Why Do Small Businesses Struggle to Share Their Expertise Online?

By Jason Hoover

We work with small businesses every day, and one thing is always true: they know far more than their websites show. Years of experience, countless client questions, clever fixes to tricky problems — it’s all there in their day-to-day conversations and personal interactions.

And yet, when you pull up their site, they sound identical to everyone else in their industry. None of that golden, hard-won expertise is represented. They just fade into the online wallpaper.

It’s not because they don’t know enough. It’s because getting it out of their head and onto the page is harder than it sounds.

Picture a landscaper wrapping up a job. He could explain, in two minutes flat, why he chose that specific stone or how he handled the drainage so the backyard doesn’t turn into a swamp after the first storm. But at the end of a long day, is he going to sit down and write a blog post? Um, no.

Or think about an attorney. In the middle of a client consultation, she nails a complicated explanation in plain English. The client nods, relieved because finally it makes sense. But later, when she sits down to “put it on the website,” the clarity is gone.

The problem isn’t knowledge. Small businesses are overflowing with it. The problem is time, energy, and the right tools to capture it.

Most expertise doesn’t show up in front of a blank screen. It shows up in conversations, quick decisions, and off-the-cuff explanations. By the time you get around to “creating content,” the spark that made it so clear in the moment has already disappeared.

That’s what I call the translation problem: the gap between what you know and what actually makes it online.

If your expertise stays locked in your head, Google can’t recognize it. Your customers can’t see it either. And that means you’re missing out on trust, visibility, and the kind of authority that only authentic content can build.

Small businesses don’t win online by out-publishing their bigger competitors. They win by getting what they already know into a format that real people (and Google) can find.

This is exactly why we built our process at Trolley Web. We give our clients an app that makes capturing expertise simple.

→ Record a quick voice memo while you’re still on the job.

→ Snap a photo of the work you just finished.

→ Jot a note about the question a customer asked you that morning.

We’ll even give you prompts to spark ideas in the moment. The point isn’t perfection,  it’s capturing the raw insight before it fades.

From there, we take what you’ve captured and turn it into engaging blogs, landing pages, or posts that match your brand’s voice. The final content is consistent, professional, and most importantly authentic. Because it comes straight from your work, not from a copywriter guessing at what you do.

Over time, those small moments add up into a body of content that builds trust with your audience and signals authority to Google. That’s how you close the translation gap.

Small businesses don’t struggle with expertise. They struggle with translating it. And once you crack that code — capturing insights in the moment and turning them into content — everything changes.

Your expertise is your edge. The only challenge is getting it out into the world where it can actually work for you.