Summary
- As a small business owner in 2025, managing multiple social media platforms can feel overwhelming, like juggling too many remote controls. You should focus on selecting the most effective platform for your business.
- Organic reach on social media has dropped to 0.05% to 3%, meaning if you have 1,000 followers, only five might see your post. Prioritize quality over quantity in choosing platforms.
- Instagram is now more about entertainment, with reels achieving four times the reach of static posts. For visually-oriented services, Instagram can connect you with potential clients through DMs and local targeting.
- Facebook's organic reach is lowest at 0.05%. Prioritize groups for community engagement and use video content to enhance reach. Reserve some budget for ad spending to contact followers effectively.
- TikTok has evolved into a search engine with significant organic reach, but it's difficult to target locally. Use creative and authentic content to capitalize on viral possibilities.
- X (Twitter) enables you to showcase expertise through engaging in public conversations. It's ideal for thought leadership, although it requires frequent posting and isn't visually focused.
- LinkedIn has low competition for attention in B2B services. Focus on text posts with strong openings and insider knowledge. It's great for professional audiences looking for content.
- YouTube is the most effective platform for building trust through long-form videos. It helps convert viewers to clients by providing educational content. Consistency is key, making videos weekly to maintain momentum.
- YouTube stands out for converting cold viewers into pre-sold clients with long-form content that works as both marketing and sales tools. It offers the greatest benefit for service businesses in 2025.
- You don't need to go viral on YouTube for success; focus on creating content that solves specific problems for your ideal clients with clear calls to action in descriptions.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest starting by choosing one social media platform that aligns with your business goals rather than trying to master all of them. If you’re a small business, YouTube could be the most beneficial. It lets you create long-form content that builds trust and converts viewers into clients. Focus on making videos that solve problems for your clients, and be consistent with weekly uploads. You don't need to go viral—just aim to provide real value.
On Instagram, focus 80% of your energy on reels and 20% on stories to maximize reach, especially if your business is visually oriented. Think of Instagram as your portfolio, where potential clients can see and save your best work.
If you’re considering Facebook, concentrate on joining or creating community groups where meaningful interactions happen. Budget for some ad spend to boost reach, and remember to focus on video content.
On TikTok, aim for creating short, authentic videos that showcase quick tips or hacks related to your service. Use trending sounds to increase visibility and capitalize on the potential of high organic reach, albeit with the challenge of maintaining consistency.
Lastly, if LinkedIn is your choice, share insightful text posts and actively engage with industry leaders. Showcase your expertise with strong opening lines and position yourself as an educator.
Remember, the key to managing your social media presence is consistency and quality. Tailor your content to fit the platform and your audience's needs, and don’t spread yourself too thin trying to be active everywhere.
Quotes by Author
"Instagram is more of an entertainment platform that really heavily favors reals"
"Facebook has basically become the digital equivalent of a retirement home"
"Tik Tok has evolved from its early days as a dance app into a bonafide search engine"
"X is great for establishing thought leadership in your industry"
"YouTube continues to dominate long-form video while adding short form options"
Full Transcript
Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, YouTube X. As a small business owner in 2025, you're being pulled in six different directions at once. Yet, none of them seem to be working quite like they used to. The organic reach across all these platforms has dropped to between 0.05 and 3%. So, that means if you have a,000 followers, only five people might actually see your posts. And with your limited time and resources, you can't afford to be everywhere, especially when the platforms themselves are making it harder than ever to get noticed. So, which one actually deserves your attention right now? After analyzing hundreds of service businesses and their social media results, I have found a clear winner, and it's probably not what you think. In this video, I'll show you how each major social media platform has changed in 2025, and which ones are becoming deadends for service businesses, the exact pros and cons of each platform, so you can decide what's going to be the best use of your time for your specific business, and the one platform that consistently outperforms all the others for building trust and generating qualified leads without needing you to be everywhere at once. So, imagine you're sitting down to watch TV, but instead of one remote control, you have a pile of them scattered across your coffee table. One for the TV, one for the audio, one for your DVD player, another for your streaming box. It's a mess. That's exactly what social media marketing can feel like for most service business owners today. Juggling multiple platforms, each with different algorithms and quirks and best practices. It's overwhelming and honestly inefficient to master all of them. But what if I told you that for most service businesses, you really only need one remote? The only question is which one? Let's start with Instagram. It's completely transformed from what it used to be, right? It's no longer all about photo albums and pretty pictures. Right now, it's more of an entertainment platform that really heavily favors reals, which get about four times the reach of static posts. And even with that, only about 3% of your followers will ever actually see what you post organically. And when I say organically, I mean without paying