Social Platform Selection by Business Type

Being everywhere dilutes effort without increasing reach. One platform done consistently outperforms four done sporadically.

• Instagram — visual products, lifestyle brands, behind-the-scenes storytelling
• Pinterest — evergreen discovery, strong for products with a "before/after" or aspirational element (home, craft, style)
• Facebook — local audiences, community groups, older demographics, event promotion
• TikTok — process and personality-led content, fastest follower growth, shortest content lifespan
• LinkedIn — service and consultancy businesses, B2B offerings

Choose based on where your defined audience (from the Foundations section) already spends time, not where growth looks fastest. A large following on the wrong platform doesn't convert.

Content Calendar Principles

A content calendar exists to remove decision fatigue, not to lock you into rigid rules. The goal is consistency of presence, not volume.

• Plan in themes, not individual posts. A weekly rotation — product, process, person, proof — is easier to sustain than inventing a fresh idea daily.
• Batch content creation. One session producing a week or month of content protects against the empty-page problem on a bad day.
• Leave room for real-time posts. A calendar that's 100% pre-planned can't respond to what's actually happening, which is often the highest-engagement content.

Template provided in the Tools & Templates section.

Writing and Sending a Press Release

A press release earns coverage by making a journalist's job easier, not by announcing that you exist. Editors receive dozens daily; most are discarded in seconds.

Structure that works:

• Headline — the news, not the business name. "Local Bakery Launches Allergen-Free Range After Personal Diagnosis" outperforms "XYZ Bakery Announces New Products."
• First paragraph — the who, what, when, where, why, in full, because some outlets will run only this.
• Body — one or two quotes maximum, specific and human rather than corporate ("I built this because I couldn't find it myself" beats "We are thrilled to announce").
• Boilerplate — a short, consistent paragraph about the business, used in every release.
• Contact details — direct, not a general inbox, and answered promptly. Slow replies lose time-sensitive coverage.

Send to a shortlist of relevant journalists and outlets, not a mass list. Relevance beats reach here — a well-targeted release to five outlets outperforms an untargeted one to fifty.

Template provided in the Tools & Templates section.