whose clients tend to research carefully before making a decision – and who asks questions online as part of that process.

The subreddits most relevant to a business like Get Ahead – and to many of the SMEs we work with – include r/entrepreneur, r/smallbusiness, r/UKBusiness, r/productivity, and r/VirtualAssistant. These communities are active, their members ask questions that knowledgeable business owners are well-placed to answer, and they have the kind of engaged, thoughtful audience that doesn’t exist in quite the same way on any other platform.

The one rule you cannot break

There is a single principle that determines whether a business succeeds or fails on Reddit, and it’s worth stating plainly:

THE RULE
Go in to contribute. Never go in to sell.

This isn’t a guideline or a best practice. It’s the operating principle of every Reddit community, and violating it – even once, even subtly – can result in a permanent ban from the subreddits where your potential clients are most active. More importantly, it simply doesn’t work. Reddit users are highly attuned to the difference between someone sharing genuine knowledge and someone using the veneer of helpfulness to promote their business. The former builds trust. The latter destroys it.

The practical implication is that Reddit requires a longer runway than other platforms before any commercial return is visible. The first weeks and months are about lurking, learning the community’s norms, and contributing answers that have no promotional content whatsoever. It’s a slow build. But for businesses that stick with it, the compounding effect – visibility in search, community trust, and the kind of warm inbound that comes from someone who’s already seen you be genuinely helpful – is unlike anything paid advertising can produce.

What it costs – honestly assessed

Reddit’s time cost is front-loaded and sustained. Building karma and community trust takes consistent effort over weeks before any return is visible. Unlike scheduling a LinkedIn post or creating a Pin, effective Reddit participation requires being present in conversations as they happen – reading threads, responding thoughtfully, engaging as a member rather than a broadcaster.

For most SME owners already stretched across LinkedIn, email, and their primary social channels, finding that additional bandwidth is the real barrier. Reddit rewards the businesses that can genuinely commit to showing up regularly. Half-measures – an account that posts occasionally and then goes quiet – don’t just underperform. They can actively undermine credibility in a community that notices and remembers.

A final thought 

Reddit isn’t for every business. And it isn’t easy.

But for businesses with genuine expertise to share – and the consistency to share it without expecting anything back straight away – it’s one of the most underused platforms available.

The community rewards real value over time. That’s a harder model than posting a graphic. But it’s also a more durable one.

The question isn’t whether Reddit is worth it in principle. It’s whether your business has something worth saying – and whether you can commit to saying it, consistently, without turning it into a sales pitch. If the answer is yes to both, it’s worth a serious look.

And being honest, I’m not a regular Reddit user myself. But I have been paying more attention to it recently, particularly how often it shows up in search results and the depth of the conversations happening there. It’s definitely made me think twice about writing it off. Without wanting to sound like a talent show – at Get Ahead we’ve got one yes to the question above, and I’d expect us to have two yeses before the end of this year.

Working out where your business’s expertise is best deployed – and which channels will actually reward the effort – is something I think about with business owners regularly. If you’d like to talk it through, I’m always happy to.

I’m Vicky McKenna, Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire.

If you’d like a conversation about where your business should be showing up, I’d love to hear from you –  please get in touch via vicky@getaheadva.com.

Next in the series: LinkedIn – and some lessons from the Metaverse

If you missed Part 1 of this series discussing Facebook, you can find it here. Part 2 – on Pinterest – is here. Part 3 about Twitter is here. All things X in part 4 here.

Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire. Former Buying Director for major UK retailers and founder of a social media agency specialising in Pinterest for business. Vicky works with SME owners to find the right support for their business – and writes about the commercial realities of social media, outsourced expertise, and growing a business without burning out.

Before I became a Regional Director for Get Ahead, I spent years as a Buying Director for major UK retailers and then ran my own social media agency, with a specialism in Pinterest for business. I’ve used these platforms commercially. I’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and what’s simply not worth a busy business owner’s time. This series is my honest perspective on each one. No strategy guides. No content calendars. Just a straight answer to the question you’re probably already asking.

Is X (or Threads) Worth It for Your Business? 

This post covers two platforms – X (formerly Twitter) and Threads – because the question for most SME owners is really the same for both: is there any text-based social platform worth my time?

An empty table and empty chairs - clearly computer generated - suggesting a platform where AI talks to AI

The honest answer is: it depends on what your business actually runs on. And for most businesses, that answer points fairly clearly in one direction.

Let’s start with X, because it needs the most unpacking.

What happened to Twitter – and what X is now

Twitter was, for a long time, a genuinely valuable platform for a specific kind of business. Real-time conversation. Breaking news. Niche professional communities. Journalists, commentators, and thought leaders building audiences around ideas rather than images. If your business ran on opinion, commentary, or being part of an industry conversation, Twitter was often the right place to be.

Since Elon Musk’s acquisition in late 2022 and the subsequent rebrand to X, the platform has changed in ways that are hard to ignore. A significant portion of the brand advertising community left. Several high-profile communities migrated elsewhere. The atmosphere shifted – for some users, sharply so. Whether your view of those changes is positive, negative, or neutral largely depends on where you already stood politically and professionally.

