August can be a strange month when you run a small service business. Emails slow down. Enquiries become less frequent. Clients who normally reply within an hour suddenly come back three days later with an apology and a photo of somewhere considerably sunnier than the UK.
It can sometimes feel as though half your client base has disappeared to Spain.
When business goes quiet, the natural reaction is to worry. Where have the enquiries gone? Should you be doing more marketing? Is everyone else experiencing the same slowdown? But a quieter August isn’t necessarily a problem.
In fact, if you use it properly, it could be one of the most useful months of the year for your social media.
Instead of spending August worrying about the temporary slowdown, you can use the breathing room to tackle all those social media jobs you’ve been saying you’ll get around to when you have more time. Because suddenly, you do.
Why August Can Be Quiet for Service Businesses
For many small service businesses, a summer slowdown is completely normal. Clients are taking annual leave. Parents are juggling work with the school holidays. Decision-makers are away. Meetings get pushed into September. Projects that aren’t urgent are quietly placed on hold until everybody is back at their desks.
That can naturally have an impact on enquiries and sales.
Of course, this varies enormously depending on what you sell. Some businesses have their busiest period during the summer. But if you’re a consultant, accountant, coach, recruiter, designer, tradesperson, marketing professional or another service-based business, you may recognise the August lull.
The temptation is to view that spare capacity negatively. We’d suggest looking at it differently.
Those slightly quieter days give you something that’s incredibly difficult to find when business is booming: time to work on your own marketing rather than your clients’ work. And there is plenty you can do with it.
1. Give Your Social Media Profiles a Proper Refresh
When was the last time you actually looked at your social media profiles as though you’d never encountered your business before? Not simply checking your notifications. Actually looking at the profile itself.
Your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok profiles are often among the first places a potential customer will encounter your business. Spend part of your quieter August reviewing them.
Check whether your:
- Profile and cover images are current
- Bio clearly explains what you do
- Contact information is correct
- Website links work
- Services are up to date
- Opening hours are accurate
- Pinned posts still represent your business
- Instagram Highlights contain useful, current information
Your business may have evolved significantly since you originally created these profiles. Your social media presence should evolve with it.
2. Film a Bank of Reels While You Have the Time
You know those videos you’ve been meaning to make for the last six months? Now is the time.
One of the biggest obstacles small business owners face with video content isn’t knowing what to talk about. It’s finding the time to stop what they’re doing, set everything up and actually film it. Batching your content can make this much easier.
Instead of trying to find time every week to record a new Reel, dedicate an afternoon to filming several. You don’t necessarily need elaborate scripts or professional production. Choose a handful of topics, find somewhere with good natural light and start talking.
You could film:
- Answers to common customer questions
- Quick tips relating to your expertise
- Explanations of your services
- Common mistakes you see customers making
- Myths about your industry
- Behind-the-scenes content
- Your thoughts on industry developments
- Short introductions to members of your team
Film ten useful videos in August and you’ve potentially created weeks of social media content before September even begins.
3. Take the Photos You’re Always Searching for
It’s Tuesday afternoon. You’re trying to create tomorrow’s social media post. You’ve written the caption, opened Canva and then realised you need a photograph. So you scroll through your camera roll and discover the same six pictures you’ve already used countless times.
Sound familiar?
Use your quieter summer period to deliberately build a new image library. Take photographs of your team, premises, products, equipment, vehicles and the everyday details of running your business. They don’t all need to be professionally photographed. In fact, natural smartphone photography can often work extremely well on social media because it feels authentic.
If your budget allows, August could also be a good opportunity to arrange a professional brand photography session. You’ll thank yourself when you’re planning content in November and have hundreds of relevant images to choose from.
4. Write Down Every Question Your Customers Ask
Frequently asked questions are a goldmine for social media content planning. Open a document and start writing down every question customers regularly ask you.
- What does your service cost?
- How does the process work?
- How long does it take?
- What’s included?
- What’s the difference between two services you offer?
- Who is the service suitable for?
- What happens after someone contacts you?
Don’t worry about turning them into polished social media posts yet. Just create the list. If customers repeatedly ask a question, there’s a good chance other potential customers are wondering exactly the same thing. One list of 20 FAQs could therefore become 20 social posts, 20 Reels, several blogs and perhaps even new content for your website. Suddenly, “I don’t know what to post” becomes much less of a problem.
5. Look at Your Last Six Months of Social Media Analytics
When we’re busy creating social media content every week, it’s surprisingly easy to forget to stop and ask whether it’s actually working. August gives you an opportunity to do exactly that.
Look back over approximately six months of content and identify your strongest performers. Don’t concentrate exclusively on likes.
Depending on your objectives, look at metrics such as:
- Reach
- Impressions
- Shares
- Saves
- Comments
- Video watch time
- Profile visits
- Website clicks
- Enquiries
- Leads
Then start looking for patterns. Perhaps your educational posts consistently receive more saves. Maybe behind-the-scenes content generates more comments. Your talking-head videos might dramatically outperform polished graphics. Or perhaps posts featuring your team receive twice the reach of everything else.
