Announcing a Change: When One Post Isn't Enough

# Announcing a Change: When One Post Isn't Enough

You've changed something. New opening hours, a different phone number, a move down the road, a booking system that replaces the old "just ring us" arrangement. You wrote a post about it. A good one, actually — clear, friendly, all the details in the right order.

Three weeks later, someone turns up at the old address.

This is one of the most common and most avoidable frustrations in small business social media, and it isn't a writing problem. The post was fine. The problem is that you treated an announcement like a piece of news, when it's actually a piece of infrastructure.

The maths nobody explains

News gets published once because everyone hears about it at once. Social media doesn't work like that.

Organic reach for a small business page is typically somewhere in the region of a twentieth to a tenth of your followers on any given post. Some do better, plenty do worse. So if you've got 800 followers and you post your new opening hours once, you might reach 60 people. Of those 60, some are scrolling past without reading, some are other local businesses, and some already knew.

Now think about who actually needs that information. It isn't your most engaged followers — they're the ones seeing everything anyway. It's the customer who uses you twice a year. The one who books a service every autumn. The one who'll need you in February and hasn't thought about you since. They are, almost by definition, the people least likely to be in that 60.

One post reaches the people who don't need it and misses the people who do. That's the whole problem in one sentence.

Repeat it far more than feels comfortable

Here's the bit that goes against every instinct you have: you should be posting about an operational change four or five times over several weeks, not once.

It will feel like nagging. It won't be. Because reach is a rolling sample of your audience rather than a broadcast, each repeat lands in front of a substantially different set of people. You're not saying it again to the same crowd. You're saying it once to five different crowds.

The trick is to change the angle each time so it doesn't read as a copy-paste:

• The announcement. The plain facts, dated, no cleverness.
• The reason. Why you've done it. "We've moved because we outgrew the old unit" is more interesting than the address alone, and interesting posts travel further.
• The reminder in passing. A normal post about normal work, with the change mentioned at the end. "Finished this one yesterday — and a reminder we're now closed Mondays."
• The countdown. "Last week at the old number."
• The correction. After it's happened. "Couple of people have turned up at the old place this week, so: we're at 14 Mill Street now."

That last one is the most valuable and the one people are most embarrassed to post. Don't be. It's genuinely useful, and it signals you're paying attention.

The feed is the least reliable place to put it

Posts sink. Within days, your announcement is buried under everything you've published since, and nobody scrolls back through a business page looking for logistics.

Anything a customer needs to act on should also live somewhere permanent:

Your bio. One line, updated the day the change happens. It's the first thing anyone checking you out will read.

A pinned post. The one piece of content that stays at the top regardless of what else you publish. If you've changed something significant, that's what belongs there for a month.

Your Google Business Profile. More people will look up your hours there than on Facebook, and it's the one most often left stale. If your hours are wrong on Google, no amount of social posting fixes it.

Automatic replies. Facebook and Instagram both let you set an instant reply to new messages. Two lines about the change means every enquiry gets told, including from people who never see a post.

The obvious physical places. A sign on the old door. A note by the till. An email footer. Social media is one channel among several, and treating it as the whole announcement is how people end up at the wrong address.

Say it plainly, then say it again

The writing itself is the easy part, and mostly it means resisting the urge to make it a moment. "As part of our continued commitment to serving you better, we're excited to share some news about our operating hours" is thirty words that haven't told anyone anything.

Lead with the change. Date it. Say what it means for them. Leave the sentiment for the end if you want it at all.

"From Monday 15th we're closed on Mondays. Tuesday to Saturday, 9 to 5, same as always. If Mondays were your day, drop us a message and we'll sort something out."

Then diarise the repeats. Not because the first post failed, but because it was only ever going to reach a slice of the people who need it. Two more over the following fortnight, plus the bio and the pinned post, and you've covered nearly everyone.

Consistency across the whole thing is what makes it stick, which is also the hardest part to keep up when you're busy running the business that changed in the first place. That's a large part of why we built Aunty Social — keeping a steady rhythm of posts going shouldn't depend on remembering.

Say it more times than feels polite. Nobody has ever complained that a business told them the new opening hours twice.