Grow your business on social media

Posting on social media consistently… but not seeing growth?

Wondering if the algorithm is hiding your posts?

Tried Reels, carousels, hooks, trending audio… and still feel like you’re guessing?

Mmmm hmm. This one’s for you.

In this episode, I’m breaking down what it actually takes to grow your business on social media and it’s not about blaming the algorithm, chasing trends, or convincing yourself you’ve been shadow banned.

I'm talking about:
What “user behaviour” really means (and why no one talks about it)

How analytics give you the answers you’re looking for

Why trends work… until they don’t

Other episodes mentioned in this episode:
The Social Media Algorithm Explained

60 minute content planning method

Free resources - Instagram audit, Planner download

• Social Media Strategy and Support: Join Get Seen Get Sales and get the tools, support, strategies & accountability you need to grow your small business (product or service) on social media with confidence Learn more
• Connect with Amanda on Instagram: @amandahughes.uk
• Growth Addicts Show Notes: Read the blog + grab freebies + guest links
• Free Small Business Downloads: Access all of Amanda’s freebies in one place → Get them here
• Exclusive Discounts: Exclusive discounts on Amanda’s favourite small business tools & services → See discounts

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of Small Business Pro Fatics. Thank you so much for joining me today. Today I'm talking about a problem that I really love helping small business owners with when it comes to social media. And that is all about understanding how social media actually works. It is so much more than just an algorithm for a start. There's multiple algorithms, but it's so much more than algorithms full stop, but it's what I see getting blamed so often. Like every single day, without fail, I will open up one of the social media platforms that I use, whether it's Threads or Instagram or whatever, any of them, all of them. And some small business owner somewhere will be saying, guaranteed, that the algorithm hates them. The algorithm is hiding their posts or that they're shadow banned. Let me tell you that the algorithm doesn't hate you. The algorithm is not hiding your posts. And it's highly unlikely that you're shadow banned unless you've been actually notified by the platform that you've preached community guidelines and that you have had a ban. And it should also tell you when that ban will be lifted. So if you've not had that, then it's really, really unlikely that you're shadow banned. It's probably this that's happening. And this is what I want you to get obsessed with. Okay. This is your new obsession. Leave Big Al alone, as we call him in my social media mentorship, get seen, get sales. We call the algorithms for all the various platforms. We call them Big Al. We have an avatar that one of our members made. He's kind of our mascot, brings in cakes on a Friday for our virtual office party. It's a whole thing. Okay. So we talk about what would Big Al do. Big Al to us is just a guy trying to do his job, and his job is to match make your content with your ideal client. But as all computer systems are, they're only as good as the information that you give them. So that's the algorithm in a nutshell. I actually do have another episode all about the algorithms, so I will link to that if you want to get a bit more detail on algorithms and how they work and how we break it down into the big Al scenario. But your new obsession, I want you to put the algorithm to the side and I want you to get obsessed with user behaviour. No one talks about user behaviour, and I don't know why, because it's really what is the driver behind whether your content is doing well or not. Now, I'd say when we talk about user behaviour, what it is first off, is exactly what it sounds. It's the behaviour of the users of the social media platforms that you're using. It's our behaviour, you know, think of your own behaviour. There's probably content that you've seen recently that you really like, but now you're seeing lots of it and you're fed up looking at it. You're looking for something fresh. That's user behaviour. And your ideal clients will have their own user behaviour patterns too. Now I would say there's two things that come into play when it comes to monitoring and understanding and using user behaviour as a tool for growth and part of your strategy on social media for your business. Analytics. Now, we are so fortunate with these social media platforms that we use that there is a whole host of data available with them for us for free. Like, I mean, honestly, at times as business owners in 2026, we don't know we're born to have access to these platforms. I know they're not perfect and I know they're frustrating, but think about it. They are free platforms that let you connect with your ideal client with thousands, millions, billions of them worldwide, whatever it is you're looking for, or just the ones in your local community, if the information we're putting in there helps them match make it with who we're looking for. What also comes with these platforms is analytics, you'll see called professional dashboard, insights, that kind of thing on the various platforms, but they're all very similar. I'm not going to go into the details of analytics, but I've done that before and it dates very quickly. I can tell you about reaching views and whatnot just now, and then tomorrow they're named something different. But even when they get named different things that all sort of generally stay the same, you know, it's how many people are seeing your posts, how many people are interacting with them, how many people followed along or visited your profile or clicked on your website, you know, it's all that kind of thing. There is an abundance of data available to us, and we have to be using it. I promote weekly planning, an hour, taking an hour every week to plan your social media content with purpose, and part of that planning is to look back at your analytics for the previous week. Now, again, I also have a separate episode all about planning. I'll link to the planning episode as well, which talks you through my 60-minute planning process, tried, tested, works. My members use it, I've used it for a long, long time. I turned it into an actual physical planner that was an Amazon number one bestseller. So it really works. You don't need the physical planner, by the way, to do this. I talk you through an