Being a home service professional is a challenging task. Whether you’re a general contractor or an interior decorator, earning and retaining customers is crucial to your success. In the past, most businesses relied on word-of-mouth recommendations to grow, but with the advent of the internet, marketing has shifted to the digital era. As a result, businesses have increased their online presence in various ways, and social media has become one of the most effective tools.
Recent data shows that people spend an average of two hours and 27 minutes per day on social media. Therefore, social media platforms offer an excellent opportunity for home professionals to promote their services and connect with potential clients. To help you succeed in your social media efforts, we’ve compiled tips and advice from industry experts in the following article.
Social Media Basics
What are the benefits of promoting your home professional business on social media?
Promoting your home-based professional business on social media platforms is becoming increasingly popular and important. Social media is a powerful tool to help you reach a wider audience, increase brand recognition, and attract new customers. Here are some benefits of promoting your home-based professional business on social media.
- Increased Reach: Social media platforms have billions of users, and by promoting your business on these platforms, you have the potential to reach a much larger audience than you would through traditional marketing methods.
- Cost-Effective: Compared to traditional marketing methods, promoting your business on social media is much more cost-effective. You can reach a large audience without having to spend a lot of money on advertising.
- Builds Brand Awareness: Social media platforms allow you to build your brand by creating a presence on different platforms. By sharing content and engaging with your followers, you can establish yourself as an expert in your field and increase brand recognition.
- Improves Customer Engagement: Social media allows you to interact with your customers in real-time, building relationships and enhancing customer engagement. By responding to customer questions and concerns, you can demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction and build trust.
- Provides Insights: Social media platforms provide valuable insights into your target audience. You can use this information to understand your customers better and tailor your marketing efforts to meet their needs.
In conclusion, promoting your home-based professional business on social media can bring numerous benefits. It is cost-effective, can help you reach a wider audience, build brand awareness, improve customer engagement, and provide valuable insights into your target audience. With the right strategy, you can use social media to grow your business and reach new heights of success.
Nick Fernandez, Founder at Upsway Marketing
How can home professionals set realistic social media goals?
Setting realistic social media goals is important to any successful home professional’s marketing strategy.
Here are some steps you can take to set realistic social media goals. They’re the same ones we use daily at Marzipan to ensure we align with our client’s social media goals and really help them to shine online:
1. Define your objectives: Before setting social media goals, it is important to understand what you want to achieve. Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive sales? Once you clearly understand your objectives, you can set specific social media goals that align with them.
2. Analyze your current social media presence: Look at your social media accounts and your performance. Identify which platforms generate the most engagement, what types of content resonate with your audience, and what areas need improvement. Using the platform’s native analytics is always best, as this provides the information at the source.
3. Know your audience: Understand your target audience and their behavior on social media. Consider their age, gender, interests, and the social media platforms they use the most. This will help you tailor your social media goals and content to better engage with them.
4. Set specific and measurable goals: Your goals should be specific, measurable, and time-bound. For example, instead of saying you want to increase engagement, set a goal to increase your Instagram followers by 20% in the next six months. Make sure you benchmark your current tally to see how far you’ve come!
5. Create a content strategy: Once you have defined your goals, create a content strategy that aligns with them. This will help ensure that you are producing content that resonates with your audience, supports your goals, and avoids wasting time creating content for the sake of content.
6. Track your progress: Keep track of your progress and adjust your strategy as needed. Regularly review your social media metrics to see how you are performing against your goals and identify areas where you need to improve.
By following these steps, home professionals can set realistic social media goals that align with their business objectives and help them grow their online presence.
Ben Adams, at Marzipan
How can home professionals develop their own social media strategy?
- Outline your goals. Your content will be determined by the goals you set. Some examples are branding, page growth, engagement, web traffic, and sales.
- Optimize your social media profiles. Are they filled out and up-to-date? Take advantage of things such as instant replies and links in bio where applicable. (Do you have links out to your social media on your website and include them in your email signature?)
- Identify your audience. Who is your current audience, and who is your target audience? Those two may not be the same.
- Research your competitors, hashtags, and trends.
- Determine your budget.
- Create a content calendar with copy, hashtags, and creative. Remember, people typically aren’t scrolling for products to buy. They look at their feeds to be educated, entertained, or inspired. Don’t be afraid to try things and incorporate video.
