Social Media for General Contractors
Every small business should incorporate social media in to their marketing strategy. Social media for general contractors is no exception. Social media shines visibility on your construction business through digital platforms, for little to no cost. There are more than a few social media platforms out there, but we think the three giants below are the best for new or established contracting companies. They’re practical, straight-forward, and offer visual and textual representation of your business.
We’ll go over the basics of how each platform works, and how it can be beneficial to your growth efforts.
First, some terminology:
Engagement describes how your viewer can interact directly with your post or message.
Virality describes how a post can go viral or be shared, boosting visibility at an exponential rate.
Monthly User Base: 2.8 billion users as of the 4th quarter of 2020.
Post Types: Text, photo, video or a combination.
Visibility: In the past few years, small businesses have flocked to Facebook for free (organic) visibility. Because of this saturation, the content Facebook must try to push to its viewers is high. This results in less reliable organic visibility. However, if you’re a growing local company your current clientele, friends, and community can help you secure a good initial following.
Engagement: Users “Like” and react to posts with other emojis and leave comments.
Virality: Users can tag their friends in comments or share a post by re-posting it to their own timeline or sending it directly to a friend in a message.
Advertising: Facebook allows its users to advertise using multiple ad formats in 2021: Photo Ads, Video Ads, Story Ads, Messenger Ads, Carousel Ads, Slideshow Ads, Collection Ads, and Playable Ads.
Potential: Facebook has more active users than any other social media platform, but the stakes are high with many businesses competing for attention. It’s a good platform to host your business on, but don’t expect a ton of growth or engagement without opening your wallet.
What are the types of Facebook ads in 2021?
- Photo Ads
- Video Ads
- Story Ads
- Messenger Ads
- Carousel Ads
- Slideshow Ads
- Collection Ads
- Playable Ads
Monthly User Base: One billion users as of January 2021.
Post Types: Photos and Videos: Either square or a rectangle resized to fit within square frame, with a text caption and optional hashtags.
Stories: Photos or videos that post at the top of the viewer window for just 24 hours before vanishing.
Visibility: Instagram runs on #hashtags. Hashtags can be literally anything. It’s wise to use a healthy mix of tags unique to your business or project descriptions alongside industry-wide tags. Use as many as you’d like, but make sure each is relevant in some way to your actual image.
Engagement: Users double-tap a photo to “Like” it and leave comments as desired.
Virality: Users can easily “share” a picture by tagging their friends in a comment, or sharing the post directly via direct message.
Advertising: Promote a post to get more visibility and brand awareness or create a post with a specific ad in mind.
Potential: The majority of Instagram traffic occurs on mobile devices. It has a predominantly younger audience, so posting material that is fresh, relevant, and useful is important. Visually stunning photos perform better than uninspired shots, so get creative and have some fun! It’s a perfect place to showcase your portfolio of projects.
YouTube
Monthly User Base: 2.3 billion users as of January 2021.
Post Type: Videos of any length and quality, often with a detailed text description of content.
Visibility: YouTube is all about keyword search (it is owned by Google, after all). You’ll want to craft a title so that anyone searching for that material will immediately recognize the relevance in your video. Be clear, descriptive, and avoid words that wouldn’t come naturally to your target audience as they search for your content.
Engagement: Viewers boost video popularity through a thumbs up/thumbs down system and leave comments.
Virality: Viewers can share videos through text message, email, twitter, and more.
Advertising: TrueView ads are a way to promote your videos and pay only when they are viewed. Create a video specifically for an ad or boost one of your popular performers.
Potential: YouTube is a great place to post DIYs, how-to’s, project progression videos, tool demos and reviews, and more. Best of all, you don’t have to be an expert to produce content people will want to watch.
New Social Media for General Contractors
There are so many social media platforms these days it’s hard to keep track of them all. Some of the popular newer social media platforms include Gab, Parler, MeWe, Rumble, and Clouthub. Local businesses, including contracting companies like yours, are faced with the task of making sure their business doesn’t just get any traffic, but local, valuable traffic. For this reason, social media should never be your only marketing method. You’ll want to put more than one stake in the ground: local, physical campaigns, location-based online targeting, social media, and more.
If you have any questions or want some advice on making your next marketing move, we are always happy to help! Be sure to check out our free PDF e-Book download on Marketing Tools for General Contractors.
Visit the forum on ContractorTalk for more marketing tips.