How to use social media for business

To use social media for business, go where your customers already spend their time. Decide what you want from it and choose the platforms your customers use. Then post regularly and send people on to your website, where they can book, buy or get in touch.

Your customers are very likely there already. In October 2025 there were 55.5 million social media user identities in the UK, equal to 79.7% of the population. The figure may count accounts rather than unique people, but it shows the scale.

Why social media is worth it for a small business

The benefits of social media for business are real, but each one asks something of you in return:

• Use a profile to show your business to new people while they scroll. Make sure the profile looks active by posting and replying regularly.
• You can talk with customers directly. That takes time each week to answer questions, thank people for their feedback and share what customers post about you.
• Getting started costs nothing, because you can open an account and post without paying anything up front. Ads are the part you pay for.
• Posts can bring visitors to your website. Give people a reason to click, such as the full details of an offer or an event.

Start with a goal and your customers

Decide what social media should do for your business before you open any accounts. Write the goal down in a few words, such as “more people through the door at weekends” or “new enquiries from local firms”. Let it decide what you post and what you measure later.

Next, think about who your customers are and where they spend time online. A platform they hardly use isn't worth your effort. If you already have customer profiles, use them to choose platforms and plan content. If you have none yet, start by identifying your target audience: who buys from you, what they need and where they look for it.

Be honest about the time you have, too, and answer these questions before you start:

• What do I want from each platform, and how will I know it's working?
• How often can I realistically post and reply, week after week?
• How can I show my products or services in a way that's interesting and builds trust?

A quick competitor analysis helps as well. Look at what similar businesses post, what gets a response and what nobody is doing yet. Then do it your own way.

Choosing social media platforms for your business

Choose the platforms your customers already use, even if another platform has more users.

The user figures in the table come from each platform's own advertising tools, as DataReportal reports them. Like the UK total above, they may count accounts rather than people. The UK total may also be based on the biggest platform alone, so YouTube's figure can be the same as the total for all social media. LinkedIn counts registered members and TikTok only adults, so read the figures as a sense of scale rather than an exact ranking.

The main social media platforms in the UK

Our advice: start with one or two platforms where your customers spend the most time and where your kind of content fits. Add another only once posting there has become a habit.

Setting up your business profiles

Whichever platforms you choose, the same basics make a profile look trustworthy:

• Give the business its own account or page, separate from your personal profile and your holiday photos. On TikTok you switch to a business account, and on Instagram to a professional account, which also shows how your posts perform.
• Add your logo and a short description. Say in one sentence what you do and who it's for, so visitors see straight away whether you're for them.
• Fill in contact details that let customers reach you outside the platform: a phone number, a professional email address on your own domain and, if people visit you, your opening hours.
• Put your website address in your profile, so interested visitors have somewhere to go next.

Free posts or paid ads?

You can promote your business on social media for free, and add paid ads when you want to reach more people. Organic social media is the content you post without paying to promote it. It's how you build followers who know and trust you. Expect it to take time, though, because organic growth depends on posting regularly and builds gradually.

Paid social media is content you pay to promote, so it can reach people who don't follow you yet. You set up paid marketing campaigns for the people you want to reach. The ads send them to your profile, your website or a landing page made for the campaign. Each platform has its own tools for this, such as LinkedIn Ads for LinkedIn and TikTok Ads Manager for TikTok. For a small business, advertising on social media works best once your posts have shown what your customers respond to, or when you're promoting something with a deadline, like a launch or a sale. It also helps to know exactly what you're promoting and to whom.

Combine both. Keep the profile alive with regular posts, and give an offer, an event or a launch an extra push with a small ad budget. Decide how much you're happy to spend on one campaign, and check what it brought in before you spend more. Our guide to social media marketing goes further into both.

What to post

Each post should give people something useful, something interesting or a look at how you work. These ideas are a good start:

• Show people who you are and how you work. Film your team, your workshop or how a product is made.
• Show your work in use, such as a finished haircut, a dish leaving the kitchen or a garden you've just worked on. Post a photo of the result.
• Share tips from your trade, such as how to care for a product or what to check before booking.
• Repost customers' photos and reviews, after asking their permission. Real customers show that people use and like what you do.
• Post news and offers, such as new stock or an event, but don't let offers take over your profile.

Choose a style and a tone of voice, and keep them the same everywhere, from your posts to your website. That way people recognise you. Within that style, try different formats and see which gets more attention. One post could be a staged photo of party shoes in a festive setting, the next a quick photo of new stock.

How often to post and how to keep it manageable

Post as often as you can keep up, rather than aiming for a number you'll soon drop. A few posts a week on one or two platforms is a realistic start, and you can post more once it feels routine. Quality matters more than volume. Research by the social media software company Sprout Social found that before people follow a brand, they care more about original content and how you interact with them than about how often you post.

Set aside a fixed time each week to prepare several posts in one sitting, and keep a content calendar of what goes out when. A scheduling tool saves more time. With the SocialPilot social media tool, you plan your posts in one calendar and publish them to several social media accounts in one go. SocialPilot is included in every Aida AI Website Builder plan.

Leave time to reply as well, and answer comments and messages quickly. When someone complains in public, thank them for the feedback and offer to sort it out by private message or phone. Never ignore genuine negative feedback. Answering it in public shows other customers that you care about putting things right.

Check what works

Look regularly at which posts did best and why. You'll find most of these numbers in each platform's own analytics:

• Reach. Check how many people your posts were shown to, and whether you're getting in front of new people.
• Engagement. Count the likes, comments, shares and saves, which show what your audience actually cares about.
• Clicks to your website. See how many people followed a link from your profile or a post. This is where interest turns into enquiries.
• Enquiries and sales. Ask new customers how they found you, or check where your website visitors come from. This tells you whether social media pays off.

Do more of what works, drop what doesn't, and give each change time before you judge it.

Send people on to your website

Your social media profiles live on someone else's platform, but your website is yours. It's where people read the details, book or buy, so it's the place to send them. Link a post that needs more than a caption to the page with the details. That could be a product in your online shop, a service page or a longer article.

Adding social media buttons to your website helps too, for visitors who want to follow you on the platforms they use.

Once your profiles and your website point to each other, the rest is keeping up the posts. Build your site with our Aida AI Website Builder and plan and schedule your posts with SocialPilot in the same place, so a busy week doesn't leave your profiles quiet.