- Schedule your content. There are a lot of paid and free social tools to make scheduling and reporting a little easier. We’re a Sprout Social Partner and would encourage you to look at what that platform offers.
- Don’t post and ghost. Engage with comments and reviews.
- Check the data. It’s not just about one post. Look at your monthly metrics and gain valuable insights for your next content calendar.
- Rinse and repeat.
Ken Braun, founder & CEO of Lounge Lizard Worldwide
What makes a social media campaign successful?
First, a social media campaign is a coordinated marketing effort to reinforce or assist with the main business goal using one or more channel-specific platforms. However, they may differ from each brand and everyday social media efforts because of increased marketing results focus, refined audience targeting, and quality measurability.
Secondly, to achieve the best social media campaign results, the aim is to focus on the right marketing goals. More so by centering around customer engagement, generating more revenue, improving the customer experience, and positioning the company as a thought leader. To achieve success, you’d want to run it for at least 3 months to get tangible results. With the right data at hand, you’ll be able to fine-tune your marketing message, your CTA, your budget, and your expectations. All this while you try to appeal to a large customer base and make those customers interested and excited about that campaign. The end result is either a conversion of target leads into more web-based traffic or even more business product sales.
Joseph Mucira, founder & Chairman at Web Tech Experts Limited
How can home professionals use social media to reach more potential customers?
We get it, social media is a BEAST! However, it provides many innovative opportunities to pull back the curtain and really showcase the heart of a brand. Recently, user behavior on social media has shifted to become a search engine for inspiration and education.
Home professionals can capitalize on this by showcasing more before and after transformations, inspirational images and videos, relevant trends, and offering product and service knowledge— all of which are deemed ‘save worthy content.’ By prioritizing trending content types that appease social algorithms like short-form video content and story engagement features like polls or quizzes, home professionals can increase reach to build authentic, relatable connections with new audiences organically. The average human attention span now clocks in at 8.25 seconds, which is why video content has the ability to captivate users’ attention more easily than static posts. In addition, establishing a cohesive social media paid advertising strategy will offer more defined targeting parameters to generate consistent leads.
Quality over quantity remains most important. Start by asking yourself, “What problem does this solve or value does this give my audience?” when crafting your social strategy. When in doubt, trust a team of experts who will consistently nurture your brand and implement strategies best suited for your overall business goals.
Katie Rothenbury, Director of Social Media at Mountain Air Marketing
What are the best practices for building trust on social media?
For home service businesses, building trust on social media is especially important as customers are often inviting the business into their homes. Here are some additional best practices that home service businesses can follow to build trust on social media:
1. Showcase your work: Sharing photos and videos of your completed work is an excellent way to showcase your expertise and give potential customers a better understanding of what they can expect from your services. You can also use before-and-after photos to demonstrate the value of your services and the quality of your work.
2. Highlight customer reviews: Customer reviews are one of the most powerful tools for building trust with potential customers. Share positive reviews and testimonials on your social media accounts, and encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews on sites like Yelp and Google My Business. Be sure to respond promptly and professionally to any negative reviews, showing that you take customer feedback seriously and are committed to addressing any concerns.
3. Offer helpful tips and advice: Providing helpful tips and advice to homeowners is a great way to establish yourself as a trusted source of expertise. Share maintenance tips, DIY tutorials, or advice on how to prepare for a service visit. By offering valuable information, you show that you’re invested in your customers’ success and well-being.
4. Provide clear pricing information: Transparency about pricing is essential for building trust with potential customers. Clearly list your rates for various services and explain any fees or additional costs. By being transparent about pricing, you demonstrate your commitment to honesty and fairness, which can help establish trust with potential customers.
5. Respond quickly to inquiries: Responding quickly to inquiries is essential for building trust with potential customers. Homeowners often have urgent needs, so it’s important to respond to messages and phone calls promptly. By being responsive and attentive to your customer’s needs, you demonstrate your commitment to customer service and show that you’re a reliable and trustworthy provider of home services.
Building trust on social media is an ongoing process that requires consistency and dedication. By following these best practices, home service businesses can establish themselves as reliable and trustworthy providers of home services, building a loyal customer base and growing their business.
Joshua Maddux, Founder at 95Visual
How can home service professionals measure the success of their social media marketing efforts?
