The 5 step social media strategy every small business needs

The short answer: the social media strategy I use with every client comes down to five steps. Entertain first and sell second. Work out what's distinctly yours. Steal formats, never ideas. Use AI as a sparring partner. Review every month and kill what flopped. I walked through all five on Suz Chadwick's Brand Builders Lab podcast, and it's the same approach that took St Andrews Hotel Fitzroy from under 5,000 views a month to 7.77 million organic views in 14 months.

You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts or Podbean. Suz also wrote it up on her website. Here's my written version.

Why posting consistently isn't a strategy

Everyone's been told consistency is key. It is, to a point. But I see business owners posting three times a week for months, every video sitting on 300 views, and nobody stopping to ask why. Consistency without a strategy is what I call being consistently ignored.

The upside is massive if you get it right. A local cafe, pub or butcher can now reach millions of people without paying for ads. The Butcher Club has had months where it passed a million organic views. That was never possible for a small Aussie business before. You don't need more posts. You need a reason for strangers to stop on them.

Step 1: Entertain first, sell second

Social media is an entertainment platform. Businesses used to pay for billboards and newspaper ads, so the idea of "just entertaining" people feels like a waste. But posting is free apart from your time. The trade-off is that you play by the algorithm's rules: earn the attention first, then drop a sell here and there.

If you're thinking "I'm not dancing on camera", good news. You don't have to. Start with a seven-second clip of you at your laptop with relatable text on screen. Then try a challenge, where people get to see how you laugh and react. Save the skits for when you're comfortable. And lean into whatever you actually find funny, because your sense of humour attracts the people who share it. I wrote more on this in video marketing when you hate being on camera.

Selling content doesn't have to be boring either. When St Andrews launched its Sunday roast, we didn't post a photo with the price on it. We filmed the chef plating it up in a giant Yorkshire pudding with his English accent over the top. Still a selling video, but people watched it like entertainment. The roast booked out.

Step 2: Work out what's distinctly yours

I treat every business like a TV show. You need a set, main characters, side characters and a story. At St Andrews the set was the back bar with its stained glass windows. The owners were the main characters. The bar and kitchen staff were the side characters, and they didn't get to escape. People found the pub online, saw the same faces a few times, then walked in and felt like they already knew the place. The full story is in the St Andrews case study.

No set? No characters? Invent them. A nutritionist's set might be their kitchen bench, and their mum telling them to ease up and have a cookie is a character. If you're a service business, you're the main character. For me it's my office, a few backdrops and the fact that I wear black every day.

Your story counts too. St Andrews is a family pub with Croatian roots, and Wednesday pie night was dying because a hundred other Melbourne venues do pie night. So we swapped it for a ćevapi night, built for social from day one. Nobody else could tell that story, which meant there was no competition.

Step 3: Steal formats, never ideas

There's no shame in looking at what's working in your industry. A format that's already proven is the quickest win you'll get. But borrow the structure, not the idea, and put your own spin on it. The brands I watch for storytelling are Pistachio Papi and Gelato Messina. When an ice cream shop makes you feel something, pay attention to how they did it.

For original ideas, I still go old school. Phone off, pen and paper, 30-minute timer. Write down everything that could entertain someone and branch off from there. The selling part is easy, so add it at the end. Most people are shocked at how many ideas they already have.

Step 4: Use AI as a sparring partner

AI should be part of your strategy, but not to write your content for you. Go back and forth with it. You still need taste, because some of what it suggests will be rubbish. The rest can spark something you can stretch out.

My favourite trick: if you're on calls all day, you've already got transcripts. Paste a few into Claude or ChatGPT and ask it to find the things you always end up talking about, the moments you explained something clearly and the quirks you don't notice about yourself. There's content gold in there, and AI is good at spotting the parts of your business you've gone blind to.

Step 5: Review every month and kill what flopped

A strategy isn't a one-off document. It should keep changing. The bit that drives me crazy is how many owners have never once looked back at their content. Then how do you know what's working?

Once a month, look at the numbers. If you did 60,000 views this month, how do you get to 70,000 next month? Which ideas flopped, so you can kill them? Which took off, so you can make another? Nobody saw the flops anyway. After a few months the guesswork turns into a system. If you want to know what should go into the plan itself, here's what a social media strategy actually includes.