Using Social Media to Promote Your Contracting Company

You’ve spent years honing your skills as a contractor. You do your work with passion and pride, and you know that having the right contractor for the job is a major factor in success or failure. But how do you get potential customers to take notice? How can you reach out to people searching for services similar to yours at any given moment? And how can you best use social media to help drive traffic through your door when they decide they need what you have to offer? Let’s start by taking a look at some ways that using social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can help you grow your contracting business.

3 Mistakes to Avoid:

As social media and SEO experts have explained for years, companies using these channels as a way of marketing themselves should avoid three mistakes. If you’re looking to use social media to promote your contracting business, make sure to avoid making these three mistakes:

1. Posting without a Strategy

Before you post anything on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, develop a social media strategy. If your goal is to gain new customers, make sure that all of the strategies you use are included in this plan as it will help ensure that everything is working together for maximum exposure. It will allow you to reach your goals quicker. If your goal is to gain new followers, make sure that you’re attracting those followers through status updates and content that they will be interested in.

2. Not Using Social Media as a Customer Service Tool

One of the most important aspects of social media is its ability to provide great customer service to people searching for information on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you can respond quickly to questions or complaints that others have about your company, this can lead to increased sales. The faster you respond, the better; this is a great opportunity for your company to show its professionalism and commitment to quality customer service.

3. Not Posting Consistently

You need to post consistently if you want people on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to take notice. If you only post once every few days or week, some of your followers may forget who you are, and when someone searches for your company’s name after seeing it posted somewhere else online they won’t see anything from you and assume that they’ve already found all of the information available about your business. Write out a posting schedule in advance with specific times and dates so that everyone in your company knows what needs to be done and can do it regularly.

Proper Social Media Posting:

It’s important to think about what you post on all of your social media pages before doing it. If you want to use social media as a way of promoting your contracting business online, make sure that the posts are interesting and targeted at the appropriate people. For example, if you’re a home contractor, don’t post jokes about dog food meals. It doesn’t even matter whether or not its funny; some recipients wont’ find it entertaining regardless of how popular it becomes on social media sites like Twitter. Using just the right amount (not too much) of humor is a fine line to walk.

A Few More Social Media Tips/Tricks for Contractors:

Don’t make the mistake of focusing on quantity when it comes to your social media marketing. It’s true that you should be building a following, but quality is much more important than number of followers. Focus on getting people who are interested in your business and are looking for someone like you through messaging them directly via Twitter direct messages or Facebook private messages first before sending out mass updates. Don’t use every trick in the book when trying to draw people into liking your company or following it online (like buying likes). Its not only tacky (and obvious) but could also get you banned from some sites.

Make sure that everything posted by employees is consistent with what customers would expect from a company. And don’t forget to have someone monitor all social media accounts. If you can afford a marketing agency, ask the company if they can handle this for you or train your employees how to get it right too.

Making these mistakes on social media might seem like no big deal but they are really easy to avoid and could save you some money in legal fees down the road. By avoiding them, however, you’ll be able to effectively promote your contracting business with social media without any mistakes that might come back to haunt you later on down the line.

Destroying Your Reputation:

Just because social media is anonymous doesn’t mean that it can’t hurt your reputation, or even cause you legal troubles. Don’t post anything on these sites (or others for that matter) if you wouldn’t feel comfortable saying it in front of a client or loved one. The best practice is not to post anything online about your contracting company if the individual saying it would be uncomfortable doing so face to face with someone they knew through your business. While this goes without saying when talking about social media, most people don’t realize that email is public domain as well according to many top-notch lawyers and security experts.

Never, Ever, Ever Post false information about your contracting business online when promoting it via social networking sites as this could lead to legal issues. This could also have a negative impact on your reputation if you’re caught lying about your company’s services or products online.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the specific social media sites that you can use to promote your contracting business to various audiences online…

LinkedIn is one way that many contractors get new customers through their networking strategies. LinkedIn has more than 200 million users and it’s primarily for professionals and small businesses alike because it includes pages where people can list off all of the services they provide. It’s an easy way for people who are looking for contractors in their area to find what they need after browsing through numerous companies on the website. For example, let’s say that you only do A/C work in the Marietta, GA area. You don’t have to worry about a potential customer from Minneapolis finding you on LinkedIn after searching for an air conditioning company there because they can only view the profiles of fellow business owners who live near them.