Your audience is already giving you clues about what they want to see. You just need to pay attention to them.
6. Identify Your Best-Performing Topics
Once you’ve reviewed your analytics, go one step further. Rather than simply identifying individual posts that performed well, look at the topics behind them. Let’s say you’re an accountant and three of your best-performing posts were about reducing unnecessary business expenses. That’s useful information.
You don’t need to conclude that you’ve already covered the subject and therefore can’t mention it again. Do the opposite. Explore it further.
You could create posts about common unnecessary expenses, a Reel about subscriptions businesses forget they’re paying for, a checklist for reviewing monthly costs or a longer blog exploring ways small businesses can reduce overheads.
Good social media planning for small businesses isn’t about constantly finding completely new things to say.
It’s about recognising what your audience cares about and finding new ways to explore those subjects.
7. Finally Film Those Talking-Head Videos
We know. You’ve been meaning to do it. You’ve probably even written “film videos” on a to-do list several times.
Talking directly to the camera can feel uncomfortable when you’re not used to it, but it can be particularly valuable for service businesses. When someone buys a service, they’re often buying expertise and trusting the people delivering it.
Seeing and hearing you can help potential customers understand who you are before they ever make contact. Your first video doesn’t need to be perfect. Neither does your tenth. The important thing is getting started.
Use August to experiment while things are quieter. Try different locations, formats, video lengths and subjects. You may find it becomes considerably easier after you’ve filmed the first few.
8. Plan Your September Social Media Content Now
September has a habit of arriving very quickly. People return from holidays. Schools reopen. Clients suddenly remember all those projects they postponed. Meetings appear in the diary. Enquiries pick up. And the spare time you had in August disappears.
That’s precisely why August is such a good time for social media content planning. Don’t wait until September to decide what you’re going to post in September.
Start now.
Map out your important dates, promotions, business updates, educational content, videos and other posts. You don’t necessarily need to create every single piece of content in advance. Even having a clear calendar of topics will make September considerably easier. If you can create and schedule some of the content too, even better.
9. Start Thinking About Christmas
Yes, we said Christmas. And yes, it’s August. But if Christmas is important to your business, leaving your festive marketing until December is often far too late. Even November can be late for some campaigns.
August is a good time to start thinking about what your business will be doing during the final few months of the year.
- Will you run a Christmas promotion?
- Do you need festive photography?
- Will you create gift guides?
- Are there seasonal services you need to promote?
- Could you run a competition?
- Will you need paid social media campaigns?
- Do you have important Christmas ordering or booking deadlines?
You don’t need to start posting Christmas content while everyone’s sitting in the garden with an ice cream. You simply need to have a plan. That means when the appropriate time arrives, you’re ready.
10. Build Yourself a Content Bank
One of our favourite summer marketing ideas is to use spare time to create a content bank. This doesn’t necessarily mean writing 100 finished captions. Instead, create somewhere to store ideas whenever you have them.
You might have sections for:
- FAQs
- Customer problems
- Tips
- Reel ideas
- Behind-the-scenes posts
- Customer stories
- Testimonials
- Blog ideas
- Seasonal content
- Industry news
- Questions for your audience
Once you’ve created it, keep adding to it throughout the year. The next time you’re staring at an empty content calendar wondering what on earth you’re going to post, you’ll have somewhere to start.
Don’t Disappear Just Because Your Customers Have
There’s another important point to make about the August slowdown. Using the month to prepare doesn’t mean stopping your current social media activity altogether. If your audience is quieter, it’s tempting to think nobody is paying attention.
But people don’t stop using social media because they’re on holiday.
They’re sitting around the pool scrolling Instagram. They’re checking LinkedIn while waiting at the airport. They’re watching TikTok in the passenger seat on a long drive through France. They may not be ready to enquire about your services today, but that doesn’t mean you should disappear. Maintaining a consistent presence throughout summer means your business remains familiar.
Then, when your potential customers return to work and suddenly decide it’s time to tackle that project they’ve been putting off, there’s a much better chance they’ll remember you.
Turn the Summer Slowdown Into a September Head Start
A quiet August can feel frustrating when you’re used to a full inbox and a busy diary. But spare capacity doesn’t have to be wasted capacity. Refresh your profiles. Take new photographs. Film your Reels. Write down your FAQs. Analyse what’s been working. Build a content bank. Plan September. Get ahead with Christmas.
Do all the social media jobs that normally get pushed to the bottom of the list because client work comes first.
Then, when September arrives and everyone suddenly switches back into work mode, you won’t be scrambling to restart your marketing.
You’ll already be several steps ahead.
And if spending your quieter August working through your social media to-do list has reminded you just how much work goes into maintaining a consistent presence, SMR Social can help.
We’re a family of social media managers helping small businesses create better content, stay consistent and turn social media into something that supports their business rather than another job permanently sitting on the to-do list.
Get in touch with SMR Social to find out how we can help with your social media management, content creation, strategy and paid social advertising.