What’s less disputed is the data. Active user numbers in the UK and Europe have declined. Advertising revenue dropped substantially in the period following the acquisition, though it has partially recovered. The platform has introduced new paid tiers, changed verification to a subscription model, and adjusted its algorithm in ways that reward certain types of content and users over others.

None of which makes X useless. But it does mean that the case for being there needs to be made more carefully than it once did.

Where X still has genuine value for SMEs

If your business operates in sectors where real-time conversation matters – journalism, PR, media, politics, financial services, tech, legal – X remains relevant. These communities haven’t all left, and the network effects that made Twitter valuable for them are still largely intact.

Thought leadership content – opinions, commentary, takes on industry news – can still find an audience on X in a way that doesn’t work as well on other platforms. LinkedIn has moved in this direction, but it still has a more formal register. X rewards a sharper, more direct voice, and for the right business owner, that’s a genuinely useful distinction.

Customer service is another area where X has historically performed well – the public, searchable nature of the platform means that businesses that respond quickly and helpfully build visible reputations. Some businesses still find real value in monitoring their brand name on X for exactly this reason.

The question for most SME owners isn’t whether X is still alive. It’s whether the people they most need to reach are still there – and what it would actually cost to show up properly..

The honest assessment for most SMEs

For most small and medium-sized businesses – particularly those in local services, retail, hospitality, professional services outside of the sectors listed above, or any business selling to a primarily consumer audience – X is probably not where your time is best spent right now.

That’s not a political statement about the platform. It’s a practical one. The audience has fragmented. The organic reach is limited. And the content format – short, text-based, fast-moving – requires a particular kind of consistent presence that many business owners simply don’t have the bandwidth to maintain effectively.

If you were getting genuine value from Twitter before 2022 – leads, referrals, meaningful conversations with potential clients – it’s worth asking whether that’s still happening at the same rate. If it is, stay. If it isn’t, that tells you something. If you were never really sure whether Twitter was working, this is probably the moment to stop asking the question and redirect that energy somewhere more productive.

A note on X if you’re already there

One thing worth saying clearly: if you have an established X presence that’s working – an engaged following, regular interactions, content that’s performing – there’s no reason to abandon it. Sunk time isn’t a reason to stay, but genuine current value is. The businesses I’d encourage to think hardest about X are the ones maintaining a presence out of habit or obligation rather than evidence. Posting into a void on any platform is a poor use of time. On X in 2025, that risk is higher than it used to be.

And what about Threads?

Threads launched in July 2023 as Meta’s answer to X – a text-based social platform built on Instagram’s infrastructure, designed to feel like Twitter at its best without the turbulence of recent years. It grew extraordinarily fast in its first week, then settled back as the initial curiosity faded.

Where is it now? Quietly growing, with a user base that skews towards people who were already Instagram users and wanted a text-based space that felt less fraught than X. The atmosphere is generally warmer and less combative. The algorithm is still being shaped.

For SMEs, the honest verdict on Threads right now is: watch and wait. The platform is not yet at the scale or maturity where it makes sense to invest significant time in building a presence from scratch. If you’re already active on Instagram, posting to Threads requires minimal additional effort and may be worth doing simply for visibility. But as a primary channel? Not yet. The more interesting question is what Threads becomes over the next two to three years, particularly if X continues to lose ground in certain communities. It’s a platform worth keeping an eye on without yet feeling obligated to commit to.

A final thought 

X has changed. Threads is still finding its feet.

For most SMEs, the honest answer is that text-based social platforms are not where your primary effort should go right now – unless your business genuinely runs on conversation, commentary, and real-time presence in a professional community that’s still active there.

If that’s you, X may still be worth it. If it isn’t, that’s not a gap in your strategy. It’s a reasonable decision based on where your audience actually is. The question was never whether these platforms are interesting. It’s whether your customers are there – and whether showing up properly is a price you can realistically pay.

If you’re reassessing where your business should be showing up – and what that should actually look like – it’s one of the most useful conversations you can have. I’m always happy to think it through with you.

I’m Vicky McKenna, Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire.

If you’d like a conversation about where your business should be showing up, I’d love to hear from you –  please get in touch via vicky@getaheadva.com.

Next in the series: Is Reddit Worth It for Your Business?

If you missed Part 1 of this series discussing Facebook, you can find it here. Part 2 – on Pinterest – is here. And Part 3 about Twitter is here.

Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire. Former Buying Director for major UK retailers and founder of a social media agency specialising in Pinterest for business. Vicky works with SME owners to find the right support for their business – and writes about the commercial realities of social media, outsourced expertise, and growing a business without burning out.

Before I became a Regional Director for Get Ahead, I spent years as a Buying Director for major UK retailers — and then ran my own social media agency, with a specialism in Pinterest for business. I’ve used these platforms commercially. I’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and what’s simply not worth a busy business owner’s time. This series is my honest perspective on each one. No strategy guides. No content calendars. Just a straight answer to the question you’re probably already asking.

