Most small businesses in Saltaire and Shipley quit Instagram by month three. Not because it doesn't work — because posting three times a week while running a café or a salon is impossible on top of everything else.
The fix isn't “try harder”. The fix is a monthly content pack: captions, photos, and carousels written for your business specifically, delivered to you once a month, ready to post. You copy, paste, done.
A small local business in BD17 or BD18 that posts consistently twice a week will typically pass 500 followers within six months and see measurable footfall lift from tagged stories and geo-tagged posts. The ones that stop at month two see none of that.
What's actually in a content pack
Every month, for one business, we produce:
- 8 to 12 posts. Mix of single images, carousels, and short reels. Each one with a caption written for your voice, not a template.
- A posting calendar. What to post when. Day, time, platform. You don't have to think about it.
- Story templates. Quick-fire stuff for the in-between days — behind the scenes, off-the-cuff, today's special.
- Hooks and angles. Why this post will land with your audience. So if you want to write your own, you have a framework.
- Hashtags and geotags. Local ones that actually get found, not the generic national ones that do nothing.
What it's not
A few things we do differently from the usual social media “managers”:
- We don't post for you. You keep the logins. You post when you're ready. If we posted for you, we'd have to charge twice as much and you'd lose control of your own account.
- We don't use AI slop. The captions are written by a human for your specific business. If we wouldn't be proud to have our name on it, we don't send it.
- We don't recycle templates. Every pack is written from scratch around what's happening at your business that month — seasonal, local, relevant.
- No fake engagement. No follow-for-follow, no bot comments, no growth hacks. We optimise for real customers walking through your door.
What actually works for a Saltaire or Shipley business
- Face of the business. You, in the post. People follow local businesses because they like the person behind them. Hide and you lose.
- Behind the scenes. The bits customers don't see — prep, cleaning, setup, the morning delivery. Weirdly this is what people engage with most.
- Before and after. For anything visual — hair, trades, cleaning, gardening, interiors. Carousel format, clear comparison, no cropping.
- Local tags and landmarks. Tag @saltaire, tag @saltaireguide.uk, tag Roberts Park, tag Salts Mill. Local discovery beats national reach every time.
- Reviews as posts. Take a five-star Google review, put it on a branded background, post it. Customers believe other customers more than they believe you.
What it costs
Content packs start at £150 a month for a small pack (8 posts, one platform) and run up to £400 a month for a full pack across Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, with custom photography every other month built in.
We'd rather you start small. Half our clients begin on the cheapest tier and never upgrade — and their follower count still doubles inside six months because the posting is finally consistent. That's the whole trick.
How it fits with the rest
Social content pairs best with a proper photography shoot (so you have real images to work with) and a Google Business Profile that's actually complete. On its own, it still works. Alongside the rest, it compounds.
For the wider picture of what a small local business actually needs to have working online, see everything a local business needs online.