How Contractors Can Use Social Media to Grow Their Business

While using social media for contractor business growth still feels vague, it still provides enough impetus to build your brand awareness.

In the latest survey by Hubspot, 77% of marketers said that social media has been somewhat to very effective for their company. It proves that social media is an effective channel to build fruitful relations with your clients on a personal and business level.

Also, regular posting on social networks can influence users’ decisions to choose one company over another. Along with posting regularly, another factor that your contractor company should consider is selecting suitable platforms for social marketing.

To help you with that, we have specifically created this guide for you on how to approach social media marketing. But first, let’s understand why you should consider social media for your contractor business.

Why Should Contractors Care about Social Media?

Social media is a great tool for building a web presence and also for local SEO for contractors. It offers the power of networking, community, interactions, and an array of tools that help engage your audience. But does it make sense to use social media for your contractor business’s growth?

To give you a simple answer — Yes. It does matter and you should care about your social presence in 2022 and beyond. The reason is that you don’t want to be the one living in a deserted town when everyone has shifted to a new place.

Even though you don’t have any product to sell (neither does Airbnb), the second most reason to use social media is to build brand awareness. And the Hubspot report mentioned above agrees with it too.

Here are some more reasons why you should care about social media:

• Construction company social media may or may not help you to get qualified leads or conversions. But it can definitely help you learn more about your customers and competitors.
• You can build a community of your own using social networks.
• The shrewd implementation of social media for contractor businesses can boost your credibility and show the target audience that you are a trustworthy brand.
• Moreover, it expands and acts as an additional customer care channel.

I think this is enough to convince you to prepare a construction social media marketing strategy for your contractor business. Here’s how you can do so:

How Can Social Media Help Grow Your Contractor Business?

1. Set Goals for Social Media Marketing

The key to achieving success in social media marketing for contractors is setting realistic and measurable goals. But for that, you must gain a thorough understanding of how each social network works and how you can leverage it to your benefit.

Realistically set goals can bring you progress, which can be measured and will give a better starting point to approach social media marketing for contractors.

For instance, let’s say your contractor company’s social media strategy’s goal is to get the word out and bring awareness. Thus, to measure the impact of your social strategy, you must keep an eye on the impressions, views, likes, and shares.

But if your goals are to get more visitors to your newly designed websites or landing page, you should be measuring clicks or CTR. And you must take a similar approach for each goal you want to achieve with your construction company’s social media marketing.

2. Meet Your Audiences Where They Live

Unless you were living under a rock, more than half the world has now shifted to social platforms. That’s where they currently live, eat, sleep, talk, and do all sorts of other things. But what platforms would be more suitable for your contractor business?

Here’s a list of platforms you can use to your advantage:

1. Facebook

One of the widely used platforms, Facebook from Meta offers a pool of opportunities to reach your target audience. By creating and optimizing the Facebook Business Page, you can effectively promote the contractor services you offer.

Let’s see how you can do so:

• Host live sessions on “Ask Me Anything” to address the queries and needs of your followers.
• Share photos and videos of your recently completed projects and provide some context in the captions.

2. YouTube

If Facebook has a high active user count, then YouTube is the most visited website. Wondering how you can use YouTube to your advantage? Let’s see how:

• Create long-form videos of your construction projects
• Give a proper tour of your work site
• And lastly, upload YouTube shorts of up to 1 min to highlight the best features of your projects

3. Instagram

Also owned by Meta, Instagram has seen exponential growth in terms of active user counts. You can post varied content types like reels, stories, photo posts, IGTV, and more.

Let’s see how to approach Instagram marketing:

• Create and post before and after photos/reels
• Give users context in the caption by telling a story
• Host live sessions similar to Facebook to engage your followers
• Announce special services, deals, and offers.

4. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a smart choice for contractors and construction companies and a great place for improving brand awareness. You can also use it for networking, promoting your services, and getting potential clients.

