12/02/2026
Something I've been mulling over recently. Your friend or therapist’s small business – hairdresser, crafts, PT, tree surgery, herbalist – might have 100, 500, 1000 followers on FB/Instagram. You’d assume that when they post something, all those followers would see it, right? But think – when did you last see so and so post – when you then go and click on them you realise there’s loads you’ve missed!
You may have heard of social media “algorithms”. Small businesses do all the work trying to make interesting posts and then tear their hair out as the analytics show that it only turned up in 40 people’s feed, despite them having 2000 followers. This is (I think) how it works.
When a small business posts, without paying to “boost” the post, it gets released to a handful of followers, this seems MAYBE to be the people who react most often – liking, sharing or commenting upon the posts. So my husband always sees my posts (to be fair he knows he’s in trouble if he doesn’t) and I know I have a handful of loyal followers who will almost always like/share/comment (you don’t know how grateful I am to you). When “enough” people interact – and that seems to be random – apparently FB/Instagram will release the post to more people, so another batch of followers will see it and so on. I think. So, yes, you might not get the post in the first place!
When you comment on your friend’s small business post, *your* friends might see that comment in their feed. Even if you just write something non-committal like “lovely photo” or “interesting!”. So this means more people will see the post = advertising.
It seems as well that FB/Insta are more likely to release a post to more people if there is a photo of a person in it. Hence occasional photos of me going “oh look, I’m on a beach”. (I hate doing this, I’m not a photo-sharing kind of person, but it’s a necessary evil!).
So anyway, I just thought I’d write a bit about this, not just to help me, but so you can help other small businesses you know. Often we can’t afford to advertise very much and social media is the only way. It’s “free” advertising technically but not free in terms of the time taken. I don’t think all this is common knowledge so please feel free to share! Like! Comment! 😄
And lastly THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for your support no matter what form it takes, I am always so very grateful!