Is TikTok Worth It for Your Business? 

TikTok is the platform that creates the most anxiety for the business owners I speak to.

Not frustration, like Facebook. Not confusion, like X. Actual anxiety. A nagging sense that something important is happening there, that businesses are building audiences and finding customers, and that by not being on it they’re falling behind in a race they don’t fully understand.

I want to address that anxiety directly – because some of it is justified, and some of it isn’t, and knowing which is which could save you a significant amount of time and energy.

What TikTok actually is – and why the algorithm is different

TikTok is a short-form video platform, but the thing that makes it genuinely distinct from every other major social channel is its algorithm. On Instagram or Facebook, your content is shown primarily to people who already follow you, with organic reach declining as your audience grows unless you pay to extend it. On TikTok, the algorithm doesn’t work that way.

TikTok’s For You Page surfaces content based on what it thinks each individual user will engage with – regardless of whether they follow the creator. A brand new account with zero followers can post a video today and have it reach tens of thousands of people by tomorrow, if the content resonates. That’s not theoretical – it genuinely happens, and it’s unlike anything else available to small businesses at no cost.

What that means for SMEs is simple: The playing field is flatter than on any other major platform. You don’t need a large existing following to get reach. What you need is content that works – and that’s where the conversation gets more complicated.

What TikTok actually requires from you

In practice, this is often the point where business owners realise whether it’s a fit for them or not.

TikTok is a video-first, high-frequency, native-feeling platform. The content that performs is not polished corporate video. It’s not a produced brand film. It’s not a graphic with text overlaid. It’s raw, direct, human, and – crucially – it looks and feels like TikTok. Audiences on the platform are extraordinarily good at identifying content that doesn’t belong there, and they scroll past it without a second thought.

To do TikTok properly, you need to be willing to appear on camera, regularly, in a way that feels natural rather than staged. You need to post frequently – the accounts that build audiences typically post daily or near-daily, at least in the early stages. And you need to spend enough time on the platform yourself to understand what native content looks and feels like in your category.

TikTok is the platform that rewards you for showing up as yourself.
The businesses that do well there aren’t the most polished. They’re the most consistent and the most human.

For some business owners, that description sounds energising. They’re already comfortable on camera, already have things to say, and enjoy the informal register the platform rewards. For others, it sounds like a significant ask on top of an already full working week. Both responses are completely valid – and both are useful information about whether TikTok is the right channel for your business right now.

TikTok isn’t difficult because it’s technical – it’s difficult because it’s personal.

The businesses finding real traction on TikTok

Looking at the SMEs that have built genuine, commercially valuable presences on TikTok, a few patterns emerge consistently.

They tend to be businesses where the owner or a key team member is the face of the brand – and is comfortable being that face on camera, consistently, without it feeling like a performance. A sole trader who is their business. A founder with a clear point of view. A specialist who can demonstrate their expertise visually and talk about what they do in a way that’s engaging rather than functional.

The sectors that seem to convert most effectively include food and hospitality, beauty and aesthetics, fitness and wellness, creative trades (interiors, floristry, craft), and certain retail businesses with strong visual products. What they share is that the work itself is watchable – there’s something to show, not just something to say.

B2B businesses and professional services can find an audience on TikTok – there is a growing community of business owners using the platform – but the bar for content quality and consistency is the same, and the conversion path from TikTok viewer to professional services client is longer and less direct than in consumer categories.

The regulatory uncertainty – worth factoring in

It’s also worth being aware of the wider conversation around TikTok. There have been ongoing concerns in several Western governments about TikTok’s data practices and its ownership by a Chinese parent company. The US came close to banning the platform entirely. The UK government has restricted TikTok on government devices.

None of this means TikTok is going away tomorrow. But it does mean that a business investing significant time and resource into building a TikTok presence is doing so on a platform with more structural uncertainty than any of the others in this series. That’s not a reason to avoid it – but it’s a reason to think carefully about how much of your content strategy you want to depend on it, and whether you’re repurposing that content across other channels as you go.

The honest question to ask yourself

Before you decide whether TikTok deserves your time, the question to sit with isn’t ‘should my business be on TikTok?’ It’s: ‘Am I – or is someone in my team – genuinely willing to show up on camera, consistently, in a way that feels natural?’

If the answer is yes, and your audience skews under 40, and you have something visually demonstrable to show – TikTok deserves serious consideration. The opportunity is real.

If the honest answer is that you’ll post three videos, feel uncomfortable, and let the account go quiet – it’s better to know that now than after you’ve invested the time. A dormant TikTok account doesn’t just underperform – it sends a signal about your business that you probably didn’t intend.

A final thought 

TikTok is a genuine opportunity – for the right business, with the right approach.

But it asks more of you than most platforms. More consistency, more visibility, more willingness to be human on camera in a way that can’t be automated or outsourced.

