It’s officially 2026, and social media has been used by businesses for a long time now. However, I’ve worked with enough clients to know that there are still those who don’t quite understand the point of social media for business or who are forced to learn how to use it after avoiding it for all these years.
If that sounds like you, I want to help guide you through how you should think about social media for business. Things have changed since the early days, and it’s harder than ever to make social media drive business.
Should Your Business Be on Social Media?
With how much people talk about how great social media is, a lot of people assume they have to be on it to be successful. Even in 2026, that’s just not true.
Think about how you get business and who your audience is. Let’s say you’re an insurance agency focused on providing business insurance. Sure, you could post really great content, and you might be seen by a business owner interested in insurance. But, it might be more effective to join business networking groups, connect with your local chamber of commerce, or offer a free insurance class for business owners. These are more targeted, and depending on your level of experience with social media, they might be easier to do successfully.
If your audience is harder to find in specific groups or could be broader than what a group provides, you might be served by social media. Let’s take two other case studies to help illustrate this further.
Case Study: Ice Cream Shop
An ice cream shop needs to attract local foot traffic. It could reach a lot of different people and could even be a tourist destination. Now, you could focus on connecting with local families through schools or various groups without having to worry about social media. If you do that consistently and people want to come back, you might get more than enough traffic to sustain you.
But maybe you don’t have connections to schools or don’t enjoy the direct networking side of things. You could just post your specials, but that only really works if you already have an audience that wants information from you (more on that in the next case study). More likely, you need to be entertaining, unique, funny, or up on the trends. It will take some work, but if you don’t want to go the other route, you can be successful on social media.
Case Study: Private School
Now, let’s say you own a private school. You don’t really need to recruit, but you want to keep your community connected. In this case, you might have alternative ways to reach out. Maybe a newsletter would be best. Or you can post updates on social media if you already have an established audience there or know people will find you. Posting updates and just expecting people to find you is a recipe for disaster. If you’re not attracting new audiences with entertaining/trendy posts, you should already have an audience you’re speaking to.
But you could also want to attract the greater community to fundraisers or events that you host. Facebook isn’t always the best social media site for businesses, but it is still the go-to spot for local events. You might not even need to post much on your page, but you use those events to make sure the public knows what’s going on. You can even put a little ad money behind your events when needed.
How Should Business Owners Think of Social Media?
When I talk to social media newbies, I like to use the analogy of trade shows. In my early career, I used to recruit students at graduate school fairs. While they still exist, I doubt they’re as popular as they were in the pre-internet days.
Know Your Platforms
So what do trade shows have to do with social media? Well, there’s a strategy to trade shows that can be applied to social media, too. Each trade show has its own culture, its own audience. If you go to a trade show that’s very strict and professional with a wheel of prizes, you might stand out in a bad way. Similarly, you need to know what kind of content is performing best on social media platforms so that your content fits there. It’s part of why I don’t recommend using too many social media platforms at once. You really need to focus your content on what that one platform wants.
Maybe there’s another trade show where you know it’s loud and fun. There’s a lot competing for people’s attention. You need a big personality or a gimmick to stand out. That’s a lot of social media these days (especially Instagram and TikTok). If that’s wrong for you or your business, that’s not the kind of platform you want to go to.
Find Your Audience
You could also be going to a graduate school fair recruiting for law school students. Not everyone there is going to be interested in talking to you, so you have to make sure you’re being clear about who you’re trying to reach and have a way to focus on just that audience. People tend to avoid narrowing their audience for fear of missing out on someone who might want what they’re selling. Sure, there could be someone interested in an MBA that I can convince to go to law school, but if I spend my time talking to 100 general graduate students just to get that one convert, I’m wasting time. Instead, I can talk to 100 law students directly and get much more out of it.
On social media, know which platform your audience uses and tailor your content for a specific audience. Don’t try to reach everyone. If you do, the platform won’t know who to show your content to, and you’ll end up reaching too many of the wrong people.
What Do You Give?
Another element of traditional trade shows is the swag. There’s a lot of thought that goes into this. You want something people won’t just throw away. It should be valuable, but still related to your business. The same applies to your content on social media. If you’re just treating it like an advertisement, there might be some people interested in that, but more likely, they’ll walk by your table (or scroll past your content).
You need to provide something that people want on social media. That could be giveaways, special deals, entertainment, community, laughs, knowledge, etc. It can be helpful to think about what people might want to share. If it’s funny enough to send to their friends or relatable enough that they want to share it on their own profile, then it’s good content.
Don’t think of social media as an advertising platform. It’s a platform to give your audience something. It’s more like public relations than advertising. Social media is about making people like you, not just selling.
Where to Start With Your Business Social Media?
After all of that, if you feel like social media is right for you, you now need to take the next steps to getting set up. Here’s what I’d recommend.
#1: Become a Social Media User
If you’re new to social media, one of the best ways to gain an understanding of the culture of the platforms is to use them yourself. But don’t just use it mindlessly. Study it. Pick a platform that you think will work for your business. Start scrolling through as a casual user.
You can follow competitors or companies similar to yours in other areas. See what people are posting and if it’s getting decent engagement. If it’s crickets, maybe this isn’t the right platform for your business (or maybe they’re just posting bad content).
Remember that you can think outside of the box when it comes to inspiration, too. A funny video from a museum in New York might show you a type of content that would work for your account too. Don’t be too narrow-minded. If anything inspires you, save it. Then you can use it for inspiration later.
#2: Decide How You’ll Build an Audience
Before you start posting content, think about how you plan to get people to see your content. Are you going to rely on the platform itself to show people your content? Then you’d better be posting things that are really good quality.
Maybe you already have an audience (on a newsletter or website). Make sure you tell that audience about your new account. Give them incentives to follow, such as a giveaway or discount.
You could also build an audience through your own engagement. From your account, you might start commenting on other posts or sharing other people’s content. If you’re willing to show up and be part of the community online, you can build an audience from that.
#3: Test Content
For the first little bit of posting on social media, it’s your experiment. Really, it should always be an experiment. But start testing different kinds of content (graphics, videos, carousels, photos). Try being funny, educational, trendy, etc. See what people respond to. Try it all. Then, you can start focusing on what is doing well for you. Just keep in mind that as platforms change, this can change too.
#4: Consistently Evaluate
I don’t just mean evaluate if your content is doing well, evaluate if it’s making you money. This is hard to track sometimes, but do your best. If you’re spending a ton of time on it, but don’t see any difference when you take a week or two off, maybe you don’t need to spend your time there.
Always remember the first part of the analogy, too. There are other ways to reach an audience. Don’t get fixated on social media if it’s not the right path for you and your business.
#5: Get Help
When you’re able to, look into getting some help. Whether that’s for building your strategy or actually posting, there are a lot of people available for help. I don’t have as much capacity for new clients these days, but you can always reach out to me with questions or to see if we might be a good match for working together.