Most business posts are about the business: our news, our anniversary, our new range, our year. The posts that actually land do the opposite. They make the customer the hero of the story and cast your shop as the helper who gets them there.
The writer Donald Miller built a whole method on this one idea: in any story people care about, the customer is the hero and your business is only the guide (Donald Miller, Building a StoryBrand). People do not tune in to hear about your journey. They tune in for their own. So talk about their life, their problem, their win, and show how you help.
New Year’s Eve shows the flip clearly. Every business wants to post about its own year, what it achieved, what it plans. The post worth reading says thank you and makes the year ahead about the customer, not the shop. You can see this on the New Year’s Eve run-up: become the shop that helps them get where they are going, rather than the one talking about itself.
Here is what the flip looks like in practice. Instead of “we have been trading for ten years”, try “ten years of you lot keeping us going, thank you, here is to your year next”. Instead of “introducing our new winter menu”, try “cold, dark and can’t face cooking? we have got your Tuesday sorted”. Same facts. But now the customer is the one the post is about, and you are the useful friend in it.
This changes the small words too. Count how often a draft says “we”, “our” and “us” versus “you” and “your”. If it is mostly about you, rewrite it until it is mostly about them. A quick test: read the post and ask, “what is in this for the person reading it?” If the honest answer is “they get to hear about my shop”, it needs turning around.
It also changes what you choose to post at all. A post about your award is about you. A post about the customer who used what you make, with their permission, is about them, and it quietly makes you look good without you claiming a thing. Let your customers be the stars and you get the credit anyway, more believably than if you had claimed it yourself.
A garage does this well when a nervous first-time driver passes their MOT. “We serviced 200 cars this month” is about the garage and nobody cares. “Sarah’s first car sailed through its MOT today, drivers of the county, you have been warned” is about Sarah, it is warm, and it says more about the garage’s care than any list of numbers could. The customer is the hero, and the garage is just the good sort who helped.
A caution. Making the customer the hero does not mean flattery or hollow praise. People can smell that. It means genuinely centring their needs and their wins, not buttering them up. And when you feature a real customer, always ask first, and only say what is true. The point is respect, not soft soap.
The short version: stop starring in your own posts. Cast the customer as the hero and yourself as the helper. Lead with their problem, their life, their win, and show how you fit into it. Swap “look at us” for “here is what is in it for you”, and watch the same news suddenly become worth reading.
Find out who your customers are in Who am I talking to?, then build each post around one of them and the win they are after.