Promoting Your Company On Facebook:

Facebook is a social networking site that has more than 1 billion users, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that many contractors are using this network to promote their businesses. This website still offers some privacy options for business owners who want to post updates about projects without letting the entire world know what they’re working on. For example, you can customize your Facebook timeline and use it in conjunction with Hootsuite to get a professional look at what your’s going on at your company while not making all of your business information public viewable by everyone across the globe.

Therefore, if you want to keep things private but are looking for creative ways to interact with customers online, Facebook might make sense for you. There’s no doubt that most people will check company is all about while also providing the right amount of information for potential customers.

Don’t just run a simple ad campaign here, though, and make sure that you take advantage of the capabilities this site offers as well. One thing you can do to attract more clients is share your content on Facebook and hope that they’ll like it enough to buy from you at some point in time. You can even set up auto-posting options if you find quality content online that relates directly to your profession. Even if people don’t purchase something from you now, they might contact you later on down the line when they’re ready to get work done around their home or office space instead!

Wondering how to make Facebook work for you?

Here are a few things that you can do to attract new customers online.

1.) Create a page specifically for your contracting business and then fill it out with relevant information about the services or products that you offer. If this company has multiple offices, consider creating separate pages for each one in addition to your main contractor Facebook page as well. This way, people who click on your pages will know exactly what they’ll get if they hire your company instead of having to read through several other profiles looking for the best one available.

2.) Keep up-to-date photos of past projects posted at all times so customers can see examples of what you’ve built in the past before toying with the idea of contracting new services or products.

3.) Be sure to connect your Facebook page directly to your professional website so that they can see how you uniquely handle all of their needs and maybe even read testimonials from past customers as well. It’s a great idea to have a link on your contractor Facebook page that goes right back to your homepage as well.

4.) Always answer people in a timely manner and make sure you’re responding to inquiries regarding potential projects instead of ignoring them altogether when possible, and reply fully so clients have enough information about pricing, scheduling and more before moving forward with any business arrangement at all . This is especially important if you think they might be close by!

5.) Add animated photos here and there and try to post at least twice a week, if not more. It’s also smart to start liking other contractor Facebook pages as well so you can build your client base in the local area with relative ease.

It can be tough to design the perfect business profile for social media sites , but it is important to aim for perfection because each site will appeal to different types of people and this could mean that you’ll get lost in between all of the competitors who are vying for attention by posting pictures and videos online. Just remember that even though Facebook does have over a billion users these days, there are still other websites out there that might suit your needs better if they’re run by contractors or construction workers just like yourself!

Search Engine Optimization for Contractors Using Social Media Channels:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is another way that many contractors use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in order to promote their companies online. On these sites, it’s easy for people looking for certain services or products to find what they need right from their computer screens simply by searching through all of the ‘pages’ of your company including links that link back to your website as well as status updates and such. This is especially useful if you can get positive reviews from past customers which you be able to show off on your social media pages too. If you want to learn how to optimize the SEO of your website, visit this helpful article here .

If all of this sounds like it could be a bit much for you or if you’re simply looking for other ways to promote your contracting business with social media, there are always others things that you can do as well including:

Use photos in an engaging, creative way – make sure that any pictures posted by employees or about company events are consistent with what customers would expect from a company. A good example is using photo-sharing sites such as Flickr or Picasa which allow people to tag photos and describe them in great detail so that they get returned when someone searches through them online Use the ‘social bookmarking’ feature – this allows you to share your business’s page with people who are searching online for specific services or products that you offer. If someone from Spain is looking for a contractor in Pennsylvania, they will still be able to find your services if you use social bookmarking. Then, make sure that you respond right away when someone asks questions about your business on these sites . This is very important and could really help build up trust with new potential customers going forward.