Why Your Social Media Should Feel Like a Pub Conversation
Most small business social media reads like a corporate press release when it should sound like the bloke at the pub who casually convinces you to trust him. Here's why conversational beats formal, and a simple test to stop you sounding like a prat.
Dave Smith
# Why Your Social Media Should Feel Like a Pub Conversation
Picture a Tuesday evening at a quiet pub. You've wandered in after work, nursing a pint at the bar. Someone you vaguely know — the bloke who runs the hardware shop two doors down from your office — strikes up a conversation.
He doesn't open with "At [Business Name], we are committed to providing exceptional customer solutions." He doesn't hand you a mission statement. He mentions the weather, makes a dry joke about the Arsenal result, then somehow ends up telling you how he's been sourcing a specific type of brass hinge from a bloke in Birmingham for thirty years, and how the Chinese imports are a false economy, and how he once sold twenty feet of copper pipe to a bishop.
You walk away twenty minutes later having learned three things about his business, trusting him implicitly, and vaguely planning to pop in when your kitchen tap starts dripping.
That's the conversation. That's what you're aiming for on social media.
The Mistake Most Businesses Make
Open Facebook or Instagram right now and scroll through small business pages. You'll see a pattern. The tone shifts the moment the camera turns on or the caption box opens. Real people — people who are perfectly normal in WhatsApp groups, at school pickup, down the pub — suddenly start writing like they're issuing a statement to shareholders.
"We are delighted to announce our latest offering."
"Our dedicated team is passionate about delivering value."
"Don't miss out on this exclusive opportunity!"
Nobody talks like this. Not your best customer. Not your mum. Certainly not the bloke at the pub who somehow convinced you to trust him with a £400 plumbing job.
The instinct is understandable. Social media feels public, and public feels formal, and formal feels safe. But safe is invisible. Nobody stops scrolling for safe.
What the Pub Conversation Actually Is
A pub conversation has structure, even if it doesn't feel like it. There's an easy way in — a comment on something shared, a bit of weather, an observation. There's personality — opinions, digressions, a willingness to say "honestly, I think that's rubbish" without hedging it to death. There's specificity — not "we work with many clients" but "I once installed a boiler in a flat above a betting shop where the owner was convinced the Queen was coming for tea." There's pacing — pauses, gaps where the other person can jump in.
And crucially, there's no sales pitch. Or rather, there is, but it's buried so deep in the story that you don't notice it happening.
Apply that to your social media and things shift. A post about a job you did last week becomes a story with a frustrating twist and a satisfying resolution. A reminder about your opening hours over Easter becomes a one-liner about how you'll be "closed Friday, because eggs." A review you received becomes a genuine moment of "this one meant a lot, here's why."
The "Would I Actually Say This?" Test
Before you post anything, read it out loud. Not in your head. Out loud, in your normal speaking voice, as if the person across the table from you is genuinely listening.
If you can get through it without wincing, you're probably fine.
If you hear yourself saying "we are delighted to announce" and immediately feel like a prat, scrap it. Rewrite it the way you'd say it to a customer who walked in and asked what's new. That's the voice. That's the one that works.
The test isn't perfect, but it catches most of the corporate drift. It also forces you to slow down long enough to notice when you've slipped into press-release mode.
Why This Is Harder Than It Sounds
Being conversational takes more work than being formal, which is counter-intuitive. Formal is a template. You can fill in the blanks without thinking. Conversational requires you to actually have something to say, and to say it in a way that sounds like you.
For a small business owner juggling quotes, invoices, the school run, and the slow panic of a mid-afternoon phone call from your accountant, that's a lot to ask. Which is why most people default to the template. The template is fast. The template is safe. The template is why half of UK small business social media reads like a LinkedIn post that got lost on its way home.
This is where the right tools matter. Aunty Social works partly because it learns how your business actually sounds, not how businesses "should" sound. Scraped from your website, built from a conversation about your tone, it drafts the post the way you'd write it at the end of a quick chat. You edit it. You post it. It feels like you because, underneath, it was built from you.
But even if you never use a tool, the principle stands: write like you're in the pub. Read it out loud. If it doesn't sound like something you'd say between sips, rewrite it.
That's the whole game. Everything else is just polish.