Over the last few years, small-business owners have spent a lot of time grappling with day-to-day challenges: finding workers in a tight labor market, maintaining healthy inventory levels and keeping up with inflation.

For some businesses, that list also includes content creation. They’re recording videos for social media, writing newsletters and recording podcasts. Some with big content platforms have been doubling down on those outlets to boost sales and promote their brands.

Worldwide Cyclery, a bicycle retailer that focuses on selling high-end mountain bikes and components, built a podcast and video studio in the middle of its headquarters in Newbury Park, California. 

“We have different lights and everything set up here for different videos,” said Jeff Cayley, Worldwide Cyclery’s owner. “We’ve got a bike stand back there that’s a more aesthetically pleasing bike stand for videos, rather than the more industrial-looking types that you’d see in the back of our shop.”

There’s a green screen for integrating other images into the shot, foam on the walls to dampen sound and plenty of props.

“Some custom-painted shoes with some bike wheels,” Cayley said. “I’m not sure where this rhino came from.”

Cayley’s company has been publishing videos, articles, reviews and other content for about eight years. The idea is to showcase the thousands of products Worldwide Cyclery sells.

Cayley said videos like this fit right into his business. Bike parts are technical, and there’s a lot to explain and compare.

“You look at this and you think, well, is this advertising?” Cayley said. “Or, is this just media generation? And the answer is yes.”

People might want to buy a product they see in a video. But if they enjoy the video, they’ll probably like the company too.

“So for us to do that in a good, useful way that actually educates the customer and hopefully makes them have a laugh or two while doing it, that definitely builds trust with our customer base,” Cayley said.

And that strategy doesn’t always require a fancy studio.

“I started using my iPhone to just record myself,” said Brandelyn Green, who owns VoiceOfHair, a company that makes hair products for women of color.

Green started VoiceOfHair in 2014 on social media to highlight up-and-coming hairstylists. A few years later, she started selling her own hair products and recording videos with her stylists.

“We would set up the camera, record, and talk to the audience and show them the products we were using and how we were styling my hair,” Green said.

Green said she’s spent money on ads, but they didn’t generate much sales revenue. Then, last year, she made a video about scalp treatment on her phone.

When Green posted it, it got more than 37,000 likes on Instagram. Green sold out of her scalp treatment product in two days.

“Because I just showed them how I used it versus something that was really polished,” Green said. “People didn’t care about that. They wanted to see how something worked and what the transformation was going to be.”

In some cases, business owners earn revenue directly from the content they generate.

“Normally for most people, if you have, let’s say, a million combined followers, you should be generating a pretty decent income from your social media,” said James Beck, who owns a hot sauce shop in Houston called iBurn.

Ever since 2020, Beck has been posting videos under the name Hot Sauce Boss. It started as a way to promote the sauces Beck sells, but he soon realized that those videos didn’t always get a lot of views.

“IBurn was launched as a gourmet hot sauce shop, and the majority of the content that really does well are the extreme content posts, where I’m doing the hottest things in the world,” Beck said.

So he focused more on filming himself eating ridiculously spicy sauces and raw peppers. Most of his videos get tens of thousands of views. And every so often, one goes viral and gets millions.

In mid-2021, TikTok started paying him for his videos. Now, Beck said, his content business is more profitable than his store.

Beck said he’s working on creating his own line of hot sauces. He’ll sell his first one directly through TikTok.