episode that I'm linking to in the show notes today. But yes, it works. And as part of this planning process, we look back at analytics. And one of the huge reasons we do that is to check out user behavior. For example, recently, you know, a month or so ago, reels with a sort of list style text on them were doing really well. So you might say, my five top tips as a web designer, or my five must-haves for your website as a small business owner, you know, and then it would be one, two, three, four, five listed in text on the video. So they had a moment a couple of months ago that were doing really well. And I certainly shared that within my mentorship group as well. These are doing great. So a list on the screen and a list in the caption, great for SEO as well, because you're getting lots of information in there. That's search engine optimization. So lots of keywords and key phrases can be included when we were doing lists. Now, take this as an example. So someone tells you that list wheels are doing well, and you trust that information, you run with it, you're creating list reels, they are doing well. Your ideal clients are enjoying them, you're getting follows, engagement, etc. etc. So you just keep going with that, keep going. And it's like two months later, and you think, my reels are not being seen by anyone anymore, they're not enjoying them anymore, the algorithm's hiding them, etc. etc. What's probably happened is your ideal clients are just fed up with seeing them. It's trends, you know, and when we talk about trending rules, we tend to talk about things that are like trending at the minute, an audio that's trending, or a particular style of real that's trending, and it's a short burst. Trending rules generally only tend to peak over 24, 48 hours, which is why you'll not see me doing them very often unless it's something really fun that I want to try. But we can talk about trends and patterns as in data analytics. If we've noticed that these list rules are doing well, people are spreading the word, people are seeing that, they're trying them for self, users just get fed up seeing them. It's as simple as that. So then they start to scroll past, they're looking for something fresher, something newer, something more exciting to capture their eyes. And the only way we would know that is by checking out our analytics. So if you're doing this weekly and looking back every week, you can think, okay, that sort of style of reel is still doing really well. I'll do another one of them this week. Or I've noticed over the past two weeks now that particular type of carousel hasn't had much engagement. Maybe I need to change up like call to action, comment one word below, comment book below, and I'll send you the link was working really well as well. It's kind of slowing down a bit now. People are not wanting many chat in their DMs to say, click here, click here, give me your email address, etc., etc. They're wanting to speak to real humans, they're wanting to be trusted more to head to the link in bio, you know, so that's working again. So maybe your carousels are not doing great because you need to change up the call to action. There's all various things, but the only way you'll know this is by looking at your analytics and making a note of that weekly and really staying on top of it. And the more you do this, the quicker it gets, by the way. It's not something that has to take a long time. Now I said there's two things that really come into play when it comes to user behaviour. And I'd say the other one is having guidance. Now, this changes so often, you know, user behaviour on social media platforms changes day to day. And as a small business owner, wearing all the hats, just like I am as well, you know, you're trying to do your marketing, your account, you're this, you're that, the next thing. And of course, the actual job that you want to do as well, that you set up your business to do what you're great at is very hard to keep in top with social media without any guidance at all. So please don't beat yourself up if you're trying to do this alone and it's not working and you're getting overwhelmed with it and it's becoming too much and it's making you feel like you're just not good at it. That's not the case at all. You're just probably not informed because there's a lot of information to know. Now, I know that when it comes to social media marketing, the main barrier for small business owners outsourcing their social media is cost. I speak to small business owners, multiple small business owners, every single day. I work with them every single day and have done for years now. And I know that a lot of you would just, if budget was no option, you would outsource your social media completely. I also know that a lot of you wouldn't ever want to outsource, regardless of budget, because you want it to be personal, you want it to be your voice. But what you would like is help with the stuff that I'm talking about today, like subusive behavior, what's working right now, what isn't working right now, what's in, what's out, what sort of trends and patterns you've seen. And that's where I come in as a social media mentor. I literally study this stuff, like it's my job because it is. I'm on social media platforms every day. I'm in Intel, I'm in data, I'm in analytics, I'm in groups, I'm in all the back office stuff that you do not have time or probably inclination or interest to do. And I am studying this for you. And then I've got my online group membership. It's a mentorship group for social media at its core, but what it's turned into is so much more than that. It's just this whole amazing community of small business owners worldwide, just supporting each other for the wins, the wobbles, everything in between, sharing good practice, sharing what didn't work well, asking questions. Oh, just all of it, honestly, all of it. But what I also do in there is every Thursday morning, 9 a.m. on the dot, a content pack drops. Now, this isn't your usual 30 days of hooks and prompts. It's not just where you're getting a spreadsheet or a line of hooks for the month that's saying, I'm a web designer. Here are my five top tips for a small business website. It's a pack for a start. At the start of the pack, it's got my notes for the week. Now, these alone I could probably package and sell my notes for the week as a guide, no problem. Just this one A4 sheet. It's all online. You just click the link and it appears on your phone, appears on your desktop. And in my