Social Media Management in Cornwall: Your Business Is More Interesting Than You Think

To the maker, this is just where they work. To me, it’s about three weeks of posts.

I realised something mildly embarrassing this week.

I haven't written a blog for Tide & Ink for nearly a year.

This wouldn't ordinarily be particularly noteworthy, except that I spend a reasonable portion of my working life telling other businesses to keep their websites updated, post regularly and occasionally remind Google that they're still alive.

So that's gone well.

In my defence, I've been busy doing exactly that for everybody else. Websites have been built, social media pages have been fed, reels have been made, Google profiles have been prodded and an alarming amount of my life has been spent wondering whether a photograph of an electrician standing next to a fuse board is interesting.

And actually, quite often, it is.

Which brings me to something I've learned from managing social media for businesses in Cornwall: your business is almost certainly more interesting than you think it is.

The problem is you've seen it all before.

It's just Mike

Running a business does something peculiar to your brain. After a while, even fairly remarkable things become completely ordinary.

That expensive machine you use every morning? Boring. The bloke who's worked there since 1998 and can apparently repair anything with a screwdriver, three cable ties and language normally heard from the away end at Home Park? That's just Mike.

Last week's enormous job, which took four people, two vans and something with a hydraulic arm to complete? Done. Next.

Then somebody like me walks in and starts asking irritating questions.

“What's that?”

“What does it do?”

“Why's that boat out of the water?”

“Do customers know you do this?”

“Who's Mike?”

This can be slightly bewildering for the person running the business because, to them, I'm pointing at completely ordinary things.

But that's precisely the point.

You've seen it 600 times. I haven't.

More importantly, neither have your customers.

This is Mike. Mike has worked here for years and knows absolutely everything. Nobody has ever thought to put him on Facebook.

You probably don't need more content

This is possibly a reckless thing to write on a page about social media management in Cornwall, but most businesses don't need somebody to invent loads of content for them.

They've already got it.

Walk around almost any working Cornish business for half an hour and there's usually enough material for weeks. Jobs being finished, things being repaired, deliveries arriving, products being made, customer questions being answered, staff taking the mickey out of each other and mysterious objects sitting on shelves which apparently perform some vital function but look to the untrained eye like something recovered from the Titanic.

The business owner doesn't photograph any of this because why would they? It's Tuesday.

Their customer, meanwhile, may find it fascinating.

Take a boatyard. There's a boat sitting six feet in the air, half an engine on a bench and a bloke underneath the hull doing something important with a spanner. To the people working there, this is an entirely unremarkable morning.

To a boat owner looking at Facebook, there are questions everywhere. What's wrong with it? What are you repairing? What happens if I ignore that on my boat? How much work goes into fixing it? How do I stop it happening in the first place?

One boring Tuesday has just become half a dozen useful posts.

This is why a big part of social media management isn't creating things at all.

It's noticing them.

Somewhere along the way, social media got a bit silly

There was presumably a meeting at some point where everybody agreed that posting on Facebook needed to become considerably more complicated.

We now have hooks, funnels, content pillars, conversion journeys, engagement strategies and algorithms which must apparently be fed at regular intervals or terrible things will happen.

These things have their place. I use some of them myself.

But if you run a landscaping company in Helston and you've spent nine hours laying a patio, the first thing you need to know is not whether the photograph satisfies the upper reaches of a marketing funnel.

You need to show people the bloody patio.

Good social media marketing for a Cornwall business can be remarkably straightforward. Show people what you do. Show them who's doing it. Answer the questions they ask. Share things you know. Show work in progress as well as the shiny finished result. Let people see a little of the personality behind the logo.

And keep turning up.

You don't need to dance beside a consumer unit.

Your accountant doesn't need to lip-sync.

Mike can remain blissfully unaware of what a content pillar is.

Everybody wins.

What you're really building is familiarity

People often ask what sort of reach a social media post should get. It's a fair question, and obviously more people seeing your business is generally preferable to nobody seeing it except your mum and somebody from Oklahoma who appears to have arrived by mistake.

But reach isn't the whole story, particularly for a local business.

I'd rather the right 500 people regularly saw a Cornish business than 50,000 random people scattered across the planet.

Because something useful happens when people keep seeing you.

At first, you're just another business they've scrolled past. Then they recognise the name. Then they see a job you've completed. A few days later they see somebody behind the scenes. Then a customer leaves a good review. Then Mike appears holding a component and explaining why you really shouldn't let seawater get into it.

By the time that person actually needs what you sell, you're no longer completely unknown.

Oh yeah. I've seen these guys.

That little sentence is worth quite a lot.

