The Reality of Running a Bookish Small Business While Working a 9–5 (and Raising a Family) - (Part 4): Fighting the Algorithm One Post at a Time

Welcome back to Part 4.

I know it has been a while since the last blog, and I was really hoping to make it a weekly thing, but alas, life overtook and it can be really hard to sit down and write a blog when I have a million other things to do.

Last time, I wrote about the financial reality of running a small business and how the money side of things is usually far less glamorous than people imagine. This week, we're moving on to another part of business ownership that looks deceptively simple from the outside but somehow manages to consume an alarming amount of time and energy.

Marketing.

Or more specifically, the endless battle to keep a small business visible online without completely losing your mind in the process. Because, here's the thing. People often see a business Instagram account, Facebook page, blog, or TikTok and assume the content just sort of appears. They see a polished product photo, a reel, a book recommendation, or a new blog post and think, "That's nice."

What they don't see, is everything that happens before that content ever reaches their screen. There's the planning, the writing, the photographing, the editing, the caption drafting, the hashtag research, and of course, the inevitable second-guessing. Then comes rewriting a caption because it suddenly sounds awkward, adjusting things nobody else will ever notice, and finally hitting publish before immediately questioning every decision that led to that moment.

By the time a single post goes live, I've often spent significantly longer creating it than most people will spend looking at it. That's just the reality of running an online business. Running Tales and Trinkets taught me that creating products and creating content are two completely different jobs. One involves making things, the other involves constantly reminding people that those things exist. Somehow, the second job never ends.

The algorithm makes sure of that.

Social media platforms are fascinating places because nobody seems to know exactly how they work, yet everyone has an extremely confident opinion about them. Post more, post less, use trending audio, don't use trending audio, make longer videos, make shorter videos, post at night, post in the morning, post consistently, don't overstep.

Every week there's another expert explaining why your engagement is down and how they've discovered the magic formula that will fix everything. Meanwhile, most small business owners are sitting there wondering how they're supposed to create enough content to satisfy an algorithm while also designing products, packing orders, updating websites, answering emails, writing blog posts, dealing with suppliers, looking after their families, working their regular jobs, and occasionally remembering to feed themselves.

For me, content creation usually happens whenever I can squeeze it into the gaps between everything else. Sometimes inspiration strikes, and ideas come easily. Other times, I'm staring at a blank screen, trying to think of something interesting to say about books for the forty-seventh time that month. As it turns out, "I like reading" isn't the ground-breaking content strategy social media experts would have you believe.

One of the strangest parts of running an online business is how much visibility can affect your confidence. A post performs well, and suddenly you're convinced you're finally figuring things out. A post flops, and you immediately start questioning every life decision that brought you to this point.

It's honestly impressive how quickly a few numbers on a screen can influence your mood. You can spend three hours carefully creating a reel, designing graphics, writing the perfect caption, and making sure everything looks exactly right, only for it to disappear into the void with barely any engagement. Then you'll throw together a quick post in ten minutes, and somehow it performs better than anything else you've published all month.

Social media has a remarkable ability to keep you humble.

The reality is that most of the work never gets seen. People see the finished post but not the twenty photos that didn't make the cut. They don't see the drafts that never get published, the content ideas scribbled into notebooks, or the half-finished projects waiting for enough spare time to exist. They also don't see the hours spent learning entirely new skills.

Running a small business has a funny way of turning you into a beginner over and over again. One minute you're creating products and the next you're learning photography, graphic design, copywriting, video editing, website management, analytics, advertising, and whatever new feature social media platforms have decided everyone needs to master this week. Some days it feels less like running a business and more like collecting additional professions.

Yet despite all of that, there are moments when the effort pays off. A post reaches someone new, a reader discovers an indie author because of something I've shared, a customer finds the store for the first time and decides to stick around, someone takes the time to comment on a post, share a recommendation, or send a message saying they enjoyed something I've written. Those moments are easy to overlook because they're small and they don't come with fireworks, dramatic music, or a viral success story, but they matter. Because visibility isn't really about chasing numbers. Not for me, anyway.

It's about building a community one person at a time. It's about connecting with fellow book lovers, supporting indie authors, sharing stories, and creating a space where reading and creativity can thrive. The algorithm may not always cooperate, but those connections make the effort worthwhile.

Even when it feels like I'm posting into the abyss. The truth is that most small businesses are doing far more work than anyone realises, just to stay visible online. Every photo, every reel, every blog post, every product launch represents hours of effort happening quietly behind the scenes. But maybe that's okay.

Because businesses aren't built from viral moments alone. They're built from consistency, from showing up when engagement is low, from trying again when something doesn't work, from learning, adjusting, experimenting, and continuing anyway.

Because behind every visible small business is a person quietly doing a mountain of invisible work and hoping that today's effort eventually becomes tomorrow's opportunity. And if nothing else, I've learned that persistence is apparently my strongest marketing strategy.

We'll see if that theory continues to hold up in Part 5.

Because next time, I want to talk about the emotional side of running a small business: the self-doubt, imposter syndrome, comparison traps, and the strange experience of putting your creativity out into the world and hoping people like it.

Spoiler alert: it's about as terrifying as it sounds.

Until then,

Kristie