Mind the Gap

Think about the last time you went out for dinner with friends. Did you look at the menu ahead of time?

Be honest. We all do it. You want to know what you’re getting yourself into.

Is it nice? Is it casual? Are the portions tiny? What’s the vibe?

And, subconsciously, but perhaps most importantly: is this place for me?

We do this all the time now.

You hear about a new hairdresser from a friend and before you book, you have a little look around online. You’re considering hiring a photographer and suddenly you’ve scrolled 2 years deep investigating their Instagram. You hear about a nonprofit doing work you care about and, before you decide whether to follow them, donate, volunteer, attend the event or simply learn more, you have a look at what they’re putting out into the world.

We want a little preview.

Not necessarily of the product, either. Of the experience.

What will it be like to work with you? What do you care about? How do you approach the work? Do I understand how you think? Will I feel comfortable here? What will it feel like to hand this person my problem/time/money/attention?

And this is where I think social media gets really interesting.

Because we talk about it like it’s a marketing channel, which it is. We talk about it like it’s a place to sell things, which it can be. We talk about algorithms and reach and engagement and content pillars and Reels and whether or not we’re supposed to be posting three times a week.

But before any of that, social media is often doing something much simpler. It’s shaping the story people start to tell themselves about us. Where they place us. What they assume. And we don’t get to control that story simply because we know the full version. People are piecing it together from whatever we choose to put online, often without much context at all.

That wasn’t really a problem when social media was just… social.

Let’s take Instagram for example. I remember posting the most random images that enjoyed about 0.00008 seconds of consideration before I hit post. It was designed to keep up with people you already knew. The less context in your posts the better. You weren’t operating within a marketing funnel. Your blurry photo of a half-consumed Starbucks Vanilla Frappuccino didn’t need a trendy audio or an ideal posting window. It simply wasn’t designed for strangers.

It was designed for your friends.

And then we figured out that the internet was a pretty excellent place to take up space. A small business could suddenly reach people beyond the few blocks around it. A nonprofit could find the people who cared about its issue, an ocean away, and better, yet get them to donate. A service provider could explain what they do to someone who had spent the last six months asking everyone they knew if they knew anyone who could help.

So now we’re posting into a room full of people who might have absolutely no context for who we are. They might have found you through a search. Someone might have sent them your profile. They might have seen one post, clicked through, and started scrolling backwards to figure you out.

And in those few minutes, they’re doing a lot of very quick, very human calculations. Enter: the SOCIAL MEDIA TRANSLATION GAP, or, Socials Gap.

There’s a business owner who is absolutely fantastic at what they do. They’ve been building a reputation for years, almost entirely through word of mouth. They know their stuff backwards. They have a particular way of working that people really value.

Their Instagram? It has a few photos. There’s a post about the holiday hours. A graphic about a new service. A great testimonial from 2023. Someone suggested they should probably post a Reel, so there’s a Reel. They’ve been meaning to update the bio for six months.

Nothing is technically wrong with it. It’s authentic. And yet, if I came to their Instagram having just heard their name from someone I trust, I might not understand what all those people are so excited about.

That’s what I think of as the social media translation gap.

The gap between what it actually feels like to experience your business or organization and what someone can understand about that experience from the outside. And I don't think the answer is to make your Instagram more impressive. I’m not talking flashy Quentin Tarintino style video edits.

I think it’s to make it more accurate. To tell a true story, better. In my experience, most businesses and organizations already have all the material they need to bridge the gap.

You just might not think it’s content. At the same time, you can’t even open Instagram to think about posting without being bombarded with content about “10 things every business owner MUST do to succeed on social media”. A new trend. A new Reel. A new hook. A new content pillar.

And if you don't have anything new to say? Eeek, better start Googling “social media content ideas for small businesses.”

But your audience doesn't necessarily need something new. And half of them won’t even see that “trending viral post” before there’s a new “trending viral post”.

They need something that helps them understand you. The bits that make them think, Oh. This sounds like exactly what I’ve been looking for.

And I think that’s particularly important when your business is built around trust.

A service provider. A local business. A movement studio. A nonprofit. Anyone asking someone to hand over their money, their time, their problem, their body, their story, their attention.

You’re asking for a little bit of trust before they’ve actually experienced you. It can show them the people behind the work. It can let them hear your voice, your sense of humour, your “why”. It can give some context to what you offer instead of simply announcing that you offer it. It can let your existing clients tell the story for you.

It can make the recommendation they got from a friend make sense.

It’s why I’m much less interested in whether your Instagram looks perfectly curated than whether it tells a clear, compelling story.

To hear a team member explain why they care about what they do than watch another beautifully edited video that tells me absolutely nothing but pushes a certain aesthetic.

And this doesn’t mean social media should become a stream of behind-the-scenes footage and personal anecdotes. You still need to explain what you do. You still need to promote things. You still need to be relevant and ‘cool’. You still need to tell people when registration opens and when the new service launches and when the fundraiser ends.

The point isn’t to stop marketing. It’s to make the marketing feel like it belongs to the thing you’re actually marketing.

Because when someone lands on your social media, they’re looking for a perfectly polished representation of your business. They’re looking for reassurance to take action. A reason to believe that the experience they’ve been promised is actually the experience they’re going to get.

That’s the job of your socials.

Not to make you look bigger. Not to make you look trendier. Not to make you look like you have a social media manager who wakes up every morning thinking about hooks. (even if you do)

The internet has changed the way people find us. It hasn’t changed the fact that we make sense of the world through stories.

So, when someone finds you online, are they getting the story you meant to tell?