If you’re willing to meet those requirements, it can work. If you’re not – and there’s no shame in that – your time is probably better invested in channels where you’ll actually show up. The question isn’t whether TikTok is worth it in the abstract. It’s whether it’s worth it for you, right now, given everything else your business needs from you.

Working out which platforms deserve your time – and which are quietly draining it – is one of the conversations I have most often with business owners in Oxfordshire. If you’d find it useful to talk it through, I’m always happy to.

I’m Vicky McKenna, Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire.

If you’d like a conversation about where your business should be showing up, I’d love to hear from you –  please get in touch via vicky@getaheadva.com.

Next in the series: Is X (or Threads) Worth It for Your Business? 

If you missed Part 1 of this series discussing Facebook, you can find it here. And Part 2 – on Pinterest – is here.

Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire. Former Buying Director for major UK retailers and founder of a social media agency specialising in Pinterest for business. Vicky works with SME owners to find the right support for their business – and writes about the commercial realities of social media, outsourced expertise, and growing a business without burning out.

Before I became a Regional Director for Get Ahead, I spent years as a Buying Director for major UK retailers and then ran my own social media agency, with a specialism in Pinterest for business. I’ve used these platforms commercially. I’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and what’s simply not worth a busy business owner’s time. This series is my honest perspective on each one. No strategy guides. No content calendars. Just a straight answer to the question you’re probably already asking.

Is Pinterest Worth It for Your Business? 

This one is personal.

Pinterest was the platform I built my agency around. For several years, helping businesses understand and use Pinterest properly was my work. So when I tell you my honest view of whether it’s worth your time, you can trust that it comes from somewhere real – not from a blog post I read, or a course I took, but from years of working inside the platform on behalf of businesses that ranged from small independents to established brands.

Here’s what I learned: Pinterest is one of the most misunderstood platforms available to small businesses. And the misunderstanding cuts both ways. Some businesses dismiss it entirely – it’s for mood boards, they say, or for people planning weddings. Others pile in expecting quick results and leave frustrated. Both responses miss what Pinterest actually is.

Pinterest is not social media

This is the single most important thing to understand about Pinterest, and the thing that most businesses get wrong before they even begin.

Pinterest is a visual search engine. Not a social network. Not a content feed. A search engine – one where people go to find ideas, plan purchases, and research decisions that often take weeks or months to complete.

When someone opens Instagram, they’re scrolling. Consuming. Reacting. When someone opens Pinterest, they’re looking for something specific, or exploring a category they’re already interested in. The intent is different. And that changes everything about how content works on the platform.

A post on Instagram has a lifespan measured in hours. By the next morning, it’s effectively invisible. A well-optimised Pin on Pinterest can surface in search results for months – sometimes years. I’ve seen Pins driving steady traffic to a business website long after the person who created them had stopped actively using the platform. That kind of content longevity simply doesn’t exist on any other major social channel.

I saw this play out clearly in practice. For one client, a marketing agency, Pins we’d created months earlier were still driving over 100 visitors a week to their website and steadily growing their email list. It’s a very different model to most platforms – slower to build, but once it works, it keeps working.

Who Pinterest genuinely works for

Pinterest works best for businesses that sell something people aspire to, plan around, or return to repeatedly. The platform’s own data consistently shows its strongest categories, and after years of working in this space, my experience bears that out.

If your business operates in interiors, home improvement, food and recipe content, weddings and events, fashion, beauty, travel, crafts, or gardening – Pinterest is almost certainly worth serious consideration. These aren’t arbitrary categories. They reflect how people actually use the platform: to plan a kitchen renovation, to find a recipe for Saturday, to build a mood board for a wedding that’s a year away.

The businesses that thrive on Pinterest share a few common characteristics. Their products or services are visually appealing. Their customers make considered, planned purchases rather than impulse decisions. And there’s a clear aspiration attached to what they sell – a vision of how life could look, feel, or be improved.

I saw this particularly clearly with a client in the food space, a well-known chef promoting her books and content. Because the content was so visual and aspirational, it translated easily into Pinterest. Over a four-week period, impressions increased from around 90,000 to nearly 400,000, with strong growth in engagement, saves and outbound clicks. It was a good example of how the right type of content can gain real traction on the platform when it aligns with how people use it.

Who it doesn’t work for – and why

Being direct about this is important, because Pinterest isn’t for everyone and pretending otherwise wastes people’s time.

If you run a B2B services business, a professional services firm, or any business where the purchase decision is driven primarily by credentials and conversation rather than visual inspiration – Pinterest is unlikely to be a strong channel for you. It’s not that your potential clients aren’t on Pinterest personally. Many of them are. But they’re not there to think about hiring an accountant or finding a logistics partner. The mindset is wrong for that kind of decision.

Similarly, businesses targeting a primarily male demographic have historically found Pinterest more challenging – the platform’s user base skews heavily female, particularly in the UK. This is changing, slowly, but it’s worth factoring in.

