There’s a strange thing that sometimes happens when small business owners sit down to write a social media post.
They stop sounding like themselves.
The friendly person who happily chats to customers all day suddenly becomes incredibly formal. Simple words disappear. Sentences get longer. Everything becomes “we are delighted to announce” and “our valued customers” and “we pride ourselves on delivering exceptional service”.
Where did the actual person go?
We understand why it happens. When you’re communicating as a business, you naturally want to sound professional. You want potential customers to take you seriously, and you certainly don’t want your social media content to make your business look amateurish.
But professional doesn’t have to mean corporate.
In fact, one of the biggest advantages small businesses have on social media is something enormous brands often spend millions trying to manufacture: personality.
There are real people behind your business. Your customers might know your name. They might speak directly to you when they call. They might see you in the shop, meet you at their home or work alongside you on a project.
So why hide all of that when you get to social media?
If you want to build trust, become more memorable and create a stronger connection with potential customers, allowing more of your business’s genuine personality to come through could be one of the simplest improvements you make to your small business social media marketing.
People Don’t Use Social Media to Read Corporate Brochures
Think about why most people open Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or LinkedIn.
They’re probably not desperately hoping to encounter some corporate marketing copy.
They want to see what people are doing. They want to be entertained. They want to learn something. They want to discover interesting stories, opinions and ideas. They want to interact with other people.
Then, right in the middle of all that, your business appears.
This is where understanding the difference between social media and traditional advertising becomes important.
If every post you publish sounds like something copied directly from your company brochure, it can feel completely out of place.
“At Example Ltd, we pride ourselves on providing high-quality solutions tailored to the individual requirements of our valued customers.”
What does that actually tell us?
Probably very little.
Now imagine the business owner explaining the same thing as they would to a potential customer standing in front of them.
The language would probably be simpler. More specific. More natural.
It might even contain a joke.
That’s much closer to how businesses should think about their social media tone of voice.
You don’t need to abandon professionalism. You simply need to communicate like a human being.
Being a Small Business Is an Advantage
Small businesses sometimes look at enormous companies and assume their marketing should imitate them.
We’d argue the opposite.
A multinational business might need to create a brand personality because customers rarely interact with the people actually running the company.
You already have one.
It’s you.
It’s your team.
It’s the way you speak to customers. It’s the little things you do differently. It’s the stories behind the business. It’s your opinions about your industry. It’s the things that make customers enjoy dealing with you.
That’s incredibly valuable on social media.
If somebody follows a local café, they might enjoy getting to know the owner and the people working there. If they follow a tradesperson, they might like seeing who will actually turn up at their house. If they’re considering hiring a consultant, photographer, personal trainer or social media manager, seeing that person regularly can help make them feel much more familiar.
Large companies often try incredibly hard to make themselves feel human.
Small businesses already are.
Don’t accidentally remove that advantage by making every social media post sound like it went through seventeen departments before somebody was allowed to press publish.
Professional Doesn’t Mean Boring
This is probably the biggest concern businesses have about showing more personality.
They worry that they’ll look unprofessional.
But professionalism and personality aren’t opposites.
You can be knowledgeable, reliable and trustworthy while still sounding friendly. You can demonstrate expertise without using complicated language. You can make somebody laugh without turning your business account into a comedy page.
The right balance will obviously depend on the business.
A solicitor probably shouldn’t communicate in exactly the same way as a children’s entertainer. A financial adviser will naturally have different boundaries from a local pub. A luxury brand might use a more refined tone than an independent sweet shop.
Showing personality doesn’t mean every business needs to become loud, quirky or hilarious.
It means your content should feel like it came from your business.
If somebody removed your logo and business name from a selection of your posts, would a regular customer have any chance of recognising that you’d written them?
That’s a useful question.
If the answer is no because your captions could have been written for almost any company in your industry, there’s probably an opportunity to develop a stronger brand personality.
Your Tone of Voice Should Sound Like You
One of the easiest ways to develop a more authentic social media voice is to listen to how you actually speak to customers.
Imagine a customer phones and asks a question about one of your services.
Would you say:
“We are delighted to offer a comprehensive range of solutions designed to meet your individual requirements”?