Here’s how you can approach it:

• Share the latest industry news and trends
• Be consistent with your content posting to become a reliable source
• Be the thought leader to attract the high-quality clients

6. Twitter

Twitter is the platform for businesses, especially brands that want to make it to the next phase of business growth. Apart from being a social platform, Twitter is also great as a social listening and customer service tool.

Here’s how you work your way on Twitter:

• Use trending hashtags and give opinions on a trending topic
• Create and post threads of multiple tweets with insightful content

3. Create a Social Posting Calendar

One of the key challenges where most businesses struggle is what and when to post on social media. And the answer to that challenge is creating a social posting calendar.

Instead of just staring and blinking in front of the wide computer screen waiting for inspiration to strike, you’ll have a pre-planned social posting calendar. Tools like Buffer, Zoho Social, and others are great to prepare and schedule your social posts.

Here are some ideas you can follow for your social posting calendar:

• Create posts to introduce your team member one at a time
• Repurpose your blog content
• Share industry insights and trends
• Share some DIY tips
• Post inspirational quotes
• Behind-the-scenes

4. Post Varying Forms of Content Strategically

Social media is not just the platform to post anything and everything, rather it can also act as a growth engine for your contractor business. Furthermore, you can use social content marketing to drive actions, build relationships, and spread awareness about your brand.

Now that we know the best social networks where your target audience lives, these platforms also offer the capability to post varying forms of content. By posting shrewdly and strategically, you can amplify your business’s social presence.

Here are a few content types you must try:

• Short video clips/Reels
• Client Testimonials
• Memes/GIFs
• Comics/Cartoons
• Polls and Surveys

5. Tailor Your Content for Each Platform

Each social network is unique and offers distinctive features for engaging your audience with your content. Thus, one content type, for instance, photos can work great on Instagram but not on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Similarly, insightful and valuable micro-content is more preferred by Twitter and LinkedIn platform audiences. Also, Facebook and YouTube have their own algorithms to promote suitable content types on their networks.

Thus, contractors must understand the algorithms and audience of each platform to find what works and what doesn’t to tailor their content. Don’t make the mistake of posting the exact same content across all your content channels.

Here’s how Uber tailors its content for Twitter and LinkedIn:

• Uber on Twitter:

• Uber on LinkedIn

6. Be In Touch with Your Social Followers

Most contractors have a primary goal to attract new clients and build relationships through social media marketing. One way you can achieve the same is by being in touch with your social followers.

Find ways and work toward building connections with your audience. Doing so will help improve your business’s reputation and increase its visibility for the better. Further, keeping in touch with them will help grow authority, client base, and your network over time.

Here’s what you can do to be in touch with your social followers:

• Start discussions regarding industry regulations, pricing, and other concerns
• Offer tips & advice
• Respond to reviews even negative ones & answer any questions users might have

7. Partner with Influencers

You might have heard many brands have taken the route of influencer marketing to get in front of their audience quickly. It’s one of the top trends as found by HubSpot that 34% of marketers currently leverage.

While it can be tempting to work with the most powerful influencers on social media, it won’t help you achieve your social media for contractor goals.

So what you can do is work with niche influencers that seem relevant to your business industry. Influencers with similar target audiences will serve your business well and help you achieve all your goals.

Once you find such influencers, reach out and collaborate with them to promote or review your business or services in return for appropriate compensation. Doing so will put your business in front of their massive audience and grow your contractor brand’s awareness.

Wrapping Up

Social channels are a proven way for contractors and other service-based businesses to build community and fruitful client relationships. The primary goal of creating a social presence for your brand is to raise awareness and visibility.

A shrewdly prepared social posting calendar will help you become an authority figure and reliable source in your niche. It’s taken that creating tailored social content is a tough nut to crack and may seem overwhelming for you.

That’s where the social media experts of Ronkot come in! We have a team of professional social media, SEO, and content writers that help develop an apt plan to achieve your social media goals.

Get in touch with us to consult our experts on the subject to help you implement a strategic social media marketing plan. That said, see you till the next!