“Share more of the person and team behind the business” I am often heard preaching to clients!
But why? They often say, swiftly followed by “I don’t know what you mean by this or how to share it, and why would people even be interested?”
The thing is, people really ARE interested. We are inherently nosy by human nature, and by giving our audience insights and snippets of what it’s like to work with us and what’s happening within our business, it brings them so much closer to working with us.
Why is this?
Because what happens behind the scenes is totally unique to us. You are your USP so to speak as a small business owner. It’s the process not the product that really engages people into working with us.
Why Does Behind The Scenes Content Really Matter?
It helps the people we want to work with understand our values, why we do what we do, why we enjoy it, and more importantly HOW we work with our clients.
Have you ever watched a movie where they share the behind the scenes and uncut footage at the end? It’s usually a brilliant watch isn’t it? And highly engaging!
If you think about it, behind the scenes content is a completely transparent way for people to view your personality, brand and offering, and to build that important trust factor. You’ve heard the saying people buy from people, but more importantly they buy from people they really trust to deliver on what they need.
Even if you have the most amazing product or service, people still need to know more.
Being visible as the face of that service or product is incredibly important as a small business owner. Don’t hide behind the logo or brand of your business, it’s not self promotional and it’s definitely not bragging either, which is a common reason for people not to share this type of content.
The Advantages of Sharing Behind The Scenes Content
What are the advantages of sharing behind the scenes content?
One of the greatest advantages is that it doesn’t have to be picture perfect! Video snippets work brilliantly in Instagram stories, and good quality selfie (yes really!) images can also work extremely well on Linkedin.
By default it can also mean this type of content can be quite quick and easy to create (which is a win-win for social media content creation for any busy small business owner).
Whilst images should always be crystal clear and sized correctly, using good quality ones straight from your camera roll can be a time saving win here.
Does Behind The Scenes Content Mean I Need To Share Everything?
Another reason business owners often don’t share this type of content is because they are afraid of “oversharing”. We all cringe at people posting constant updates about their day or brag posts about their business wins, but this isn’t what YOU have to share.
Your content strategy is your choice. It’s absolutely not necessary to share everything that’s happening in your business.
It’s more about thinking strategically. What do you want your audience to know about you? For example, sharing that you’ve missed business deadlines because you are too busy wouldn’t be ideal, but sharing that you’ve just taken on another project and looking to expand your workforce would be really positive to share!
Behind the scenes content that shows you working on a new product or service feature is absolutely ideal.
And don’t forget, behind the scenes content should be just as professional as all your other content. Always stay on brand and most importantly, be authentic.
Your Behind The Scenes Content Should Have An Objective..
If you’re stuck wondering what you could share, consider this. What do you want to bring people closer to understanding about working with you? Is it your best selling service? Is it that you have a really talented team of people working with you?
Is it that you have specific expertise in an area of business no one knows about? Is your way of working with people quite unique?
Or do you have a specific product or service coming to market that you want to take people on a journey with?
Establish the goal of the behind the scenes content and this will make it much easier to plan and create.
Small Business Behind The Scenes Content Ideas For You To Action Today…
If you’re keen to get going with this type of content for your small business, here’s a useful set of ideas and prompts you can start with today..
- Sharing your values and what makes you enjoy your work
- Sharing any daily habits you have – maybe it’s your morning coffee, walk to work, or a form of exercise you build into your day
- Sharing your team if you have one, who they are, what they do and why you recruited them, and interesting facts about their personalities.
- Share your day to day – meeting locations and the people you meet. Social media loves images of faces, so snap away at networking or business meetings, even new prospect meeting locations can be shared with no other information given away!
- Your interests outside of work can be shared, which gives people a unique insight into you and your USP.
- The process behind the development of a service or product that you are working on, meaning you can engage your audience in the process and even ask them for feedback on it.
- Sharing your learnings – whether this be specific to a project or piece of work, or in business in general.
- Sharing what you’re inspired by
- Something you’re preparing for – a trade show, a speaking gig or a podcast appearance for example
There are so many engaging ways you can share this content too, so get creative and brainstorm some ideas.
Of course you definitely wouldn’t want to share this type of content all the time. Behind the scenes style content should be shared as part of an overall balanced content strategy that works for you and your business. My strategy training sessions could help you with this and you can find out more about those here, or just drop me a DM on Linkedin and we can have a no obligation chat.
I hope you found this blog helpful!
Beth
