Tag: social media management

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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?