notes, this is my sort of thoughts of the week. I make notes every day, make them in my phone, and then put these into the content pack where I'm saying, I'm seeing this working, I'm not seeing this working, this was working last month, this seems to have dropped off a bit. Try this. You know, for example, this week, I'm saying, let's put some more why into our hooks and our captions. So if your ideal client is a mums over 40 who are tired, we want to say why they're tired. It's down to that emotional selling, which is actually a workshop we have in the group. This is part of our library. So if you join, it's there to hit play. But emotional selling, a lot of that is about knowing what your ideal client wants and then knowing why they really want that. So maybe they want to lose weight, but they really want to lose weight because they've got their daughter's wedding this summer and they want to feel their best. You know, it's the why and then the really why. So that was one of my notes this week, for example, that really that emotional selling is so important on social media, just how users want to feel seen and heard, they want to feel like your posts are speaking directly to them. And to do that, we need to bring emotion into it. So if you're calling all tired mums over 40, let's reframe that and add in why they're tired. Calling all mums of two-year-olds who were woken up at least three times last night as a mum of a two-year-old. I have been previously, they're five now, my twins. But I would open that and think that post had been all written for me, and I definitely want to read more about what this person has got to say because they get me. I feel seen, I feel heard. In the content pack, we've got notes, then we've got examples of hooks, we've got a reminder of the get seen, get sales method, which is what our strategy is built on. And then we go into the actual pack. And now we're talking a page per hook here, and it's got the total total detail, it's got what the hook is, it's got why the hook works, it's got examples for a service-based business and a product-based business. And I always pull examples of actual service and product-based businesses that we have in the group at the minute. And then we've got a caption starter to get your tongue rolling with your caption and a call to action idea. Then we've got how you can use it on various platforms and how you can repurpose it. We're all about repurposing content. So if I'm suggesting a reel to you, for example, I'll suggest that you cross-post that to Facebook. If you use Facebook, you can cross-post that to TikTok. You can reinvent it as a quick talk to camera video for LinkedIn or do it as a text-based post for LinkedIn and threads. There's a whole section in there as well for that. And then there's also a live example of this type of hook being used for inspiration, not for copying, but for context, which is really important when it comes to hooks to see these things in action. I know cost is a huge barrier, and that is why my membership is only£40 per month. Okay, it's less than£10 per week. I don't even know if you can get a takeaway for£40 these days. I know every time we phone a takeaway now, it is quite expensive here in Scotland. So it's affordable, is what I'm trying to say. And there's a whole reason for that. It's because I know my ideal client, I know that this is a huge barrier, and that's why you get so much in Gets and Get Sales for just£40 per month. But if that is even out of your budget just out, that's okay. I totally understand. Maybe this podcast is your resource. And if that's the case, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome. Please listen to what I'm saying. Go and check out the other episodes that I'm linking to today. Jump into the show notes. I've got freebies on my website as well for like to audit your Instagram and a free download of my best-selling partner that I spoke about as well. You can get a free download of it. Like, honestly, I'm here to help. I want to help. I'm here to help. So whatever your resource is that you're finding decide to help you with social media, please lock into it. Do it, action it. You're not rubbish at social media. The algorithm is not hiding your posts, it doesn't hate you. It's very unlikely that we've been shadow banned unless you've been told it's just that it's hard. And when I was told is there was a new mum, it's hard because it's hard, not because you crap at it. Okay, it's hard because it's hard. We're out here, social media mentors, social media managers are out here doing this as full-time, legit careers, but small business owners, we're trying to add that on to what we'd all need to do. And I get it. Like, I mean, I do my own bookkeeping, for example. I actually quite enjoy it, but some weeks I find it hard to fit it in. Would it be nice to outsource that? Yes, but you know, it's a budget constraint. So listen, I totally, totally understand. So what I'm saying is, I have a resource there that is affordable if you can afford it. If you've got the budget for that, please hop in. The link is always in the show notes. We are saving you a seat. We would love to have you. And we will, I, we, the community, we will help you grow consistently on social media. Like I can say that straight face looking you at and in the eye, not a problem. When you get in there, I'm not upselling you like a five grand course or anything. There is nothing else. There's nothing else to sell you. So when you get in, you've got full access. If that's out the budget just now, use a podcast, use a free resources on my website, just find something, lock in and use it. Okay, I think I'm repeating myself now. Sorry, I just get really passionate about that because there is help out there and it's not all about cost and a fortune. It's not all about 20-page PDFs, it's not all about courses that are thousands of pounds. You know, there's affordable and there's actually free options out there. Get the help and boost your confidence, and boost your knowledge about how social media works, and then you'll see the growth. And then that in turn just increases your confidence and increases your momentum. Okay, I'm going to leave it there. I'll speak to you soon. Come and find me on Instagram, amandahuse.uk. I'd love to say hi to podcast business over there. If you enjoyed this episode, and you have a small business on a friend who's also struggling to get seen on social media this time, then follow this over. I'll speak to you soon.