This is why I don't think every post should sell something. If every Facebook update screams BUY THIS, following the page starts to feel like being cornered at a wedding by somebody who has recently discovered a business opportunity involving essential oils.

Sometimes the job of a post is simply to make people know you a little better.

Trust takes care of a surprising amount after that.

Cornwall makes this particularly interesting

Marketing a business in Cornwall has its own peculiarities.

We're not a huge place, although the A30 in August occasionally suggests otherwise. Communities overlap. People recommend people. Local Facebook groups remain astonishingly powerful. One customer in Truro will somehow know your cousin in Falmouth, the bloke who fitted your kitchen and somebody you went to school with in 1993.

Then there's tourism. Some businesses need Cornish customers all year. Others need visitors. Plenty need both. A person booking something from Bristol in February may not arrive here until August.

That means social media marketing in Cornwall needs a bit of local understanding.

Cornwall shouldn't simply be the word you put after “social media management” because Google likes geography. It genuinely affects who you're talking to, when they're likely to buy and what they care about.

It also gives Cornish businesses something many companies would kill for: character.

Use it.

Facebook isn't dead, by the way

This comes up surprisingly often.

Someone will announce that Facebook is dead, usually on Facebook, and everybody nods gravely.

For many local businesses I work with, Facebook remains extremely useful. People ask for recommendations there. They follow local businesses. They share things. They look businesses up. Community groups can put a company in front of exactly the people it needs.

Instagram has a different feel. It's more visual, which makes good photographs, short videos, reels and behind-the-scenes content particularly useful.

You don't necessarily need to be everywhere.

In fact, I'd rather see a business doing one or two platforms properly than maintaining six accounts which last received an update during the reign of Liz Truss.

Pick the places where your customers actually are and make them good.

Nearly 30,000 people in one local Facebook group. Facebook is dead, apparently.

So what does a social media manager actually do?

Well, I can't speak for everybody offering social media management in Cornwall, but I can tell you what I do.

I get nosy.

I want to understand how the business works, what customers ask, what people misunderstand, what happens behind the scenes and which bits the owner has completely stopped noticing.

Then I turn those things into content.

That might be a Facebook post, an Instagram reel, a customer question, a finished job, a photograph from the workshop, a story about somebody in the team or something completely ridiculous that happened on a wet Wednesday morning.

The important bit is that it should still sound like the business.

I don't want an electrician, accountant, kennel, landscaper and tackle shop all sounding like Tide & Ink.

That would be weird.

My job is to find their voice, not lend them mine.

Does social media help with Google?

Indirectly, yes, but this is where it's easy to start talking complete marketing bollocks.

Posting on Instagram isn't a magic button that fires your website to number one on Google.

What social media can do is help people discover you, remember you, search for you and visit your website. Someone might see a Facebook post today, Google your business next month, read your reviews, disappear for another fortnight and eventually send an enquiry while sitting on the toilet.

Customer journeys are rarely elegant.

This is also why I work on websites, copy and local SEO alongside social media. They support each other. If somebody discovers you on Facebook and then visits a website which looks like it hasn't been touched since dial-up internet, we've rather wasted the introduction.

Everything should feel like the same business.

Preferably one that's still open.

Do you actually need somebody to manage your social media?

Maybe not.

I realise I'm absolutely smashing this sales pitch.

If you enjoy doing your own social media, have the time and you're consistently getting good stuff out there, keep doing it.

The problem usually comes when the actual business gets busy.

Monday's Facebook post moves to Tuesday. Tuesday becomes Friday. Friday becomes I'll definitely do something next week.

Then somebody looks at the page in October and your most recent post says Happy Easter.

This is normally the point where having somebody else take care of it starts making sense.

You keep repairing boats, cutting hair, fitting kitchens, walking dogs, making signs, doing accounts or whatever pays the bills.

I'll worry about Facebook.

Seems a reasonable division of labour.

Monday became Tuesday. Tuesday became Friday. Facebook will now be dealt with at some unspecified point in the future.

Social media management for Cornwall businesses

Tide & Ink is based here in Cornwall and I work with local businesses on social media, websites, content and getting found online.

I'm particularly interested in the stuff that makes a business different but has become invisible to the people running it.

The workshop.

The characters.

The knowledge.

The little details.

The questions.

The jobs nobody thinks to photograph.

The everyday stuff.

Because that's usually where the good content is hiding.

So if your Facebook page hasn't been touched for months, Instagram has become another job you keep meaning to do, or you simply don't know what the hell to post anymore, give me a shout.

I won't make you dance.

I won't turn Mike into an influencer.

I'll just help people notice what's already good about your business.

After all, you've seen it 600 times.

I haven't.

Justin
Tide & Ink 🌊