Talk to Your Customers, Not At Them
Most small business posts are news about the business — your sale, your delivery, your hard-working team. Here's how to say the same thing in terms of what the reader actually gets.
Most small business posts are the business talking about itself.
“We’re having a sale this Friday.” “We’ve just taken delivery of our new season range.” “We’re excited to announce our extended trading hours.” “Our team works hard to ensure a quick turnaround for all our customers.”
Every one of those is true, clear, and took a minute to write. And every one of them is news about you — your sale, your delivery, your announcement, your team. The reader is handed your diary and left to work out what any of it means for them.
Most of the time they don’t bother, because that’s work and they were only scrolling.
Say what they get
The fix isn’t a friendlier tone. It’s changing what the sentence is about.
Take those same four posts and lead with the thing the reader would actually want:
- We’re having a sale this Friday → 50% off everything, Friday only
- We’ve just taken delivery of our new season range → The new range is in, from $40
- We’re excited to announce our extended trading hours → Open until 7 on Thursdays now
- Our team works hard to ensure a quick turnaround → Order before 2pm and it goes out the same day
Same information in every pair. Nothing has been added and nothing dressed up — the subject of the sentence has just moved from you to them.
Notice the rewrite is shorter every time. That’s not a coincidence, and it’s the most useful thing in this article: the padding is the narration. “We’re excited to announce” is four words of you before the reader gets anything at all. If your rewrite isn’t shorter than what you started with, you haven’t finished it.
Finding the benefit
Sometimes it’s obvious. A discount is a discount. When it isn’t, three questions get you there:
- Why would someone want this? Not why it matters to you — what it does for them.
- What would they have typed to find it? People look for the thing, the size, the price, the day. Nobody searches for your announcement.
- What question does this answer? If a customer asked you about it across the counter, your reply is the post. You’d never open that reply with “we’re excited to announce.”
If you can’t answer any of the three, the post may not have a reason to exist yet. Better to find that out before you write it than after.
Try this on your last five posts
- Read each one and ask what the reader gets out of it. If the answer is “they find out what we’ve been doing,” mark it.
- Rewrite the worst one, leading with the benefit or the action.
- Check the new version is shorter. If it isn’t, some narration survived.
- Read it aloud. Cut anything you would never say to a person standing in front of you.
Fifteen minutes, and you’ll have one better post — plus a question you can put to every post from now on. What does the reader get?
Promo can help you brainstorm when you’re stuck for something to say — but this needs nothing except your last five posts and fifteen minutes, and it’ll do more for the next one than any tool will.
