Summer is over. The evenings are getting darker, the weather is becoming increasingly unpredictable and the annual debate about whether it’s too early to turn the heating on has probably begun.
Autumn is definitely here.
For small businesses, this can also be a slightly strange time of year on social media. The obvious summer content has disappeared, Christmas still feels a little way off and suddenly your Instagram feed seems to contain an extraordinary number of photographs of pumpkins.
What are you actually supposed to post about?
It’s easy for businesses to hit something of an autumn social media slump. Perhaps you were posting regularly throughout the summer, documenting events, holidays, busy periods and everything else that was happening. Then October arrives and inspiration starts to disappear.
The good news is that you don’t need to spend the next two months desperately trying to make your products look autumnal.
There are plenty of interesting things your business can talk about at this time of year. More importantly, October is a great opportunity to concentrate on the things that make good social media content throughout the year: useful information, genuine stories, interesting people and content that gives potential customers a reason to remember your business.
So, put the pumpkin graphic down for a moment.
Let’s talk about how to keep your small business social media content interesting this autumn.
Autumn Doesn’t Have to Become Your Entire Personality
We love seasonal content when it makes sense.
If you run a garden centre, restaurant, fashion retailer, wedding venue, hotel or any other business where the changing seasons genuinely affect what customers are interested in, autumn probably gives you loads to talk about.
Use it.
But there’s something that happens every October where businesses suddenly feel legally obliged to incorporate orange leaves into their social media graphics.
Your accountant probably doesn’t need to be surrounded by pumpkins.
Your IT company doesn’t necessarily need to tell customers about its “spookily good cybersecurity”.
And your solicitor can probably make it through Halloween without wishing everyone a “fang-tastic Friday”.
If you have a genuinely good seasonal idea, absolutely use it. Seasonal content can be timely, relatable and fun.
But don’t force it.
One of the most important parts of creating an effective social media strategy for a small business is understanding what your audience actually cares about. The fact that it’s October doesn’t suddenly make all of your usual content irrelevant.
Your customers still have questions.
They still have problems you can solve.
They still want to understand what you do.
And they’re still interested in the people behind the businesses they choose.
That’s where most of your best content will come from.
Look at What Changes for Your Customers in Autumn
Rather than asking, “What can we post about autumn?”, ask a slightly different question.
What changes for our customers at this time of year?
That’s a much more useful starting point.
A window company might talk about draughts, condensation and energy efficiency as temperatures fall. A personal trainer could discuss staying motivated when dark mornings make getting out of bed considerably less appealing. A gardener might explain what homeowners should be doing to prepare their gardens for winter.
An independent retailer could start talking about products that become more relevant as the weather changes. A restaurant might introduce seasonal dishes. A photographer could discuss autumn family photography. A financial adviser might have completely different issues that become important as the end of the year approaches.
Now your autumn content has a reason to exist.
You’re not mentioning October simply because the calendar says October.
You’re recognising that your customers’ lives, priorities and problems change throughout the year and adapting your content accordingly.
That’s the difference between seasonal social media marketing and sticking a picture of a leaf behind your logo.
October Is a Great Month for Useful Content
There’s another reason we like October for small business social media.
People are generally back into their normal routines.
The summer holidays are behind us. Schools are back. Businesses are moving towards the final part of the year and customers are starting to think about things they want to get sorted before Christmas.
That creates plenty of opportunities for helpful content.
Think about the questions your customers are likely to be asking over the next few months. What might they need to organise? What should they be thinking about now rather than leaving until December? Are there deadlines they need to know about? Are there common mistakes you can help them avoid?
You can answer those questions through social media.
This is where your expertise becomes content.
If you’re an accountant, there are probably financial questions you can answer. If you’re a tradesperson, there may be home maintenance issues that become particularly relevant as the weather deteriorates. If you’re a recruitment company, you could discuss hiring towards the end of the year. If you’re a business consultant, you might talk about planning for the following year.
None of those ideas requires a pumpkin.
They’re simply useful subjects that happen to become particularly relevant during autumn.
And useful content is often some of the strongest content a small business can create because it demonstrates why somebody should listen to you in the first place.
Don’t Let Darker Days Make Your Social Media Go Dark Too
There is a practical challenge that arrives with autumn.
Creating visual content can become more difficult.
Those lovely photographs you were taking at 7pm during the summer aren’t quite as easy when it’s already dark outside. Outdoor businesses might have fewer opportunities for bright, sunny photography. Staff leave work when it’s dark. The weather might ruin your plans to film something outside.
It’s surprisingly easy for this to affect how much content you create.
The solution is to become a little more deliberate.
If you’ve got a bright morning, use it. If several members of the team are together, take some photographs while you’ve got the opportunity. If you’re visiting an interesting project, capture more content than you need immediately.
Take photographs in both portrait and landscape orientations. Record a few short video clips. Get some close-ups as well as wider shots. Photograph the people as well as the finished work.
You don’t need to know exactly how you’re going to use everything while you’re taking it.
You’re building a content library.
