At some point every small business owner gets the advice that they should be posting on all of them. It is bad advice, and it is bad in a specific way that costs more than doing nothing.
Why being everywhere is worse than being somewhere
An account that has not posted since 2023 is not neutral. Somebody who finds it reads it as a business that has either lost interest or gone under. A dead profile is a worse signal than no profile, and most businesses that "get on everything" end up with four dead ones and one alive.
There is also a straightforward capacity problem. Each platform wants a different format, a different length, and a different tone. Posting the same thing everywhere reads as automated on all of them, which is its own signal.
Pick by where your customers already are
Not by where the audience is biggest. By where the specific people who buy from you already spend time.
Trades and home services. Facebook, and it is not close. Local buy-sell groups, town groups, and recommendation threads are where a plumber gets found in Metro Detroit, and they are conversations rather than broadcasts.
Anything visual. Salons, restaurants, landscapers, photographers, anyone whose finished work looks like something. Instagram, because the work is the post.
Business to business, professional services. LinkedIn, and mostly as a place to be found and to be credible rather than a place to broadcast.
Anything where somebody watches you work. Detailing, restoration, repair, anything satisfying. Short video, and it is the one channel where a small business can genuinely out-perform a big one.
Pick one. Maybe two if they are genuinely different audiences. Not five.
What to do with the rest
Claim the name and leave it. Register the handle so nobody else takes it and so your business name is consistent everywhere. Fill in the profile, the address, the link, and then stop. A complete profile that never posts reads very differently from an abandoned one that used to.
Or delete it properly. If there is a half-dead account with three posts from two years ago, closing it is a legitimate option and it is better than leaving it up.
The one that is not optional
None of the above is your Google Business Profile. That is not social media, it is your listing, and it is the single highest-value free thing a local business has. Categories, hours, photos, and replying to reviews.
A business that does nothing on social media and keeps that profile current will out-perform one doing the reverse, for the kind of customer who searches for what you sell rather than scrolling past it.
The honest version of the effort question
One platform, posted to consistently, with real photographs of real work, beats five posted to occasionally. Consistently means something you can keep up in your actual week, in January, when you are busy. For most small businesses that is once a week, not once a day, and once a week for a year is a genuinely strong position.
Pick the number you will still be doing in six months and then pick the platform, in that order.
If you want a read on which one fits your business, ask. It is a five-minute answer and we do not sell social media management, so there is nothing in it for us either way.