And businesses that can’t commit to creating quality visual content consistently will struggle. Pinterest rewards accounts that post regularly with well-designed, properly keyword-optimised Pins. An account that posts in bursts and then goes quiet doesn’t build the momentum the algorithm rewards.

I’ve also had situations where Pinterest wasn’t the right fit. In one case, I worked with a business offering bespoke, made-to-order products – visually strong, but very niche and reliant on a more considered, relationship-led sales process. Even with consistent activity, it didn’t deliver enough return to justify the time investment. It highlighted how important it is to match the platform not just to the product, but to how customers actually search and buy.

What businesses consistently get wrong

After years of working with businesses on Pinterest, the mistakes I saw most often weren’t about design or posting frequency. They were about fundamentals.

The first is treating Pinterest like Instagram. Posting lifestyle images with no keywords, no description, no thought given to what someone might actually be searching for. Pinterest is a search engine. If your Pins aren’t optimised for the words and phrases your customers use when they’re looking for what you offer, they will not be found – no matter how beautiful they look.

The second is expecting fast results. Pinterest builds slowly. In the early months, it can feel like nothing is happening. Businesses that give up after six weeks – which many do – never see the compounding effect that makes Pinterest genuinely valuable. The accounts that commit to twelve months of consistent, well-structured activity are the ones that start to see the platform working the way it’s supposed to.

Pinterest builds slowly. The accounts that commit to twelve months of consistent, well-structured activity are the ones that start to see the platform working the way it’s supposed to.

The third mistake is ignoring the link back to the website. Every Pin should lead somewhere useful – a product page, a blog post, a service description. Pinterest is one of the strongest social media drivers of referral traffic when it’s set up correctly. Businesses that Pin without thinking about the destination are missing the most commercially valuable part of the platform.

The time investment – honestly assessed

Pinterest requires less real-time engagement than platforms like Instagram or Facebook – there’s no expectation that you’ll respond to comments within the hour, and the lack of an algorithmically-driven feed means you’re not competing for immediate attention. In that sense, it suits time-poor business owners reasonably well.

But it does require consistent creative output. Well-designed Pins, properly written descriptions, a structured board strategy. If you don’t have the capacity to create quality visual content regularly – either in-house or with support – Pinterest will underdeliver. It rewards the businesses that treat it as a long-term investment rather than a quick-win channel.

A final thought 

Pinterest isn’t for every business.

But for the ones it suits, it’s one of the most misunderstood – and underused – platforms available to SMEs.

If you sell something people aspire to, plan around, or come back to repeatedly – and you’re willing to invest consistently over time – it’s worth taking seriously. The question isn’t whether Pinterest is impressive. It’s whether your customers are there, and whether you’re prepared to show up for long enough to let it work.

Pinterest strategy was at the heart of the agency work I did before joining Get Ahead. If you’re wondering whether it could work for your business – or how to approach it properly – I’m always happy to have that conversation. 

I’m Vicky McKenna, Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire.

If you’d like a conversation about where your business should be showing up, I’d love to hear from you –  please get in touch via vicky@getaheadva.com.

Next in the series: Is TikTok Worth It for Your Business? 

If you missed Part 1 of this series discussing Facebook, you can find it here.

Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire. Former Buying Director for major UK retailers and founder of a social media agency specialising in Pinterest for business. Vicky works with SME owners to find the right support for their business – and writes about the commercial realities of social media, outsourced expertise, and growing a business without burning out.

Before I became a Regional Director for Get Ahead, I spent years as a Buying Director for major UK retailers and then ran my own social media agency, with a specialism in Pinterest for business. I’ve used these platforms commercially. I’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and what’s simply not worth a busy business owner’s time. This series is my honest perspective on each one. No strategy guides. No content calendars. Just a straight answer to the question you’re probably already asking.

Is Facebook Worth It for Your Business? 

Let’s be honest about how most business owners feel about Facebook right now. 

Somewhere between mildly guilty and quietly relieved. Guilty because you know you probably should be doing something with it. Relieved because, increasingly, it feels like permission to stop trying. 

Everyone seems to have written it off. It’s the platform your parents use. Organic reach died years ago. The young people have left. It’s all ads and algorithms and content that disappeared into a void the moment you posted it. 

That’s the story. And like most stories, it’s partly true and partly a convenient excuse not to think harder about it. 

What Facebook actually is now 

Facebook has changed significantly, and it helps to see it clearly rather than through the lens of what it used to be. 

It is no longer a platform where you post content and your followers reliably see it. Organic reach on Facebook Pages has declined sharply over the past decade and continues to fall. If you’re still running a business Page and posting content into it with no paid support, you are largely talking to yourself. That part of the story is true. 

But Facebook is also, still, the most widely used social media platform in the UK. Not among teenagers, you’re right about that. But among adults aged 35 and over, Facebook remains the dominant platform. Two thirds of UK adults use it regularly. And if you’re running a business that sells to people over 35, or to local communities, or to families, or to anyone who makes purchasing decisions that involve more than a moment’s thought, those are still your people, and they are still there. 

