Social Media Success: 5 Principals for Contractors | H.O.M.E.S.

I love getting these notifications! 

So what’s the secret? What are these contractors doing? They are following our 5 principals of social media: HOMES

H: Human
O: Optimize
M: Maintain
E: Engagement
S: Solve Problems

Let’s break it down:

HUMAN: People do business with humans — not businesses. If you’ve been in construction for longer than a minute, you already know this but may not know how it carries over to social media. If you have employees or dedicated subcontractors, feature them in your posts. Show how you are involved personally and as a company in your local community — Do you participate in a toy drive? Have a float in the annual parade? Donate your time for a cause throughout the year? People are more willing to support a business when they see that company as another human and not just a brand. 

OPTIMIZE: “Optimize” is probably one of my favorite marketing terms! Basically, it means how can we make things better. As a seasoned marketer, my life revolves around looking for a better way to do things. With social media, there is so much information available to us. As a contractor, you may not think about things like this, but it doesn’t have to be difficult.

A few examples of metrics to review with your social media:

• Engagement: Likes, Shares, Views… these tell us how people engage with our content
• Leads: Direct messages, contacts through your website, phone calls… Are people contacting you?
• Conversions: If people are contacting you, are they turning into customers?

Create a weekly or monthly marketing dashboard that you can use to track your marketing performance. You can either work with an agency like Home Pro Digital, invest in some software to track things for you, or manually track using a program like excel. Review posts that perform well as well that those that underperform. Use that data to drive your marketing plan. 

Voila, you are now optimizing your social media!

MAINTAIN: It’s easy to get busy and fall behind on your social media game. Working with contractors, I typically see that strategy is the first thing to go! But in order to see success on social media, it’s important to maintain your presence. We see the best success for contractors when they posting at least 3x per week. With many of our clients, we offer a maintenance program that covers the 3 posts each week and they fill in when they have extra behind the scenes pictures. If you aren’t able to keep up with the needs, this may be a good option for your business. The Home Pro Vault is also a great platform if you just need a hand with figuring out what to post.

ENGAGEMENT: Engagement and interacting are the keys to success. The algorithm (or the “code” that decides what shows up on people’s feed on every platform) will always favor businesses that get engagement over those who don’t. So what do you need to do increase your audience engagement?

• Post relevant content (so NOT just project photos!)
• Interact with your audience. When they comment, reply back! Build up relationships.
• Encourage people on your team to share and interact with your posts.
• Use different types of posts: video, quizzes, gifs, memes… see what resonates well with your audience.

It’s important to note that every business will be unique and each platform is different, so it’s important to take the time to understand your audience and how they engage with your page on each social media platform. 

SOLVE PROBLEMS: This is the biggest piece to the social media puzzle (and really – your marketing in general) If it would have made sense, I would have started with “S” but “SHOME” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Your audience doesn’t really care about your skills and everything else you bring to the table if they don’t understand how it solves their problem! Make sure you meet them where they are at, use terminology that they understand. Your messaging should speak to their problems and give them the answers — or better yet, see that you are the expert and the one who will solve their problem. 

Example: If you are a plumber, you aren’t just replacing a broken water heater. You are allowing a whole family to shower without running out of hot water (as the mom to 4 boys can I get an AMEN?!) 

When you speak to the issues your audience is facing they connect with your business and build the relationship that moves people from awareness to life-long customers. 

We love helping contractors succeed on social media.

Do you need a hand with your social media? We offer services ranging from coaching, maintenance, and full management. Interested in learning more? Request information today using the form below.