Probably not.
You’d explain what you do.
You’d answer their question.
You might give them an example.
You’d probably use contractions such as “we’re”, “you’ll” and “it’s”.
You might say, “To be fair, you probably don’t need that option.”
That last example is particularly interesting.
Sometimes being helpful means telling somebody they don’t need the most expensive thing you sell. That’s the sort of natural, trustworthy interaction that happens every day inside small businesses, but it often disappears from their marketing.
Your social media content should capture more of those conversations.
Before publishing a caption, read it back and ask yourself whether you’d actually say those words to a customer.
If you wouldn’t, rewrite it.
Showing Your Face Can Make Your Business Feel More Familiar
We regularly encourage small businesses to show the people behind the company.
And yes, we know.
Not everybody enjoys being on camera.
You might feel awkward talking into your phone. You might hate photographs of yourself. You might watch your first video back and suddenly become extremely conscious of what you do with your hands while speaking.
That’s normal.
But there’s a reason people-led content can be so effective.
Seeing somebody repeatedly creates familiarity.
Imagine you’re considering contacting two local businesses offering similar services. One Instagram account contains nothing but stock photographs, product graphics and promotional messages. The other regularly features the owner explaining things, answering questions, showing projects and introducing members of the team.
By the time you make an enquiry, the second business might already feel more familiar.
You’ve seen the person you’re going to speak to.
You’ve heard how they explain things.
You’ve developed some idea of their personality.
That can remove some of the uncertainty involved in contacting a business for the first time.
You don’t need to appear in every post, and you certainly don’t need to become an influencer. But allowing customers to occasionally see the people behind the logo can make a significant difference to how approachable your business feels.
Behind-the-Scenes Content Helps People Connect With Your Business
Personality isn’t only about talking to the camera.
You can show it through the everyday reality of running your business.
The slightly chaotic morning before a big event. The office dog refusing to move from somebody’s chair. The enormous delivery that has just arrived. The team celebrating a successful project. The coffee keeping everybody going during a busy afternoon.
These things might seem insignificant to you.
But they’re the little moments that remind people there’s a real business happening behind the polished finished product.
Behind-the-scenes content can also demonstrate the care and expertise that customers don’t normally see.
A bakery can show the work that happens before opening. A wedding photographer can share the preparation involved before arriving at a venue. A tradesperson can explain why they’re taking extra time over a particular part of a job. An online retailer can show orders being packed.
You’re not simply showing what you sell.
You’re showing how your business works.
That helps people understand the effort, knowledge and personalities behind what they’re buying.
Your Opinions Can Make Your Content Much More Interesting
Businesses are often so concerned about saying the wrong thing that they end up saying nothing particularly interesting at all.
We’re not suggesting deliberately becoming controversial.
But if you’ve spent years working in an industry, you probably have opinions about it.
Maybe there’s something customers are frequently told that you disagree with. Perhaps there’s an industry trend you think has been overhyped. Maybe there’s a common approach that you believe causes more problems than it solves.
Those opinions can make excellent social media content.
Here at SMR Social, for example, we don’t believe every business needs to be on every social media platform.
That’s hardly going to start a national argument, but it is an opinion.
If your customers are primarily on Facebook and Instagram, spreading yourself thinly across six other platforms simply because they exist might not be the best use of your time.
We’d rather see a small business do a couple of platforms properly than maintain seven accounts badly.
Opinions like that demonstrate experience.
They show that you’re thinking about what you do rather than simply repeating generic industry advice.
And importantly, they give people something to respond to.
Someone might agree. Someone might have a different experience. Someone might ask you to explain further.
Now you’ve started a conversation.
That’s what social media is supposed to be good at.
Stories Are More Memorable Than Sales Messages
Imagine you’ve been running your business for ten years.
There’s probably a story behind that.
Perhaps you started at the kitchen table.
Maybe your first customer is still a customer today.
Perhaps something went spectacularly wrong in your first year and taught you a lesson you’ve never forgotten.
Maybe the business has changed completely from what you originally imagined.
Those stories are part of your brand.
