Social media will continue to be an important growth channel for small businesses (SMBs) in 2025, but the landscape is ever-changing. With more competition, a heavy push for paid media, and changing platform features, social media is more complex than ever.

Although rising challenges such as shifting algorithms, content fatigue, and limited resources persist, new opportunities like AI capabilities, evolving customer expectations, and community building create a space where creativity and innovation are rewarded, even for SMBs.

Any brand can find those key challenges difficult to keep up with, but it just means leaning into what you're learning from your customers and what they engage with and understanding how to make these social platforms work best for you and your marketing goals.

Instead of looking at vanity metrics such as likes and comments, algorithms prioritize significant, valuable, engaging content. They look at watch time (how long are viewers watching your Reels?) and shares (are they sending your content to others?). In addition, there are so many new platforms to keep up with and build audiences on: TikTok to Threads, Bluesky… Who knows what's next? With each platform, adjusting your content to fit the format is a necessity.

Social media STILL matters. Over 50% of consumers discover new brands on social media channels, so having and building a strong presence is in your best interest. However, don't let these significant challenges scare you; opportunity awaits you with open arms.

Key Challenges Facing SMBs

Limited Time and Resources

As a small team at IronGlove Studio®, we understand entirely having limited time and resources in your day. Small social teams at SMBs can struggle to maintain a consistent, high-quality presence, and there are only so many hours in a day to fit all of your marketing efforts in.

To combat this, we recommend batch social content drafting and scheduling. We've implemented this for our clients and ourselves. Every 2-3 weeks, we'll draft social content across our key channels, ensuring we highlight various content types, from case studies to blog posts, client testimonials, and more. We'll then schedule and stagger that over multiple weeks.

This helps block time in your schedule to dedicate creative time to social content development and ensures a consistent posting schedule. We don't recommend going dark on social media after you've started building a presence; keep focusing on building your audience, and even if you're only putting out 2-3 posts per week, consistency is paramount.

Algorithm Uncertainty

Organic social media content reach may decline, but that doesn't mean it's not essential or achievable. Our Advantages of Organic Social Media blog highlights how there's still an incredible amount of value in building brand loyalty and long-term awareness, strengthening partnerships, and increasing visibility beyond sales by storytelling and showcasing brand values with organic social media.

Use it thoughtfully to get creative, share your brand story and the behind-the-scenes of your SMB, and focus on relationship building. Building authentic communities and relationships with your customers can be completely doable through organic social media, and it may have some fantastic, long-term results.

Content Fatigue

There's a lot of pressure these days to churn out new content 24/7, try new things daily across channels, and always think outside the box. Generating new ideas and standing out in the crowd (and among your competitors) can be difficult. It doesn't always need to be like this, though. We recommend looking deep at your social analytics through Meta Business Suite or any social scheduling tool you use, such as Sprout Social or Later. Truly analyze what your audience is sharing and engaging with.

Sometimes, content doesn't need to be crazy and out of the box; it just needs to make sense for your audience and what they want to see.

For example, we have a client with a really strong audience on Facebook. They consistently engage with short, engagement prompt-type posts. They want to share their feedback, engage, and be part of the conversation. It's a recurring content type that isn't necessarily extremely creative, but it just makes sense; therefore, we get increased engagement repeatedly when we run these posts.

New Opportunities for SMBs in 2025

AI-Powered Tools and Resources

AI isn't just for big brands anymore. SMBs, too, have access to many cost-effective (even free!) tools and resources to help improve processes, content creation, and analytics.

You can use AI tools for tasks such as drafting social post captions and generating new hashtag ideas, scheduling and optimizing the best times to publish your posts, ideating on new content ideas, or personalizing messaging for different audiences across platforms.

AI can help with another key opportunity: testing and optimization. A/B testing is when you test different content against one another to see which performs better. You can test different visual elements (video vs. graphic, for example) or different messaging styles (emotional vs. practical) and even test different times to publish your content and see when your audience is most active and peak engagement times.

Content Repurposing and User-Generated Content (UGC)

There is no need to reinvent the wheel regarding high-performing content! Repurpose long-form blogs into video content and carousel posts, turn client or customer testimonials into graphics or videos, and encourage customers to share their reviews and photos for user-generated content (UGC) that you can publish on your social channels.

UGC is great, too, because it's your actual customer content, not just you promoting yourself. It's a reliable testimonial showing their genuine love for your brand and an excellent way to build more social proof on your channels.

Hyper-Personalized Engagement

Again, you can use AI tools to help streamline your processes and improve your connection with customers and partners. Between social listening tools, where you track and understand opportunities to join in relevant conversations on social media, and delivering tailored responses and building loyalty with your audiences, the possibilities for ways to engage with customers thoughtfully (and creatively) are endless.

Practical Advice to Adapt & Thrive

Our advice? Don't overdo it; set clear, realistic goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) you want to aim for and reach. Define what you want to achieve: website traffic, social followers, content shares, etc. Focus on the platforms that make the most sense for your business. Where are your customers most active, and where are they most likely to engage with you and your content best? Meet them where they already are.

Embrace the opportunities that AI and automation offer, but do so strategically.

Use these tools for heavy lifting, such as a blog post outline or social calendar outline, but make sure you add your personalized, unique human touch and voice to it. Remember to always continue content tests! Run small tests regularly to ensure you're optimizing your content strategies, learning, and gaining insights to help inform your future content ideas.

Engage authentically and consistently with your followers across the platforms you're active on. Ensure you have excellent community management practices by responding promptly and personally to each DM or comment across your posts; this greatly helps with brand trust and relationship building!

Lastly, stay agile. The social landscape is constantly changing, so being able to pivot as needed and monitor trends, algorithm updates, and customer feedback will help you adapt your approach and content.

Although social media can feel difficult these days, it's gratifying when done well and thoughtfully. Focus on adapting smartly and looking at changes as opportunities. Be willing to experiment and think outside the box, and with even the smallest SMB team, you can achieve incredible results.

If you're in the market for a digital marketing or social media partner, don't hesitate to contact our team and see how we can help you reach your online goals.