Doing your own social media? Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, sorted
Agencies charge small businesses hundreds of pounds a month to run their social media. Here’s how to do a good job of it yourself, platform by platform, whether you’re posting your first photo or ready for the clever stuff.
When you run a small business, you’re also the marketing department. Nobody hands you a budget or a content calendar. It’s you, your phone, and ten spare minutes between jobs. The good news: that’s enough, and you already own the one thing no agency can buy, which is being the real person behind the business.
I wrote before about a simple weekly routine that keeps social media to twenty minutes a week. This post is the companion: what actually works on each of the big three platforms, with tips for your first month and for when you’re ready to get clever.
Think of Facebook as the town noticeboard, Instagram as your shop window and TikTok as your open kitchen. Each rewards different things, but one good idea can feed all three. Get the basics solid on one platform before you add another.
Get the boring bits right first
Before you worry about content, spend fifteen minutes on the stuff nobody talks about because it isn’t exciting. On every platform: a recognisable profile photo (your logo or your face, not a blurry group shot), your opening hours, your town, and one link that goes somewhere useful, ideally your website or WhatsApp. Then pin your best post to the top of the profile, the one that explains what you do and where you are.
This matters because most people who land on your profile aren’t browsing for fun. They’ve just heard about you and they’re checking you out. If they can’t work out what you sell and how to reach you within five seconds, they’re gone.
Facebook: the town noticeboard
Facebook isn’t cool, and it doesn’t matter one bit. It’s still where most UK adults are, and crucially it’s where the local community groups live. If you serve a town, Facebook is where that town talks to itself.
Starting out: post what’s happening this week (the special, the quiz night, the job you just finished), share your posts to the local community groups when they’re relevant, and reply to every comment, even if it’s just a thank-you. Comments tell Facebook your page is alive, and they tell customers you’re the sort of place that answers.
Stepping it up: schedule a week of posts in one sitting with Meta Business Suite, which is free and also posts to Instagram at the same time. Create a proper Facebook Event for anything with a date, because events get shared around groups in a way ordinary posts don’t. And when you have a post that’s already doing well organically, put £15 or £20 behind it targeted at people within a few miles. That isn’t “doing ads”, it’s buying your best post a bigger local audience for the price of a round.
Instagram: the shop window
Instagram is where people decide whether your place looks worth their time. Nobody books a table or a haircut from a paragraph of text. They look at the photos, and they judge.
Starting out: natural light is your best friend, so shoot near a window or outside. Post the thing you sell looking its best, tag your location on every single post, and use Stories for the everyday stuff that doesn’t need to be perfect: deliveries arriving, the room set up for the evening, a rainy Tuesday. Stories vanish in 24 hours, which takes the pressure off.
Stepping it up: learn Reels, because short video is what Instagram shows to people who don’t follow you yet, and it’s the closest thing to free reach left on the platform. Use Highlights as a permanent menu: one for prices, one for your work, one for how to find you. Try a collab post with a neighbouring business so one post lands in both audiences. And aim for content people save: a menu, a price list, a before-and-after. A save is worth ten likes, and Instagram knows it.
TikTok: the open kitchen
You don’t have to dance. TikTok in 2026 works more like a search engine than a dance app. People type “best sunday roast near me” and “how to tile a bathroom” into it every day, and the average UK user spends more time there than on Facebook and YouTube combined.
Starting out: point your phone at what you already do and talk normally. The plasterer skimming a wall, the chef plating up, the florist unpacking Monday’s delivery. Rough and real outperforms polished on TikTok, which makes it the cheapest platform of the lot: no design, no editing, just your actual day. Fifteen to thirty seconds is plenty.
Stepping it up: say the words people would search for out loud in the video and put them in the caption (“dog friendly pub in Staines”), because TikTok indexes both. Use trending sounds while they’re still rising, reply to good comments with a video answer, and make a series: “Jobs of the week”, “Behind the bar”, “What £20 gets you here”. A series gives people a reason to come back, and gives you a format so you never start from scratch.
73%
of UK internet users are on Facebook.
49hrs
a month the average UK TikTok user spends on the app.
48%
of UK consumers have bought something directly through TikTok.
The habits that quietly compound
Whichever platforms you pick, a few habits separate the businesses that get somewhere from the ones that give up in March:
- Make one idea work three times. Tonight’s special is a Facebook post, an Instagram Story and a fifteen-second TikTok of it being plated. One idea, three platforms, ten minutes.
- Read your own numbers once a month. Every platform shows you which posts did well. Ignore likes and look at shares, saves and messages, the actions that suggest a customer rather than a scroller. Then do more of whatever earned them.
- Post when your customers are looking. For food, that’s late morning when people plan lunch, and early evening. For trades, evenings and Sunday, when homeowners sit down and finally message about the leaky gutter.
- Keep the ratio honest. Aim for roughly four posts that are useful, entertaining or human for every one that directly sells. All adverts, no personality, is the fastest way to be muted.
Nobody follows a small business to see adverts. They follow for the bits an agency could never fake: you, the shop, the dog, the Tuesday chaos.
The traps that eat your evenings
A few things not to do. Don’t buy followers, ever: a thousand bots impress nobody and quietly convince the algorithm that real locals don’t want your posts. Don’t argue with strangers in your comments; reply once, politely, and move on, because every future customer reads those exchanges. Don’t chase every trend, only the ones you can do in your own voice without wincing. And don’t feel obliged to be on every platform. Two done properly beats four done badly.
Your platform cheat sheet
- Fix your profiles first: photo, hours, town, one useful link, one pinned post. Fifteen minutes, once.
- Facebook: post what’s on, use the local groups, make real Events, and put £20 behind a post that’s already working.
- Instagram: natural light, location tags, Stories for the everyday, Reels and save-worthy posts when you’re ready.
- TikTok: film your actual day, keep it rough, say the searchable words out loud, build a series.
- Everywhere: recycle one idea three ways, check your numbers monthly, keep four useful posts for every salesy one.
None of this needs to swallow your week. Pair this platform guide with the twenty-minute weekly routine and you have a system: the routine tells you when, this tells you what. And remember where it all points. Social media warms people up, but it’s your website that takes the booking at 11pm when you’re asleep. Make sure the follower who finally taps through has somewhere decent to land.
Figures from 2026 UK social-media and consumer studies.