Yet businesses often leave them completely untouched while publishing another post saying, “Contact us today to find out more about our services.”
There’s a place for promotional content. Businesses need to tell people what they sell.
But stories give people a reason to care.
You could tell the story behind a particular product, explain how a member of your team joined the company, share something you’ve learned from a difficult project or talk about why you started the business in the first place.
This is particularly valuable for building trust on social media because stories reveal things about the people and values behind a company without requiring you to explicitly tell everybody how passionate, dedicated and customer-focused you are.
Show it instead.
Stop Saying You’re Friendly. Be Friendly.
This applies to lots of words businesses use to describe themselves.
Friendly.
Approachable.
Passionate.
Professional.
Customer-focused.
Reliable.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of them.
The problem is that virtually every business claims them.
If your website says you’re a “friendly and approachable team”, that doesn’t automatically make anybody believe it.
Your social media can provide the evidence.
Respond warmly when customers leave comments. Show your team interacting naturally. Write captions that sound approachable. Answer common questions without making people feel silly for asking them.
The same applies to expertise.
Don’t constantly tell people you’re an expert.
Share useful information that demonstrates it.
Don’t repeatedly tell everyone that you provide brilliant customer service.
Share genuine customer experiences that illustrate it.
The strongest social media branding for small businesses often comes from demonstrating characteristics rather than simply listing them.
Generic Stock Photography Can Make a Small Business Feel Less Personal
Stock photography has its uses.
Sometimes you need an image that you simply can’t produce yourself, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with using a good-quality stock photograph when appropriate.
But problems arise when an entire small business social media account is filled with photographs of people who have absolutely nothing to do with the business.
You’ve probably seen them.
The suspiciously enthusiastic team having a meeting around a perfectly tidy desk.
The businessperson pointing excitedly at an invisible graph.
The customer service representative wearing a headset while smiling far more enthusiastically than anyone has ever smiled while wearing a headset.
Everything looks polished.
Nothing feels real.
For small businesses, your own photographs can often be much more valuable.
They don’t necessarily need to be professionally photographed.
A genuine photograph of your team working on a project might be slightly less polished than a stock image, but it tells the audience something about your actual business.
A photograph of a real customer project shows something you’ve actually achieved.
A quick picture from behind the scenes gives people access to something they wouldn’t otherwise see.
Authenticity doesn’t mean deliberately publishing bad photography.
It means recognising that real can sometimes be more valuable than perfect.
Personality Doesn’t Mean Sharing Everything
There is an important distinction to make here.
Being authentic doesn’t mean you have to share every aspect of your life online.
You can absolutely have boundaries.
Some business owners are comfortable talking about their families. Others aren’t. Some enjoy sharing personal interests. Others prefer to keep their business and personal lives largely separate.
Both approaches are fine.
You decide which parts of your personality are relevant to the business and which things remain private.
The objective isn’t to turn your business page into your personal Facebook profile.
It’s to stop pretending there aren’t humans behind the company.
You can be personal without being private.
You can share opinions without sharing everything you think.
You can show your face without documenting your entire life.
And you can build an authentic business personality while still maintaining completely reasonable professional boundaries.
Don’t Manufacture a Personality Because Marketing Told You To
There’s another trap worth avoiding.
Once businesses decide they need “personality”, sometimes they try a little too hard.
Suddenly every caption contains ten emojis.
The brand starts using slang nobody at the company would ever actually say.
Every post desperately attempts to be funny.
The comments section becomes full of forced banter.
That’s not authenticity either.
If your business is naturally understated, let it be understated.
If you’re genuinely funny, humour can become part of your content.
If your customers expect detailed, knowledgeable explanations, lean into that.
If your team is enthusiastic and energetic, allow that to come through.
The objective isn’t to create a personality you think social media will like.
It’s to identify the personality your business already has and communicate it more effectively.
That’s why copying another company’s tone of voice rarely works.
What feels completely natural for them might feel painfully forced coming from you.
Your Personality Can Help Differentiate You From Competitors
This becomes particularly important when several businesses offer broadly similar products or services.
Imagine you’re choosing between three accountants in your local area.
They all appear suitably qualified.
