Social Media Marketing

It’s 2018, the key to construction marketing is that you’ve got to be using social media, you know that right? You have to be online, you have to. It’s not as if you can say, well, I’ll get a website, I’m good. You have to be online. Pew Research Center says that 71% of female internet users are using social networking sites.

So regardless of whether or not you’re into it or you’re a part of the conversation, the conversation is happening, it’s being had. And Mrs. Jones is having it with your competition because they’re on, they’re using social media and they’re getting the benefit of at least having the conversation and having mind share.

You need to have a plan to take part in these conversations, to be part of the engagement, because if you’re standing on the sidelines thinking it’s a fad and you’re not engaging and you’re not positioning your message, you’re at risk of becoming absent from the conversation entirely. You can even just use social as a listening post, you can get a good idea of what’s going on in the public and a general consensus of what’s happening in your vertical.

Now, it may not be Mrs. Jones who’s going to write you your next check, but if you can learn about what’s going on in the marketplace, if you can keep your ear to the ground and hear what’s going on and anticipate the questions that you’re going to get from your prospects and have an answer, then guess what? Then you become the expert.

They’re online, they’re seeing you, you’re answering their questions, you’re talking about the product or service that you provide and you’re going to have a better chance at positioning yourself as the expert because being a contractor with the right answer means you’re going to get the job done.

So if you’re not on social now, get on there, get to it because your customers are.

This video talks about buying likes on Facebook. When you buy likes, you have no idea what you are getting, you are being as disingenuine as you possibly could be to your followers, regardless of how many you have.

But there is another reason you don’t buy likes today…watch the video to get the answer.

Remember the classifieds? Long before Craigslist came along, people used to get their hands dirty shopping for everything from cars for sale to yard sales in their local classifieds section.

If you ever placed a classified ad, you should remember this drill; 20 characters for the headline, 50 characters for the body for about $25 bucks. Throw in a few more dollars if you wanted something bolded.

Point is, you could get your message out there to the masses for a relatively low cost, with just as equally low expectation that you would get any results. I mean, sometimes you did, most often you didn’t.

It all depended on your message and your offer!

Here is Philly, there was a guy who sold VCR’s (I bet there is someone reading this who has never seen a VCR in real life) in the classifieds for $50 in and around the various colleges in the area. His name Bruce. Call Bruce, pony up your half-a-yard, and you could watch all the movies you wanted in the comfort of your dorm room.

It worked so well, Bruce bought himself a huge mansion with a circular driveway. Then the taxman came, but that’s a different post for a different day.

What I am getting at is the fact that classifieds worked, for a long time!

Now turn the page to 2016

Last year sometime, I did a post on what my thoughts were on each of the social media platforms. Facebook was this, Instagram was that, and Twitter…Twitter was, to me, a PR platform.

It was a place for you to go and talk about yourself, insert yourself into the general conversation and engage. It was a way to introduce what you do to like-minded people and who knows, maybe do some business.

Now it seems like Twitter has become the new classifieds section of the web.

What you see now is a firehose of offers and solicitations, coupons and discounts and items for sale by everyone from car salesmen to insurance agents to construction marketing people, all hoping to gain your attention inside of 140 characters.

Now, all that might change once Twitter increases their character limit from 140 to 10,000. Then I predict you will have full-blown advertorials.

Not that any of this is bad, mind you. We all know social media is less about being social and more about ad buys. I’m just saying the social media marketing landscape is changing, and I am simply reminding you to make sure you pay attention to what these platforms become (and how to use them properly) in 2016.

With so many social media networks, you have to ask yourself, what is the viability of Google+ in 2015? While Twitter or Facebook have the potential to grow your company, Google+, a social network that was created as Google’s response to Facebook, has so far failed to live up to the hype.

But is there any relevance left in Google+, should you actually use it on a daily basis, or should you focus on other social sites? The reality is that despite being considered a flop in the online world, Google+ still has quite a lot of potential, especially for the right contractor.

Search result integration

If there’s one thing that you will like about Google+, is complete integration with Google search results. This alone makes Google+ a win because your posts can receive a lot more exposure when people searching for what you do who happen to also follow you. Your site will populate in their personalized search results.

Website traffic

Even if Google+ has lost many of it’s users to other social networks, there are still millions of users here, you just have to go into using the platform with eyes wide open, meaning, Google has been stripping away features, which is never a good sign for a Google product. But, if you can create great headlines and useful content, people will, like all other social networks, share your articles and offer you the exposure you need. It all comes down to offering them something useful and relevant.

Engagement factor

Since Google+ does integrate with most of the other Google services, you can easily improve the overall customer engagement through promoted content, which is shared across other social media platforms. Not that many social networks offer the amazing engagement factor that Google+ does, so you should give Google+ a shot because you just never know.

While the future of Google+ is still unknown, the reality is that until Google axes the product (something that it did with Reader, Code and plenty of other services), you can drive some value from the platform. Grow your audience, offer them something that brings in value and quality, then they will always generate at least some traffic for you and bring the exposure you want.

Of course, you do need a solid social presence on other sites, just in case Google+ decides to take the platform out behind the bard and shoot it. But you should certainly try it out, especially since all you need is a Google account to start.