for reach with an ad. And for service businesses, Instagram does have some pros. It's excellent if your service is visually oriented. You know, think design work, home improvement, or photography. And the DM feature lets you make a more personal connection with potential clients. Plus, you can target locally through location tags and local hashtags. Take Dr. Dr. Munib Shaw. He's a dermatologist who grew 6 million followers in just a year by consistently posting educational skincare content. His success came from building trust. People need to feel like they know and trust you as a service provider. But here's the question. Is the effort worth the result for your specific business? Because there are some big downsides, too. You need to constantly be creating visual content, which can take a lot of time. You don't have many options for links. So getting that traffic back to your website can be a challenge and possibly worst of all. Your content ends up being pretty disposable. It's going to show up for a day or two tops. Then it's right back to the hamster wheel. But if you do decide to focus on Instagram, here's what you want to do. So put about 80% of your energy into reals and 20% into stories. Static posts just don't get seen that much anymore. So try to create content that people will want to save like tip lists to boost your visibility in the algorithm and think of Instagram really as more of a portfolio rather than a lead generation tool. All right, sticking with meta, Facebook has basically become the digital equivalent of a retirement home. Organic reach has dropped to about 0.05%, the lowest of any platform we're going to talk about. Their algorithm prioritizes content from friends and family over businesses. and they're putting all their energy into groups rather than business pages. So for service businesses targeting people over 45, Facebook still has some advantages. You know, groups provide targeted access to local communities where people will often ask for service recommendations and their ad targeting capabilities are still pretty powerful. You can target by location, interests, and behaviors. And their review system helps build some social proof. Miles Laughlin, known as the pool guy, managed to crack the Facebook code by focusing on groups rather than just on his business page. He uses Facebook groups to target local homeowners looking for pool services. And what's interesting is that even though Facebook's organic reach is pretty terrible, Miles says that most of his new business comes from social media referrals and found that groups are where the real conversations happen. There are some drawbacks, though. basically have to pay for advertising to reach even your own followers. Very few young people use it these days and most content doesn't spread much beyond your own friends list. If you choose to focus on Facebook, I would lean heavily into groups instead of your page content. Either create your own or better yet just join local service groups. You'll want to budget for at least some ad spend to be able to reach your existing audience. and you'd still want to focus on video content here, which gets about three times the reach of normal text posts. Okay, moving on to Tik Tok. So, in 2025, Tik Tok has evolved from its early days as a dance app into a bonafide search engine. You know, about 40% of Gen Z now uses Tik Tok for search instead of Google. The algorithm focuses on showing you stuff that you're interested in rather than just who you're following. And while Tik Toks can now be up to 10 minutes, shorter content still performs the best. The biggest pro for service businesses is that Tik Tok still has the highest organic reach of any platform at about 3% and sometimes a little higher, which is it's still small, but it's better than the others. There is potential for pretty explosive viral growth even with a small following. The platform rewards authenticity over production quality, and it's great for demonstrating quick processes, tips, and advice. Remember Miles Laughlin, the pool cleaning guy? He went viral on Tik Tok with one of his cleaning videos getting 170 million views. He built 14 million followers just by showing these satisfying pool cleaning transformations with no fancy editing or effects. And that just proves an important point. Even the most boring services can find creative ways to engage an audience. Miles just happened to find an interesting angle. You know, those satisfying transformation videos for a traditional service that people wouldn't normally think is exciting. But there are definitely some challenges here, too. So, the algorithm is unpredictable, making it really hard to get consistent results. It's also not easy to target locally. So, your viral plumbing tip might reach people a thousand miles away, right? Where they can't really work with you. You need to constantly stay aware of trends and adapt to them. And the short video format makes it really hard to build real trust. And let's never forget Tik Tok was shut down for a full 12 hours before finally being bailed out. So, just goes to show you how volatile this one can be. If you go all in on Tik Tok, you really want to focus on quick tips and hacks related to your service. You want to do everything you can to hook viewers in in the first 3 seconds. And you probably want to use those trending sounds to boost your visibility. Okay, so now let's talk about possibly the most controversial on the list, X, formerly known as Twitter. So, in 2025, X has expanded with features like longer posts for subscribers, dual feeds, which is basically a for you feed and a following feed. And it has a much stronger focus on public conversation rather than traditional media sharing for good or for bad. And for service businesses, X is great for establishing thought leadership in your industry. So the conversationbased format does allow you to show off your expertise and you can directly answer potential clients asking questions and your content can spread quickly through retweets or I guess those are reposts. Now it's confusing but what's surprising here is that 69% of ex users have bought something from a small business because of something they saw on the platform. Consultants