Getting Started Guide: Advertising Your Construction Company for Free

Social Media and Your Construction Company

Social media can be a money pit as well a time drain. These days everyone is on social media but very few posts actually get shared. Truthfully, with the exception of facebook ads, most business don’t really get much out of social media. It’s a “check the box” type of thing.

Let’s face it, unless your product or service is really sexy, interesting, futuristic, or controversial- you’re likely not going to get much engagement. But that doesn’t mean that you can forget about participating in it all together. The following is a guide to social media for the construction industry. You can also download our guide on how to efficiently promote your construction company with no cost and take your construction marketing game to the next level.

Why do people share things on social media?
They want people to think they’re smart/funny/sexy/thoughtful
They have an emotional reaction to something
They want to provide some altruistic or inspirational message to others

What types of content gets shared the most from businesses on Social Media?
Like above, almost all posts on social media will fall into one of the above categories, but some posts will still do better than others.

Types of media with the most shares:
1. Lists
2. Why posts
3. Videos
4. How-to Articles
5. What Posts
Figures based on data on a hubspot study on content.

Depending on where you look, the social shares of content varies slightly. Noah Kagen from Okdork finds similar results with his data.

Things you should post on your company’s social media -Facebook and Linkedin:

Original and Shared Content:
All blog articles
Infographics, lists, eBooks, guides, templates, case studies, white papers, etc
Videos / How-to Videos
Testimonials
Pictures of a job site

Company Updates, Announcements, and News:
New staff
New service announcements
Won contracts
Bought a big-ticket item for your business (truck, tools, server racks, etc)
Mile stones (first double digit month, 90 days without accidents, etc)
Office Move
Completion of a big job
Attending a conference/event/show
Sponsoring a team/event/charity

News/Media coverage:
Interviews on a blog/podcast/other publication?
Your content got published anywhere else
Someone mentioned you or your business in an article about your industry

Industry News/Predictions:
Upcoming events
Legislation, laws, and international agreements affecting your industry
Predictions and trends about your industry for the future

Random things you or your staff enjoy:
Funny videos of something related to your industry
Inspirational quotes (in the form of a picture is always better)
Other relevant viral content

How to Make Your Images Look fantastic:

There are all kinds of tools to dress up your imagines so that they stand out more.

Try out these free tools:
www.canva.com
http://www.visme.co/
http://vizualize.me/
http://piktochart.com/
http://visual.ly/
https://venngage.com/
http://www.easel.ly/

Visme Home Page

Find more tools like these and many other sales and marketing tools on our Free Master list of tools

Timing is everything:
When do you schedule or post most of your content? If you’re like most people, you don’t have a window in mind where most of your interactions happen. After billions of posts and interactions across many different social media channels the answers are available.
Facebook:
Weekdays: 1–4 p.m.
Weekends: 12-1 p.m.

Twitter:
Weekdays: 12-3 p.m. and 5-6 p.m.

Linkedin:
Weekdays: 5-6 p.m.

Youtube:
Weekdays: 2-4 p.m

*A more detailed summary can be found in a social media timing post from FastCompany.com and another study pulling from 16 other sources from CoSchedule.com.

To boost or not to boost?

Companies can be compelled to boost their content especially when they’ve put hours into producing one article that isn’t getting noticed. This can be expensive and massive waste of money.

Don’t boost something that isn’t getting ANY social interactions to start with. It’s a solid indicator that if a small audience doesn’t like what you’ve created, then it’s likely a larger audience will feel the same way. Boost the stuff that does well and hold off on putting money behind things that don’t preform.

Remember what social media is, it’s our highlight reel. We want other people (friends, co-workers, and connections) to think we’re funny, sexy, smart, and thoughtful. Ask yourself before you post something, if one of your friends posted it would you interact with it? Is it fluff?

To share or not to share?

Only you can decide what is appropriate for social media. Fortunes are won and lost over night due to a piece of content being shared on social media that walks the line of what is “acceptable.” We live in a day in age where people choose to take offense to all kinds of innocuous things. Generally a rule of thumb is consider your “intent” before posting. Don’t be mean. Don’t be rude. Don’t ostracize, marginalize, or burn bridges online.

Tools:

There are thousands of tools that allow you to share, analyze, and amplify your social media posts.
Consider using one of the following to make life easier by using a tool that helps you to schedule, measure, and post on social medial:
Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Tweetdeck.

You can find a slew of helpful social media and content creation tools inside of our master list of tools sheet – Over 360+ online tools! Check out also our guide on how to successfully advertise your company in the construction field!