The platform has also quietly shifted its centre of gravity away from Pages and towards Groups. That’s the part most businesses have missed. 

The Groups opportunity most businesses are ignoring 

Facebook Groups are a different proposition entirely from Pages. Where a Page is essentially a broadcast channel that increasingly requires paid amplification to be seen, a Group is a community. Content shared within Groups gets significantly higher organic reach than Page content. Members receive notifications. Conversations happen. People come back. 

The businesses getting the most out of Facebook right now aren’t the ones posting on their Page three times a week. They’re the ones running, contributing to, or genuinely participating in Groups relevant to their customers.

This could mean running your own Group – a space for customers, clients, or a niche audience you serve. It could mean becoming an active, genuinely helpful presence in existing Groups where your target clients spend time. Not to promote, but to contribute. To answer questions. To demonstrate expertise. In the same way that showing up consistently at a networking event builds reputation over time, showing up consistently in the right Group builds something similar – just in a digital space. 

It takes time. It requires you to give more than you take. And it only works if the Group’s audience genuinely overlaps with yours. But for the businesses that get this right, Facebook remains one of the most effective community-building tools available, and it costs nothing but consistency. 

What about Facebook advertising? 

Facebook and Instagram advertising – they share the same Meta infrastructure – can be extremely effective for SMEs, with one important condition: you need to know what you’re doing, or work with someone who does. 

The targeting capability is genuinely impressive. You can reach people by age, location, interests, life stage, and a dozen other parameters. For local businesses, service businesses targeting specific demographics, or anyone selling something with strong visual appeal, the audience is there and the tools exist to reach them efficiently. 

But running Facebook ads badly is an effective way to spend money and learn very little. Without a clear objective, a properly structured campaign, and enough budget to generate meaningful data, the results are rarely worth the investment. If you’re considering Facebook ads, the question isn’t whether the platform can deliver, it often can, but whether you have the expertise in-house or the budget to bring it in. 

The honest question to ask yourself 

Before you decide whether Facebook is worth your time, there’s one question that cuts through most of the noise: 

How old are your best customers? 

If the answer is under 30, Facebook probably isn’t your primary channel. If the answer is 35 to 65, it almost certainly still is, even if the way you show up there needs to look different from how it looked five years ago. 

The second question is: 

Do I sell something that benefits from community, conversation, or local presence? 

Services businesses, local retailers, and businesses that thrive on word of mouth and relationships tend to find real value in Facebook Groups. Businesses selling to a broad national audience, or to a younger demographic, or whose customers make fast, low-consideration purchases, may find their time better spent elsewhere. 

A final thought 

Facebook isn’t what it was. 

But that doesn’t mean it’s not useful. 

For the right business, with the right audience, it can still be a valuable part of how you stay visible and connected, particularly if community is part of how your business grows. 

The key is not whether you should be on Facebook. It’s whether it makes sense for you. 

If you’re trying to work out which platforms are actually worth your time – and what to do with them – that’s exactly the kind of question I work through with business owners in Oxfordshire every day. 

I’m Vicky McKenna, Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire. If you’d like a conversation about where your business should be showing up, I’d love to hear from you –  please get in touch via vicky@getaheadva.com.

Next in the series: Is Pinterest Worth It for Your Business? 

Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire. Former Buying Director for major UK retailers and founder of a social media agency specialising in Pinterest for business. Vicky works with SME owners to find the right support for their business – and writes about the commercial realities of social media, outsourced expertise, and growing a business without burning out.

One of the most common questions clients ask us is “how often should you post on your social media?” We’d love to give you a simple answer but unfortunately, there isn’t one! But what we can do is give you a bit more information so you can make the right choice about your own social media. And if you want to outsource social media, we can help there too. 

Let’s take a closer look.

How often should you post on your social media?

The internet is full of articles telling you to post multiple times a day across all your social media channels. We love the theory…but seriously, who has the time?! Instead, prioritise sharing fewer posts while making sure each one is worth reading. 

In general, it’s a good idea to post at least three times a week on social media. Of course, if one of your posts performs exceptionally, or you put a great deal of work into it, a smaller number of posts might be effective. 

It’s also important to remember that different platforms have different norms. On LinkedIn, for example, you might share a lower number of posts but each one will be targeted, authentic and worth your followers’ time. But on X, Instagram and Pinterest, it’s usual to post several times a day.

How do you stay consistent on social media?

Most social media managers agree that consistency is more important than frequency. Posting consistently shows that you’re serious about what you do. Any potential clients or customers visiting your social media channels will see that your business is active right now. This means they’re considerably more likely to convert than if the last post were from six months ago. 

Many of our clients choose to schedule their social media in advance, so they know it will appear online even if they don’t have time to post in real time. Whether they produce their own content or outsource it to one of our social media managers, the content is usually scheduled a month in advance. 

A huge advantage of scheduling is that you and/or your social media manager can do all your planning at once. You don’t have to jump out of a heavy finance meeting straight into an upbeat Instagram post. Instead, you can put yourself into your social media groove and plan all your posts at once, then let them roll out in a timely fashion.

