The small business guide to looking good online

Small business owners are a special breed: independent, tenacious, and often exhausted. I should know. I’ve run Papa Gede’s – a small bar in Sydney – for over a decade and have probably served you a delicious cocktail (or two, let's be honest).

Here are a few things I’ve learned about online branding and content creation in my time straddling the bar, the books and the socials.  

1. Be distinct: Unless your small business caters to retirees or CBD oil-imbibing sloths, it’s likely your target customers are time-poor. Help them out by making your content distinct. This can be as simple as using the same filter, wearing the same colour in videos, or always using Motown backing tracks on your reels as your logo spins in a corner. Anything to make it recognisable, and memorable.
   

2. Know your ‘why’: What's your goal? A nebulous life-coaching thing to ask, but important nonetheless if you want your branding efforts to be worthwhile. Do you want to be constantly on trend? To make people laugh with rough BTS footage? To provide slick, museum-worthy photography of everything you sell? (In Food and Beverage this is HUGE.) Or to simply have an online presence so that your customers can look you up after the fact and know they weren’t hallucinating? (Also huge in F&B, especially beverages).
   

3. Get to the point – quickly. I’m not convinced that customers read content closely. I think it’s safe to say they ‘jump to recipe’ most of the time. So, with that in mind, get to the point. Clarity is Queen. And if you can be clear, while sounding like an actual human being, even better. The reality is that whatever you’re saying, you’ll likely need to say it again, and again, and again before anyone remembers anyway.
   

4. Adapt or die. The way your customer (or supplier, or future staff member or awards-granting industry expert that you want to impress) interacts with online content will likely change over time. A lot. It used to be all about likes. Now it’s all about shares, saves and reposts. This is normal. It’s you who needs to change. 
   

5. Don’t forget, you’re the boss. Think about online presence as a glass display window on the high street of a quaint country town – what do you want people to see depending on the day of the week, or the season? Your most profitable product? A variety of services? A hyper-specific niche? The best (and worst) thing about being a small business owner is that you’re the boss – so you can take a peek at the metaphorical high street then tweak the display to maximise impact – rain, hail or shine. 

This is a blog featured on Remedy Content. We specialise in wellness, health and lifestyle content, copywriting, editing, and design for start-ups and small businesses. If you have a word-y problem, we'd love to hear about it! Get in touch for a chat/ brainstorm/ strong coffee/ craft beer/ dog walk.