To gain customers these days, it helps to have followers—and that means keeping your brand front and center in social media.
Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as simply creating an account and pushing out your first post. Maintaining a social presence requires thoughtful planning, active posting, a good sense of humor and a carefully selected team to help get it all done.
Take too many shortcuts and you’ll find yourself with disengaged, argumentative, or offended followers. You run the risk of causing serious, possibly irreparable brand damage. And how do you think potential customers will feel about your brand when they happen across your old social account that hasn’t seen a post in three years?
What is the solution, then? This may sound harsh, but your best bet is to either do it right or don’t do it at all. Before you open a new account, make sure you do your research and establish a team to help you get it all right:
Tip #1 Choose a few trusted coworkers to be part of the social team
Together, your Construction Social Media team will brainstorm content, set standards for what should and should not be shared, and agree on how to respond to social feedback. This group will also be responsible for ensuring that the page either stays active, or in case of failure, gets deleted.
Tip #2: Plan content in advance, and share at least three times per week
Your customers aren’t going to follow you out of the kindness of their hearts—give them a good reason to stay interested in your company. Post status updates on a current project, share links to interesting new products, and keep your readers informed of the industry at large.
Remember: they’re following you so that they can stay in-the-know about what you do; it’s your job to curate the content that they’d want to read.
Tip #3: Spice up your social presence with images—lots of images
Your social media posts are competing with hundreds, even thousands of other updates in your followers’ feeds. Plain text is boring and can easily be overlooked, so add some visual intrigue with candid shots, video or stock photography. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it just has to be interesting.
Tip #4: Be natural and have fun
This tip is so simple that it’s scary. The trick to being natural is to post about relevant items with genuine feeling. If you’re proud of a recently completed project, absolutely share your enthusiasm. If you have doubts about a new building method, share your opinion in a respectful way. Feel free to use slang or make jokes (when appropriate)—your followers will actually appreciate the human approach.
And lastly...
Tip #5: Always take praise and criticism with grace
Social media accounts are meant to encourage communication, and eventually you’ll receive comments, both positive and negative. Responding to criticism with genuine concern for the customer’s experience is an admirable approach that can show other customers that they’re in good hands.
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