Doing all your planning is easier when you come up with a strategy and follow it. Maybe you create regular posts about different areas of your business, like a client spotlight, a product focus and a business tip every week. When you manage your social media within a strategic framework, you’ll soon see your content schedule fill up! And if you’re really stuck, think about what posts have worked well in the past and recreate that success. 

It’s important to be consistent in your interactions as well as your posts. Remember to block off time each week to visit your social media channels, reply to comments you’ve received and interact with other accounts. If thought-provoking, insightful comments go unnoticed, your followers will stop typing them and your online community will dwindle. Fortunately, you can keep up the momentum with regular interactions. 

Outsource social media

If you love the idea of creating stunning, effective, consistent social media posts but simply don’t have the time, our social media managers are here to help. Explore our site to find out more on how to outsource social media. 

We don’t just talk the talk – we walk the walk too! Follow us on social media for great insights, rolling out consistently across the working week. 

Social media is a fantastic tool for marketing your business. It’s free, easy to use and a great way to engage directly with your customers and clients. You can also outsource social media, winning back time and gaining dedicated support. But what social media is best for business? 

In this blog, our social media expert Chloe talks us through the different platforms to help you decide which social media platform you should prioritise.

What social media is best for business?

Chloe: the best social media platform for your business depends on a number of factors, like who your audience is and what kind of content you share. 

Different platforms are suitable for different kinds of content. For example, if video is the strongest way of marketing your business, it’s a good idea to put YouTube or TikTok at the centre of your social media marketing. And if your services lend themselves to long-form content, choose a platform that supports links to blogs like LinkedIn or Facebook.

It’s also important to remember that different demographics use different social media platforms. B2B businesses often share content on LinkedIn, for example, while lifestyle brands attract followers on Instagram. That said, there is some overlap – amazingly, Innocent Smoothies have gained loads of traction on LinkedIn while B2B brands have done well on Instagram and Facebook. Consider who your audience is and which social media platforms they use…but keep an open mind too.

How do I know who my audience is?

Chloe: Social media is free to use, but it’s still important that the time you invest in it is well spent. When we target the right audience, we can be sure that we’re using our time efficiently. 

I encourage my clients to imagine their ideal customer – how old they are, what they do for a living, whether they have a family, where they live, what matters to them and even what their names might be. With this information, you can work out which social media platform they are most likely to use. This is the platform where you should focus your energy. 

What content should I share?

Chloe: Instead of asking what content to share, think of the kind of content that best showcases your offering. If you specialise in tailored consultancy work, it’s important that you come across as someone who thinks in detail and understands the nuances of the industry. LinkedIn and X are great platforms for diving deeper into common questions and seriously analysing current issues. 

On the other hand, you might have a retail business or a lifestyle brand, in which case Instagram is a great platform for you. Share photos of your latest product or short videos of the experiences you offer. 

Decide what content best tells your story, and which platform is the best place to share it. Then consider which platforms your customers and clients use. They should overlap! This overlap is the platform where you should concentrate your energy.

How many social media platforms should I use? 

Chloe: I never want my clients to feel under pressure to use every single social media platform. Instead of churning out content on lots of different platforms, I believe it’s more effective to focus on the platforms where you’re able to post regularly. For example, if someone is researching you on Facebook and you haven’t posted for several months, it could look as if you’ve gone out of business (even if you haven’t). You’ll only find Get Ahead HQ on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram – we’ve weighed up the pros and cons and decided where to focus our efforts.

When you remember that effective content is tailored for the platform where it is posted, it’s easy to see that using too many channels is a waste of resources. Most businesses don’t have the capacity to adapt their message for every platform – particularly if it doesn’t grow your business. 

If you’re trying to work out which social media platform is the right one for you, Get Ahead’s detailed guide can help.

Outsource social media 

Outsource social media and benefit from consistent posting, expert content creation and regular analysis of your interactions. You’ll also gain back loads of time – no more labouring over graphics or getting distracted online. 

If you’re ready to outsource social media, we hope you’ll consider Get Ahead. Read more about what we offer here, or follow us on LinkedIn to see us in action. 

If you’re a regular on social media – and if you’re a business owner, you should be – you know how important it is that a post catches the eye. Instagram is an obvious example, standardising picture-led posts and creating instant visual appeal. But even posts on wordier platforms like LinkedIn and X should have their own graphics. In this blog, we talk to Get Ahead’s experienced graphic designer Kate about why visuals matter on social media. She also shares her top tips how to make social media graphics that look great and drive conversions. 

Why do visuals matter on social media?

Kate: We all know that social media posts that include pictures gain more traction than ones that don’t. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words! Any post with a picture on it can immediately convey more information than one that is purely text. A picture brings the words of a post to life, giving potential customers a better idea of your products, or showing that you uphold the values listed on your website. 

It’s important to remember that we take in information from pictures faster than from words. So if you want someone to read your post, grab their attention with a picture first. 