That gives you something to work with when it’s raining sideways on a Tuesday afternoon in November and you suddenly realise you haven’t got anything to post.
Your Everyday Business Is Still Your Best Source of Content
We recently wrote about how businesses are often much more interesting than they think they are, and autumn doesn’t change that.
The work you’re doing every day is still one of your best sources of social media content ideas for small businesses.
- What have you been working on this week?
- What questions have customers asked?
- Has something unusual happened?
- Have you completed a project you’re particularly pleased with?
- Has a member of the team achieved something?
- Have you received a great review?
- Did you solve an interesting problem for a customer?
These things don’t stop being worth talking about because it’s October.
In fact, one of the easiest ways to avoid the autumn content slump is to stop trying to invent content specifically for autumn.
- Talk about the business.
- Show people what you’re doing.
- Explain the work.
- Introduce the people.
- Share the results.
If something naturally connects to the season, brilliant. If it doesn’t, that’s absolutely fine.
Your audience followed your business because they’re interested in what you do, not because they’re waiting for your annual thoughts on crunchy leaves.
Autumn Is Perfect for Behind-the-Scenes Content
There is something about autumn that naturally suits behind-the-scenes content.
Perhaps it’s because businesses start feeling busier as the end of the year approaches. Perhaps it’s because people are back into routines. Or perhaps there’s just something more interesting about seeing the reality of a working day when everything isn’t perfectly sunny outside.
Whatever the reason, we’d make the most of it.
- Show the morning preparations before you open.
- Show products arriving.
- Show the team working on something.
- Take people through a project.
- Explain what’s happening in the business.
If you’re starting to prepare for Christmas, you can show glimpses of that process without immediately turning your entire social media presence into Santa’s grotto.
Behind-the-scenes content works particularly well for small businesses because it gives customers access to something they wouldn’t ordinarily see.
A finished product tells one story.
Seeing how that product was made tells another.
A completed renovation looks impressive.
Seeing the transformation taking place gives people a reason to follow along.
A restaurant can show the finished dish, but watching the chef prepare it gives the content movement, personality and a human element.
These little glimpses into the business help make your social media presence feel more genuine.
And importantly, they’re usually much more interesting than another generic “Hello October!” graphic.
Let the People Behind Your Business Appear
As the year progresses, it’s worth looking back at your social media feed and asking a simple question.
Can anybody actually see who runs this business?
If your feed consists almost entirely of graphics, products and promotional messages, autumn is as good a time as any to change that.
- Introduce somebody from the team.
- Ask them a question on camera.
- Share a photograph of somebody doing their job.
- Tell the story of how they joined the business.
- Let the owner explain something customers regularly ask about.
You don’t need everybody to become a presenter.
Some people will happily talk into a camera. Others would rather hide in a cupboard until you’ve finished filming. That’s fine.
Even a natural photograph accompanied by a short story can help customers get to know the people they’re potentially going to deal with.
This matters because familiarity builds trust.
If somebody has been following your business for several months and regularly sees the same people sharing useful advice, completing projects and interacting with customers, contacting you can feel much less daunting.
They already have some idea of who you are.
For a small business, that’s a powerful advantage.
Autumn Gives You Plenty of Opportunities to Tell Stories
Sometimes the best social media content isn’t really about the season at all.
The season just gives you a starting point.
Perhaps your business is approaching an anniversary. Maybe you’re looking back at how much has changed since the beginning of the year. Perhaps you’ve had an incredibly busy summer and can share something you’ve learned from it.
Maybe there’s a customer story that’s particularly relevant at this time of year.
Stories give your content depth.
Instead of simply posting a photograph of a completed project and writing, “Another happy customer!”, explain what actually happened.
- What did the customer need?
- What problem were they experiencing?
- What did you recommend?
- Were there any challenges?
- What was the finished result?
Now the audience has something to follow.
This approach works particularly well for service businesses because potential customers can recognise themselves in the story.
Someone might read about a problem you’ve solved for another customer and think, “That’s exactly what we need.”
That’s far more powerful than simply reminding them for the fifteenth time that you offer the service.
Don’t Forget About Video Just Because Summer Has Gone
Short-form video continues to be an incredibly useful format for businesses, and autumn is no reason to stop creating it.
- You don’t need spectacular scenery.
- You don’t need to film everything outdoors.
- And you don’t need a professional production crew following you around.
- A useful explanation filmed in your office can work.
- A quick walkthrough of a project can work.
- A before-and-after transformation can work.
- A member of the team answering a common question can work.
- A short behind-the-scenes video can work.
The important thing is that there’s a reason to watch.
One advantage of video is that it can bring relatively ordinary subjects to life. Something that might feel slightly flat as a static photograph can become much more engaging when somebody explains what’s happening.
And if you’re uncomfortable speaking directly to camera, you can record footage of what you’re doing and add text or a voiceover afterwards.
There are plenty of ways to create useful short-form video content for small businesses without pointing a phone at yourself and hoping you suddenly develop the presenting skills of David Attenborough.
You Don’t Need to Mention Christmas Yet, but You Should Probably Be Thinking About It
We promised this wasn’t going to become a Christmas blog.
