As the owner of a contracting business, you already know that managing your jobsite activities, administrative tasks, and pipeline of new jobs is a significant challenge. We at Knowify stress that doing a great job at the first two—and really showing off your professionalism—can help with the third, since happy clients can often help drive new business through referrals. But there are many other things contractors can do to source leads, and one critically overlooked sales tool in our industry (don’t cringe!) is social media. An active social media presence is an easy way to stand out from the competition, while also making your business more visible and accessible to prospective clients.
Twitter and Facebook, two of the older social media platforms, are still quite useful. Twitter, for example, is tailor made for sending real time updates to your client base. Facebook, on the other hand, serves as a modern day Yellow Pages. A good corporate Facebook page will have pictures of past projects, information on the best ways to reach your office staff, and the company’s regular hours of operation. Lacking a page with these basics can be a red flag for a client deciding between contractors.
Instagram, though, provides the greatest opportunity for business owners to get creative. Any readers who remain unconvinced that Instagram is anything more than a place for high school students to waste time should spend some time on the page of @justaconstructionguy. The page belongs to Omar, an Austin area contractor, and focuses largely on his day job. Within two weeks of the page’s inception, he reached nearly 240,000 followers—needless to say, that’s a whole lot of prospective customers. You just need to find the right audience and your followers will grow! You too can be an Instagram sensation!
View this post on Instagram: When your work neighbors have the best coffee in town. ☕️?
A post shared by Omar (@justaconstructionguy) on May 14, 2019 at 9:27am PDT
A few tips for finding the right audience
Geotag — Geotagging your photos whether it’s a posted photo or a story will help people in that area find you!
Hashtags — Use hashtags relevant to your work so that people will be able to easily search for what you are offering.
Tagging other accounts — Tag other accounts in the photos that you post and give them credit! Working with another team or subcontractor? Tag them! Have a favorite tool company that is in the picture? Tag them, too! Each photo gets up to 10 tags, so if you can, use them all. This will help feature, and also put you on their page. When their followers look at their tagged photos, they will be led to your account.
When marketing your business through Instagram, be sure to feature high quality pictures with attractive lighting. Above all, though, make sure to keep things fun: there are a lot of places Instagram users can go to look at pictures of remodels, but only one place where they can get to know you.