I always think that a picture is another opportunity to reinforce your brand. You could put your logo in the corner, or choose highlight colours from your brand palette. 

It’s also important to remember that different people take on information in different ways. Some people respond better to words, others to pictures. When we include a graphic on a social media post, we widen that post’s appeal. The words people can learn from the written section of the post while the pictures people can learn from the graphic. 

What are your top tips for making graphics for social media?

Kate: Platforms like Canva make it easier for business owners to make their own graphics. If you enjoy doing it and it doesn’t take up too much time, DIY social media is a great way to save money and stay authentic online. But remember, it’s only a real saving if the graphics you produce work hard for your business. 

Here’s how I go about making graphics for social media that get results

1. Keep it simple

Most of us absorb visual information more quickly than the written word…but only if the design is simple. If your message is lost in a forest of colours, shapes and fonts, try cutting back on some of the design elements to make something more engaging.

2. Stay on brand

Reinforce your brand by using the same colours, fonts and logo that appear on your website and other touch points. Creating a social media template in your design platform can help keep the appearance of your posts consistent.

3. Check it makes sense!

If you’re creating a visual of your business values or an inspirational quote, don’t let the design take over. Reread it after you’ve created it and make sure the words have the same power now you’ve combined them with graphic design.

4. Be aware of proportions

Social media platforms change the proportions of pictures from time to time. If Instagram caught you out recently, you’re not alone! Make sure that whatever you create will work on your intended platform.

5. Make sure your design fits the platform. 

Scheduling software like Hootsuite makes it easy to make one post and then share it across all our social media platforms. But it’s not a perfect solution, so remember to keep your wits about you. You don’t want to lose valuable information because the platform crops the image, for example. It’s also important to make sure that the image suits the culture of the platform. For instance, a celebration of your morning coffee might work better on Instagram than LinkedIn.

How to make social media graphics that really work

We hope Kate’s top tips will help you make more powerful graphics for your social media platforms! And if they’ve made you wonder whether you should leave it to the experts, we are here to help. Get Ahead has a great team of graphic designers and social media managers ready to share your brand and increase your visibility. Explore our site to find out more, or follow us on social media.

Did you know there are lots of great PR ideas for small businesses you can try yourself? They needn’t be expensive, difficult or time consuming, but they could make a big difference to your brand’s reputation.

In this blog, we talk to PR expert Caroline who shares some of her top PR ideas for small businesses.

Why do small businesses need PR?

Caroline: For small businesses, reputation is everything. This means that it’s really important to establish your brand and tell people why it matters. PR is the best way of doing that! Yes, your website and your advertising can tell potential customers what you have to offer, but your PR will tell your story, bring your brand to life and share it with a new, wider audience.

What PR can small businesses do themselves?

Harness the power of social media

Caroline: One of the easiest approaches is social media. You can choose between affordable outsourcing or doing it yourself. And best of all, social media accounts are free.

For effective social media PR, choose the right platform for your campaign. For example, if you’re a B2B business, your first choice should always be LinkedIn. But if, say, you’re bringing a lifestyle product to a new audience, Instagram would be the best option.

Make sure your profile is strong and says exactly what you do in language your audience understands.

Look for opportunities to share your news too. If you attend an event, achieve a milestone, appear in the press or win an award, don’t waste the opportunity – shout about it on social media!

Responding to someone else’s social media posts is also important. The more support you show, the more you’re likely to receive. Communicating with others also shows you can see the bigger picture – a great position for any brand.

Share your story

Caroline: There’s always something going on in a busy business. You might be celebrating a business birthday, gaining B-Corp status, welcoming a new employee or something else. Maybe you’ve merged with another business, or you’ve broken into a totally different market.

These developments are all worth sharing. From a warm, authentic social media post to a targeted press release, there are lots of ways to tell your story and celebrate success.

I try to maximise the effectiveness of press releases by reaching out to the right publications and websites. It’s better to make the front page of an industry-specific publication than be ignored by the Financial Times!

A strong press release should always include the “who, what, where, when and why” of your story. Try and think like a journalist and make it as easy as possible for them to get the information they need. Include some quotes they can drop into their finished article, as well as contact details in case they have any questions.

Enter for awards

Caroline: There are awards for almost every industry that recognise hard work, innovation, inclusivity and more. I’d always recommend business owners enter for awards and competitions because the resulting PR is so strong. The application might cost you time and money but you should see a good return on your investment.

It’s great to be able to post on social media that you’ve entered for a prestigious award – you can ask your community to vote for you. And if you’re shortlisted or even win, you’ve got a great piece of news to shout about. Not only does it make a great social media post, but the press might be interested too. We’re really proud of how many times Get Ahead has been featured in the business press for just this kind of achievement.

Delivering PR ideas for small businesses

If reading Caroline’s expert view on PR has made you wonder if you could be doing more to increase awareness of your brand, we’d love to hear from you. Caroline and our other PR experts can help you see your business in a newsworthy way, finding the stories and turning them into positive press. Visit our PR page to find out more, or contact your local regional director here.