And it isn’t.
But we’re in October, so we can’t completely ignore what’s coming.
You don’t necessarily need to start publishing festive content yet. Depending on your business, your customers may have absolutely no interest in seeing Christmas posts at the beginning of October.
Behind the scenes, though, planning should probably be happening.
If Christmas is an important commercial period for your business, what content will you need?
- Will you need product photography?
- Are you planning an offer?
- Will you run a competition?
- Do you need to communicate ordering deadlines?
- Will your opening hours change?
- Are you planning Black Friday activity?
- Will you be running Meta ads?
- Do you need video content?
The earlier you answer those questions, the easier the next couple of months become.
Good social media content often looks spontaneous to the audience while being considerably less spontaneous behind the scenes.
Planning gives you the freedom to create better content without spending December desperately trying to design a Christmas graphic while simultaneously running the busiest part of your business.
Use October to Experiment
If things are relatively steady for your business during October, it can also be a good opportunity to try something different.
Perhaps you’ve never filmed yourself answering a customer question.
Try it.
Maybe your social media has relied heavily on graphics and you want to introduce more photography.
Start taking photographs.
Perhaps you’ve never created an Instagram carousel, shared a customer case study or written a more opinion-led LinkedIn post.
Give it a go.
You don’t need to completely reinvent your small business social media strategy every month. In fact, we’d strongly recommend that you don’t.
But trying new formats and ideas helps you understand what your audience responds to.
Then look at the results.
- Did people watch the video?
- Did they save the carousel?
- Did the customer story generate comments?
- Did somebody send you a message after seeing the post?
Social media becomes much easier to improve when you treat it as an ongoing process rather than trying to discover one perfect formula and repeat it forever.
Don’t Mistake Consistency for Posting Constantly
Another thing that can happen when businesses feel their social media has gone quiet is panic.
You haven’t posted for a few days.
You start feeling guilty.
So you decide you need to publish something immediately.
Anything.
That’s usually when the generic seasonal graphics appear.
Consistency is important, but consistency doesn’t mean filling your feed for the sake of it.
We’d rather see a business publish three genuinely useful, interesting posts in a week than seven posts created purely because somebody decided the account must publish every day.
A realistic social media posting schedule for a small business is one you can actually maintain.
That might mean posting several times each week. It might mean creating fewer, better pieces of content and spending more time engaging with your audience.
There isn’t a magic number that works for every business.
What matters is that your account doesn’t disappear for months at a time and that the content you do publish has some thought behind it.
Pay Attention to What’s Already Working
If you’re struggling for ideas this autumn, your own social media analytics can help.
Look back over the last six months.
- Which posts performed particularly well?
- Which generated comments?
- What did people share?
- Which videos kept people watching?
- What led to website visits or enquiries?
- You don’t need to constantly invent completely new subjects.
If you posted something useful in April and it performed brilliantly, there might be another angle you can explore now.
Perhaps a customer question you answered earlier in the year needs updating. Maybe a successful Reel could become a more detailed carousel. An older blog could inspire several new social media posts.
Reusing an idea isn’t the same as reposting exactly the same thing over and over again.
Good subjects can be approached from different perspectives.
In reality, only a fraction of your audience will see every piece of content you publish anyway.
Don’t abandon a useful subject simply because you mentioned it once eight months ago.
Your Audience Doesn’t Need Autumn Content. It Needs Good Content.
That’s really the point.
October can provide some brilliant social media content ideas.
Use the changing season when it’s relevant.
Talk about the things your customers are experiencing right now.
Make the most of seasonal products, changing customer behaviour and timely advice.
Have some fun with Halloween if it suits your business.
But don’t feel that everything you publish between September and December needs to contain an autumn leaf.
Your customers haven’t suddenly stopped caring about your expertise, your people, your products, your services or the problems you solve.
Those things should still form the foundation of your content.
Seasonality is something you can layer on top when it adds relevance.
It shouldn’t replace the reason people were interested in your business in the first place.
Keep Showing Up While Everyone Else Goes Quiet
There’s actually an opportunity hidden inside the autumn social media slump.
Other businesses experience it too.
Some will post less frequently. Some will run out of ideas. Some will disappear until they suddenly return in December with a “Merry Christmas from the team!” graphic.
You don’t have to.
- Keep showing the work you’re doing.
- Keep answering customer questions.
- Keep sharing useful advice.
- Keep telling stories.
- Keep showing the people behind the business.
- Keep experimenting with photographs, videos and different types of content.
By the time Christmas arrives, you’ll have spent another couple of months building familiarity with your audience rather than trying to suddenly grab their attention when everybody else is doing exactly the same thing.
At SMR Social, we’re a family of social media managers helping small businesses create consistent, interesting social media content throughout the year. We help with social media strategy, content creation, ongoing social media management, community management and paid social advertising, so you don’t have to spend every Monday morning staring at Instagram wondering what on earth you’re going to post this week.
And if you do want to publish a picture of a pumpkin?
Go for it.
Just make sure you’ve got something interesting to say alongside it.