like David Prell and Justin Welsh were able to grow their business by sharing free daily insights. you know, they consistently shared knowledge and took part in conversations that were happening in their industry. This led to newsletter subscribers and then paying clients, which just goes to show that being generous with your expertise can attract the clients you're looking for. So, the downsides are that X is another fastmoving platform where your content just disappears really fast. It's also difficult to showcase any kind of visual work effectively. There are very limited local targeting capabilities and let's face it, it can be a really harsh place for discussions. You know, think Thanksgiving dinner with your really, really political uncle. If you do use X, you need to post consistently about three to five times a day just to maintain your visibility. So, use threads to share deeper insights that won't fit into one post and search for industry questions that you can jump in with a helpful answer. Now for LinkedIn. So LinkedIn's definitely grown from a simple resume site to a fullblown content platform. Their algorithm rewards dwell time, which is just how long people spend reading your content. There's more emphasis on individual thought leadership versus company pages. And there's a new focus on industry expertise over connections. For service businesses, especially B2B ones, LinkedIn has some pretty unique advantages. You've got a professional audience actively looking for business content. They've got some of the highest conversion rates for B2B services. And there's less competition for attention than on other platforms right now. And your content has a longer shelf life with posts sometimes continuing to perform for weeks at a time. Roger Wakefield, a plumber from Texas, became known as the expert plumber on LinkedIn by sharing expert plumbing tips and career advice for trades people. His consistent posting and engagement built a really big following, which led directly to bigger contracts and consulting opportunities, too. Roger's success shows that even hands-on services can benefit from positioning yourself as an educator rather than just as a service provider. The cons are that LinkedIn has pretty limited usefulness for, you know, BTOC services. People check LinkedIn less than other platforms. There are also connection limits that really restrict network building and the need for a professional tone can limit your personality. Though I have definitely noticed even LinkedIn's gotten a bit more, let's say, business casual than it used to be. If you choose LinkedIn though, focus on textbased posts with really strong opening lines. Share insider knowledge and industry perspectives and you want to have meaningful conversations on others posts before publishing your own. But what about YouTube? You know, YouTube continues to dominate long- form video while adding short form options to the platform, too. And their algorithm rewards watch time over views or subscribers. It's also still the second largest search engine after Google, and there's a built-in mechanism based on people's watch history. They might recommend your video to those people even when they're not searching for it. And for service businesses, YouTube has some pretty powerful advantages, right? It builds deeper trust than any other platform because people can see and hear you explain things. Your videos work for years through search unlike posts that just quickly disappear on all the other platforms. It's perfect for educational marketing and demonstrating expertise. And it's by far the strongest platform for converting viewers into paying clients. Roger Wakefield, the same plumber who found success on LinkedIn, built an even bigger audience on YouTube. He became the most watched plumber with over a 100 million views. And what's interesting about his case is how the platform transformed his business model. Potential clients would watch his tutorials and immediately trust his expertise. So, by the time they called his company, they already felt like they knew him. So that shortened his sales cycle dramatically and got his name out way better than he could have with traditional marketing. And the best part is his videos keep working for him 24/7, bringing in new leads all day, every day. The challenges are that YouTube does require more production effort for filming and editing. So there is a longer timeline to build momentum. I usually say it's between 3 to 6 months minimum. You need at least some basic video skills and equipment. And to make it work, you really do need to be consistent with weekly videos. If you want success on YouTube, you want to focus on solving specific problems your ideal clients face. You want to make videos around searchable titles using keywords that they will actually type in and design thumbnails that people actually want to click. Showing transformations or results tends to work best. And you want to include clear calls to action that direct viewers back to your business in your video descriptions. So, what's the clear winner for service businesses in 2025? Well, based on all the data and the case studies, it's got to be YouTube because it's the only social platform that builds actual trust through long- form videos. And the most unique benefit here is that it's the only marketing channel that works as both a marketing and a sales tool. And because it's search-based, you're matching intent. You know, people are actively looking for what you offer. And the biggest advantage of YouTube is just turning cold viewers into pre-sold clients. And you're doing it completely on automation. By the time they contact you, they already feel like they know you and they trust your expertise. That means shorter sales cycles and higher conversion rates. It's like having your best sales presentation running 24/7. And I should know, I've been doing YouTube since 2016. And if you want to learn my exact YouTube system for attracting high-quality clients and growing your business, click right here and I'm going to show you how I did it and how you can do it, too. The best part is you never even have to go viral for this strategy to work. So, click right here and I'll see you
