A Contractor’s Guide to Social Media Marketing Part 1

Even if you’ve been living on the moon for the last few years you’ve heard of social media sites twitter and Facebook. In fact, Facebook just broke 500 million users, almost double the US population. For all my contracting brothers and sisters out there that think social media sites are a fad…they’re not, and you better get used to it because this is how people are going to communicate in the future. Think I’m crazy? Here’s a stat for ya, 1 out of 8 married couples last year met via social media. And here’s one more, social media has overtaken porn as the number one activity online!

The sooner you realize social media isn’t just about a bunch of kids sitting in front of their computers getting fatter buy the day the sooner you’ll understand the opportunity you have to move your contracting business to the next level with the help of these social media platforms. Twitter and Facebook gives you an opportunity to engage with people who are actively seeking your product or service.

This gives you a real chance to interact with them and help with any pre-sales questions they may have while strengthening your brand to those who are “listening” to the conversation. The benefit to you the contractor during this interaction is that it doesn’t cost you anything other than some of your time.

Now, you can dismiss Twitter and Facebook and say social media isn’t for you but let me ask you a question, is your contracting company running entirely off referred clients? If it is, good for you, you’ve been around the block a long time and have done great work. But if you still need to market your company to bring in new business and you don’t see the value of social media as a marketing tool check out Magic Pool Services and Cipriani Builders, both are killing it online and they’re not marketing guys like me; they’re contractors like you who are making a difference for their businesses everyday online.

Now, I am going to be talking about social media for the rest of the week. I am going to give you some of the background in social media as well as ways to implement it into your contracting business today. I am going to show you some of the do’s and don’ts of online social interaction to help you avoid the pitfalls that some businesses fall prey to when just getting started. So I hope you enjoy my quick contractors guide to social media marketing and if you have any comments or questions make sure to drop me a line in the comments section below each post!