Their prices are relatively similar.
They offer many of the same services.
How do you choose?
Sometimes the deciding factor is simply the business you feel most comfortable approaching.
Perhaps one accountant regularly creates straightforward videos explaining tax issues without jargon. You like the way they communicate. They seem knowledgeable without making everything unnecessarily complicated.
Another account is filled with formal graphics and generic messages about “bespoke financial solutions”.
Both businesses might be equally capable.
But one has given you a much clearer idea of what dealing with them might actually be like.
Personality becomes part of the customer experience before somebody has even become a customer.
For small businesses competing against companies with larger marketing budgets, that’s an opportunity worth taking seriously.
You might not be able to outspend your biggest competitor.
You can absolutely be more relatable than them.
AI Makes Genuine Personality Even More Important
There’s another reason we think this subject is becoming increasingly important.
Businesses now have access to tools that can generate enormous amounts of content incredibly quickly.
That’s useful. We use AI ourselves.
But it also means the internet is becoming increasingly full of content that is technically fine but sounds very similar.
Perfect grammar. Sensible structure. Appropriate terminology.
And absolutely no indication that a particular human being or business was involved.
AI can help businesses generate ideas, improve writing and speed up content creation. But if you remove your own knowledge, opinions, experiences and personality from the process, you risk producing the same generic content as everybody else.
The businesses that stand out will increasingly be the ones that have something genuinely theirs to say.
Your experience can’t be copied from a prompt.
The story about what happened with a customer last Tuesday is yours.
Your opinion after 15 years in your industry is yours.
The way your team works together is yours.
The strange thing customers always ask you is yours.
Use those things.
Technology can help you turn them into content, but it shouldn’t remove the very characteristics that make the content worth reading.
Consistency Matters More Than Becoming a Character
Once you’ve established a tone of voice, try to maintain it.
That doesn’t mean every post needs to sound identical. A serious customer announcement will naturally sound different from a funny behind-the-scenes Reel.
But people should broadly recognise the same business.
If Monday’s post sounds like a solicitor wrote it in 1987, Wednesday’s sounds like a teenager on TikTok and Friday’s sounds like a multinational bank, your brand personality is going to feel confused.
Think about a few simple characteristics that describe how you want your business to communicate.
Perhaps you’re friendly, straightforward and knowledgeable.
Maybe you’re energetic, informal and encouraging.
Perhaps you’re calm, premium and reassuring.
Those characteristics can act as a useful filter when you’re writing content.
You don’t necessarily need an enormous brand document explaining which adjectives you’re legally permitted to use on Tuesdays.
You just need a clear idea of how the business should sound.
Social Media Gives Small Businesses Something Big Brands Would Love to Have
There are plenty of disadvantages to being a small business.
Your marketing budget might be smaller.
Your team has fewer people.
Your time is limited.
You probably don’t have an entire department dedicated to creating Instagram Reels.
But small businesses also have something incredibly valuable.
You can be genuinely personal.
Customers can get to know the owner.
They can see the people doing the work.
They can ask a question and receive a response from somebody who actually understands the business.
They can follow your journey.
They can watch projects develop.
They can understand what you believe and how you work.
Social media gives you a direct way to communicate all of that.
Don’t waste the opportunity by pretending to be a giant corporation.
Let Your Business Sound Like Your Business
The next time you write a social media caption, read it back before publishing.
Does it sound like you?
Would you actually say it?
Could the same caption have been published by ten of your competitors without changing a word?
If so, loosen it up.
Tell the story.
Give the opinion.
Use the phrase you’d actually use when explaining it to a customer.
Show the person doing the work.
Share the photograph that isn’t absolutely perfect but captures something genuine about the business.
You don’t need to make your social media less professional.
You need to make your professionalism feel more human.
At SMR Social, we’re a family of social media managers helping small businesses create content that actually sounds and feels like them. We can help develop your social media strategy, find the stories and ideas hiding inside your everyday business, create engaging content, manage your social media accounts and use paid social advertising to reach more of the right people.
Because your competitors can copy your services.
They can copy your offers.
They might even copy your content ideas.
But they can’t be you.