My Five Honest Opinions on Content for Independent Businesses

I've been thinking about writing this post for a while, mainly because every opinion on this list has been shaped by years of working with independent businesses, watching how they approach their content, and occasionally seeing them make the same decisions over and over again.

This isn't meant to be a list of things you're doing wrong. In fact, far from it.

It's more that I think some unhelpful beliefs are floating around about what content is, what it's for, and what it takes to do it well, and I'd rather give my ten pence than keep nodding along!

Here are my five honest opinions on content for independent businesses.

A Photo with a Caption Isn't Automatically ‘Content’

I’ll be more specific: a photo with a caption can absolutely be content, but most of the time it isn't. 

What most independent businesses do when they "post" is fill a gap. They've remembered they haven't been on Instagram for two weeks, grabbed their phone, taken a photo of something nearby, typed something vaguely related underneath, and called it done.

The distinction between that and actual content matters more than people realise, because one gives you the feeling of showing up without any of the actual benefit. Content has intention behind it; it's made with someone in mind, it's trying to do something specific, it reflects the business in a way that makes a stranger want to find out more.

The photo and caption format isn't the problem at all. A really well-made image with a caption that sounds like the person behind the business is one of the most effective things you can put out there. It's the absence of thought going into it that tends to be the issue.

An All-Rounder Can't Do Everything Well, and Content is Usually What Suffers

I've lost count of the number of job descriptions I've seen that go something like: “social media manager, copywriter, graphic designer, and” - this is my favourite part - "access to own camera equipment is a bonus!" 

All for one person, and often at a salary that wouldn't even cover a mid-range camera lens.

I understand why this happens. Hiring people is expensive, and the idea of one person handling everything sounds like an efficient solution on paper. The trouble is that content (particularly visual content) is a craft skill, and treating it as one item on a longer list of responsibilities usually means it gets whatever time and energy is left over after everything else, which is rarely very much.

My observation is that the businesses doing this usually do see the value in content. They just don't see quite enough value in it to treat it as its own thing. And there's an irony in that, because the content produced under those conditions often reinforces the belief that it isn't worth investing in properly because it doesn't perform, because it was never given the space to be good.

Cutting Content When Things Get Hard is One of the Most Expensive Decisions a Business Can Make

I have a lot of empathy for this one because again, I understand exactly why it happens. When revenue dips, or something goes wrong, the instinct is to cut anything that feels non-essential, and content (which is hard to measure and slow to pay off) feels like a fairly obvious candidate.

There's also something else going on: when businesses are going through a rough patch, they often don't want to be visible. Putting something out into the world when things feel difficult can feel dishonest, or just emotionally exhausting.

But the businesses that are on people's radars when things pick back up tend to be the ones who stayed visible while everyone else went quiet. The ones who disappeared for six months have to start from scratch, rebuilding the familiarity they'd already earned. That's much harder than keeping the momentum going through a difficult period, even at a reduced level.

Sounding Like Your Audience and Sounding Like Yourself Aren't the Same Thing

There's a version of marketing advice that says you should always speak in your audience's language, meet them where they are, mirror back the words they use. And there is truth in that; understanding your audience matters, and communicating in a way they can connect with is important.

But somewhere along the way I think this advice has been taken to mean that businesses should shrink down their own voice in favour of something more broadly appealing. Then what tends to happen is that the content ends up sounding like nobody in particular: generic, a bit flat, and indistinguishable from the business next door.

The independent businesses whose content actually works tend to sound like themselves. They have a way of putting things that feels specific to them; their captions sound like a person wrote them rather than a brief was followed. That's not accidental, and it's not about ignoring the audience at all - it's about trusting that being yourself is more attractive than performing a version of yourself that's been optimised for mass appeal.

"Is Investing in Content Worth It?" is Usually the Wrong Question

I've had enough conversations with business owners weighing up professional content to recognise the pattern fairly quickly. At some point the question becomes whether it's "worth it", and what they usually mean by that is whether it will bring in sales quickly enough to justify the investment.

Which is a completely understandable thing to want to know. But it's also a question that professional content can't always answer in the short term, and that's not a limitation; it's a reflection of how content actually works, which is slowly, cumulatively, by building familiarity and trust over time rather than by converting strangers into customers in one go.

The businesses that see professional content as something that's either worth it or not tend to make one-off investments, see incremental results, and then conclude it didn't work. The ones who see it as an ongoing commitment to how their business shows up in the world tend to feel the benefit in ways that are harder to attribute to a single post or campaign.

So if you've been wondering whether it's worth it, I'd gently push back on the framing. The question that tends to be more useful is: what do you want people to think when they come across your business online, and is what they're currently seeing doing that justice?

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If any of these touched a bit of a nerve, it might be worth sitting with the discomfort rather than dismissing it, because usually the things that sting a little are the ones closest to home.

Of course, none of this is meant as a criticism of businesses doing their best with limited time and budget, because most independent businesses are. Some of these patterns are worth examining because they tend to keep businesses stuck in ways that don't move them forward.

If you're an independent business owner who's starting to think differently about how you show up online, I'd love to have a chat with you. You can find me on Instagram or get in touch through my contact form.