We’ve discussed this past month the importance of having an online presence. Having your Google my Business and website ready to go is great and shows that your company is prepared, but there’s another step that will benefit your business. Now is the time to focus on having a social media presence. The use of social media is growing fast, with more than 3.2 billion users on social media every month. That’s about 42% of our total present population! This is definitely a trend you want to take advantage of to help keep your company ahead of our industry. It will continue to grow in the coming years and once you give your company the social media touch, it will benefit your business growth as well.
Today, there are many social media platforms. We understand it can become overwhelming trying to determine where to begin, or update your social media presence. So we’ve narrowed it down to the top 4 platforms accessible to you, and how they will benefit your business!
1. Facebook
Facebook is the most popular platform and can be a very effective social media platform for your business. With nearly 2.41 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the world’s largest social media platform. The best feature Facebook has to offer is the ability to create a business page specifically for your company. It’s similar to a regular Facebook page where you’re able to post images, videos, links to your website, announcements and engage with your audience. The main difference is that your business page will measure engagements, likes, and more, so that you can analyze your page’s effectiveness.
It provides you with great tools to be able to find out how well the content you post is doing with your audience. This is important because you can take advantage of this information to know what type of content you should push towards your audience to help convert your visitors into customers. What makes this platform effective is the Facebook Ads Manager. The ads manager allows you to advertise your services in many different ways ¬- such as:
- Brand awareness: Introduce your service to a new audience.
- Reach: Expose your ad to as many people in your audience as possible.
- Traffic: Drive traffic to a specific web page, app, or Facebook Messenger conversation.
- Engagement: Reach a wide audience to increase the number of post engagements or Page Likes, increase attendance at your event, or encourage people to claim a special offer.
- Lead generation: Get new prospects into your sales funnel.
- Messages: Encourage people to contact your business using Facebook Messenger.
- Conversions: Get people to take a specific action on your website
- Store traffic: Drive nearby customers to bricks-and-mortar stores.
For example, if you want your advertisement to improve engagement, you would select the type of audience you want to target. The settings range from gender, age, location and even their interests. This will help you target your audience accurately with your advertisements in order to grow your customer base. The final step of this process is creating your ads. You’re able to create them in a various amount of formats such as images, videos, slideshows, messenger and more! Your image advertisement could be a recent project that was aesthetically pleasing, or a video showing your crew working hard at the job site. The purpose is to upload visual content that will catch the attention of your new potential customers. Keep in mind that the Ads Manager is not free, but a small budget can go a long way to benefit your business with exposure and growth.
You can also easily interact with your customers. When customers don’t have that much time to make a phone call, they can message you directly through your page and you’ll be able to resolve their problem or question in no time! Keep in mind to check your page often for any responses to your posts or messages. Out of all the social media platforms, Facebook is absolutely essential to benefit your business.
2. Instagram
When it comes to those aesthetically pleasing projects you’ve worked on, Instagram is definitely the platform you want to share those projects on. Instagram focuses on the power of visuals, by allowing people to share and comment on photos and videos. Every month it has over one billion active users, so you want to be sure you’re taking advantage of this platform. It allows you to create a business page where you can keep track of analytical data such as likes, shares, comments, and visitors that take a look at your page. This data is great to keep track of because you can determine what content is working, and what isn’t. The business page will also offer a contact button so your customers can directly email, call or find your business location. All of this information is edited within the settings section of the app and you decide how much is public. You can even add a link to your website to help direct traffic to it! Once you’re ready to go, it’s time to figure out what to post about your business besides your aesthetically pleasing projects. Since Instagram focuses on the visual content, here are a couple of ideas to help get you started:
- Upload at least one photo a day to ensure that you are giving yourself enough opportunities to be seen in the newsfeed. Ensure that your imagery and video content is unique and inspiring to your specific audience in our industry. Think about images or videos that you personally like to see from other contractors and start from there.
- Remember to use hashtags. Instagram has a discovery section where public content is displayed, or when people search for certain hashtags your work will appear. Use hashtags like #landscaping or #contractor.
- Run a competition to encourage engagement on your posts (tag your friend below, comment below to enter etc) or encourage photo contributions around a theme and hashtag. This is a great way to build awareness for your services.
- You can ask clients to submit photos of your service to share on your page. Don’t forget to shout them out for submitting it.
- Post photos of your employees at work. It helps your audience connect to your business by showing who’s behind all the hard work and getting those projects done.
- Your content doesn’t have to just be pictures, you can upload content with mainly text or announcements about your specials/services.
You can always follow other contractors to get ideas of how to run your Instagram business page or simply to connect with them. Remember to engage with your audience and to be creative when it comes to your captions.
3. LinkedIn
In the past, LinkedIn was a platform for anyone in search of a career. Now it’s also about building connections with like-minded professionals, staying up-to-date with industry trends and uncovering new leads who could become customers. It’s the world’s largest professional network, with over 500 million active users. Having your business on LinkedIn is critical in order to have a professional appearance. Your next customer will be doing their research online about your business before choosing your service, and being on LinkedIn will catch their attention for sure.
Similar to the other platforms, you’re able to create a page for your company and add your information along with your website. What’s important about LinkedIn is your connections. You’re able to join groups of people with the same interest, or in the same industry. Search for businesses that provide similar service and connect with them. Eventually, they may introduce you to someone that can turn into a potential customer.
Since LinkedIn’s main purpose is to help you make connections with potential customers or like-minded professionals, sharing content such as blogs, group discussions, and individual conversations can help you stand out from the crowd. It shows you’re an expert in the industry and it will build your credibility. When sharing, think about topics that can help solve problems such as equipment issues, tips on providing a service, or ways to grow a profit. You can even share content from your website, or other social media platforms. Be sure to include a brief description and not just a copy and paste. Rich content and compelling status updates can help establish your business as a leader in your industry. Remember to post often each week and keep your page updated with information about your business.
4. Twitter
Twitter is a social media and online news platform where people communicate in short messages up to 240 characters long called tweets. There are six parts to a Twitter profile – a Twitter handle, a username, profile picture, bio, header image and pinned tweet. All these elements should work together to create an accurate representation of your business.
This platform gives you the opportunity to increase sales and customer service. Visitors or customers on your twitter page can reply easily to any of your tweets in case they have questions about your service. Being responsive on Twitter is important because of how quick it is get in contact with you, so be sure you respond in a timely manner.
But how can you build an audience in the first place? Similar to LinkedIn, it’s important to build relationships on twitter. You can search for hashtags in the industry, such as #Landscape, #Renovation, #Contractors and more. Simple keywords that are often used in the industry can help you connect with similar businesses, and it can help others connect with you when you use these hashtags in your tweets.
Take advantage of the media aspect of Twitter. You’re able to upload industry-related images, videos, links to content from other platforms or even your website as well. If you can upload your content directly to twitter such as before and after images of a recent project, it will result in larger preview treatment over an image that is linked. Keep in mind there are a lot of tweets daily, so make sure you upload content that is eye catching for your audience. If your audience is interested in your tweets with media and hashtags, they can retweet (repost) it which will lead to a growth in your customer base. Also, don’t be afraid to post your content more than once, but remember to change the imagery or description the second time.
Whether it’s support with posts, blogs, or design support, Central is the right partner for your business. Our highly experienced Marketing team has decades of experience to help you identify best-practices and implement initiatives that deliver results. We’re ready to help you grow!