Content Marketing: How to Get People To Talk About Your Small Business

Sue Skavlem

6 days ago3 min read

By Sue Skavlem

MARCH 2025

What do people talk about when they tell their friends about your business?

They talk about how you met their need with what you offer
How accessible you are with your location & hours
How your products/services match up to your pricing,
How welcome, seen or understood you made them feel
They may even show photos/videos of your products as they talk about you

Who Do You Want Talking About You?

Before you start posting every 5 minutes, on every platform ever - let's take a step back so we can find a path through the forest.

Who do you want to know about you? Who do you want talking about you? Who do you want remembering you?

In order to write the right content for the right people, you need to ask 3 things:

WHO is my customer?
WHAT questions are they asking?
WHERE can you share the answers?

Good Content answers the questions your customers are asking - in a place they can easily find it.

Let's Give Them Something To Talk About

Content is anything you share with your customers for them to be excited about, celebrate, wish for, relate to, create a need for action, or be in-the-know.

Think of content as anything customer-facing:

Brochures
Advertisements
Emails
Testimonials
Videos
Maps
Blogs
Photos/Graphics

What Makes Good Content Better?

Boring Content gets ignored, muted, scrolled past, or not remembered.

Spammy Content means showing up uninvited, too pushy, too sketchy, or unasked for, and gives you a bad reputation.

Good Content answers questions, it addresses needs, it educates, it informs, and sometimes it entertains.

Better Content is human. It's just a bit weird or wild - without crossing the line into WTF. It's stories that make you feel. It's how your product helps people without the marketing fluff. It's how you fit into your community and make a difference. It's behind the scenes. Work + Play.

It's the kind of content that people share with at least one person, until everyone knows about it.

How to Start

Start by identifying your customer. (Use Age, Interest, Location, Hobby, etc)
Find out what they ask about what you offer.
Identify the 1 social media platform that the majority of your customers use.
Post answers to questions on that one platform.
Try out many different types of content (video, audio, photos/text)
See what kind of content gets you the most engagement (comments and shares) over a 3-month period. (yes, really that long)
Adjust your content plan to what people are engaging with every 3 months.
Keep posting consistently for 1 year.
Create a feedback survey to see if any social media posts. led to new or returning customers. Do more of that.
Add in 1 more social media platform (the next highest one your customers use) Repeat.

Awareness, Familiarity, Likeability

People want to do business with brands they are aware of, familiar with, and like! That KPI (measurement) has a lot more to do with the customer than you.

So when you put your real self out there—into your brand, into your webpage, into your content—you are growing your audience's awareness of you. When you consistently show up in their feed, in their inbox, and in their day-to-day experience, you're growing your brand's familiarity. When you create content that resonates with your customer, solves a need, or provides a user-friendly tip, you're building trust and likeability.

Your content introduces you to your customers and says "Hey, Neighbor" as you go about your business.

They're probably talking about it right now.

About the Author

Sue from Skavlem Designs

When I make a design, I think – What can this do?

These designs don’t just exist. These designs DO. They work hard alongside you and your business. These designs are levers. They are sales. They are engaged customers. They are brand recognition that gets you that meeting.

Top 3 things I love to do: Read. Paint. Snowboard.

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