For the last few weeks I’ve been going through the local business groups around Hart and Franklin County. Hartwell, Royston, Lavonia, Elberton, Toccoa. Not skimming them. Actually reading. Dozens of businesses, hundreds of posts.
I wasn’t hunting for customers. I wanted to understand how businesses around here actually show up online, because it works differently than the marketing internet assumes.
Here’s what I keep running into. Almost all of these are people doing excellent work, so read this as four cheap fixes rather than a scolding.
1. Your comments are turned off
This stopped me twice in one month. Two real businesses, both busy, both posting good work, both openly looking for customers, had comments disabled.
I get why people do it. You got tired of somebody starting an argument under a photo of a job you were proud of. But think about what it costs. Somebody who wants to hire you now has no way to ask the one question standing between them and picking up the phone. They will not go hunting for your inbox. They will scroll.
If you shut comments off after one bad experience, that experience is still charging you rent.
2. Your phone number lives in a post, not on your page
I found a lot of phone numbers this month. Almost every one of them was typed into the body of a post. One post, from three weeks ago, now buried under forty newer ones.
A post is temporary. Your page is permanent. If the number only exists in the post, then reaching you requires a stranger to scroll until they happen to find the right one. Put it in your About section, in the page’s contact field, and in the first line of your page description. Four minutes, start to finish.
3. I can see your work. I can’t tell what town you’re in.
This is the most common one by a wide margin. Beautiful before and afters. Real craftsmanship. Genuinely impressive stuff. And nowhere, not in the post, not on the page, not in the bio, does it say where you actually go.
Around here that matters more than it would in a city. Somebody in Elberton has no idea whether you’ll drive to them. Somebody in Lavonia can’t tell if you’re Hartwell only. When people have to guess, they guess no.
Name the towns. Literally list them out.
4. Posting more is not the same as posting something
I saw two patterns. Some businesses post constantly, the same three lines and the same graphic, twice a week, for months. Others post every couple of weeks, but when they do it’s a real detail. What the job was. What went sideways. How they got around it.
The second group gets the comments. Every single time.
Nobody follows a local business for content. They follow to figure out whether you know what you’re doing. One post explaining why you ran the wiring before the drywall went up will do more for you than twenty posts saying call us today for a free quote.
None of this costs money
That’s the part worth sitting with. Every one of these is a fifteen minute fix, and not one of them requires hiring anybody. Including me.
The bar around here is low. Most of your local competition hasn’t touched any of this in years, which means simply being current puts you in front of most of the people you’re up against.
So go look at your own page with fresh eyes. Can a stranger tell what you do, where you do it, and how to reach you, inside about ten seconds? If not, you just found your whole to-do list.