Knowing how successful your social media marketing campaigns help you know which ones to repeat and which to replace. The best way to measure efforts is by tracking specific metrics, such as the number of visits from the social site to your webpage, likes on your profile pages, and interaction with potential customers.
Choose the type of response you want to achieve, so you know how to gauge whether a campaign was successful. If you want traffic, then create a separate landing page and send social media visitors directly to that page. You’ll be able to see from traffic metrics how successful you were.
If your goal is name recognition, you may want to gain more likes or shares of your posts. Come up with viral topics people want to share. Humor and how-tos are both popular options. You can also create unique videos that answer the top questions your customers have. Solve their pain points, and you’ll attract the right target audience.
If you want more bookings, then you might use a special discount code for folks who saw an ad or post online. You can track how successful your social media marketing is by how many people use the code.
Most social media platforms offer analytics to track how an ad performs. See how many people in your target audience engaged, clicked on a link, or shared the post with others. Since home service professionals tend to be localized, seeing how many of those interacting were in a certain location gives you a chance to tweak advertising to match your response.
Local businesses can ramp up their customer base by reaching leads via online platforms, such as social media sites. Figure out which metrics you want to use and track results, so you know what works for your business model.
Eleanor Hecks, Editor in Chief at Designerly
How can home professionals measure the effectiveness of their social media campaigns?
Tracking key metrics is crucial for measuring the effectiveness of social media campaigns. Planly, a social media scheduling tool, can help home professionals monitor these metrics. Focus on:
- Engagement Rate: Track likes, comments, shares, and other interactions to gauge how well your content resonates with your audience. High engagement indicates that your content is compelling and relevant.
- Reach and Impressions: Measure how many people see your posts and how often. This helps assess the visibility of your content and its potential impact.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): Monitor the percentage of users who click on your links compared to the number of people who view your posts. A higher CTR indicates effective calls to action and content that drives traffic.
- Conversion Rate: Track the number of users who take a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter or requesting a consultation, after engaging with your social media content.
- Return on Investment (ROI): Evaluate the revenue generated from your social media efforts compared to the costs. This helps determine the overall financial impact of your campaigns.
Planly simplifies this process, providing valuable insights to help optimize your social media strategy.
Planly
What tools should home professionals be using for social media?
As a home service business, I recommend leveraging the tools within the social media platforms themselves. For example, take advantage of Instagram Reels as your video editor tool. They have many different options for you to trim video snippets, add trending audio, add text and dynamic features, and more. This one place can allow you to create great short-form videos that you can post across all your social media platforms.
I highly recommend HootSuite for multiple social media accounts to schedule social media posts. If you primarily use Instagram and Facebook, the Meta Business Suite has all the features you need to schedule and adapt each post to the unique platform effectively. This is also where you will see insights and data about your social media performance. Another one of my favorite tools is Canva. Canva is the most accessible graphic design software you could ever want as a home services business. You can create beautiful branded graphics for social media and find templates for things like stories, reels, posts, and more. My perhaps contrary opinion, however, is that there is no need to clutter your plate with endless software and tools as a home service provider. Simply being present and consistent on social media platforms is what you will need to do to be successful, and I find that having a lean toolset clears the clutter and allows businesses to post more frequently. Find the tools that streamline efficiency for you while creating high-quality social media assets.Madeleine Costa, at Succeding Small
How can home service professionals promote their services on social media?
Home service professionals can effectively promote their services on social media and create an eCommerce store with the help of an eCommerce website development company. In addition, home service professionals can benefit from their expertise and experience in creating online stores optimized for conversions and user experience by working with an eCommerce development company.
They can create an online store using platforms like Orocoomerce, Magento, Pimcore, Commercetool, or Fabric.
An eCommerce development company can help home service professionals set up an online store on their website and integrate it with their social media profiles. They can also provide customized solutions for their unique business needs, such as a booking system for appointment-based services or a product catalog for hardware and equipment sales.
Moreover, an eCommerce development company can provide ongoing support and maintenance services to ensure that the online store runs smoothly and is regularly updated with new products and services. They can also offer marketing and advertising services to help promote the online store and increase sales.
Overall, partnering with an eCommerce development company can provide home service professionals with a complete solution for promoting their services on social media and creating an online store that is optimized for success. With their expertise and experience, eCommerce development companies can help home service professionals grow businesses and reach more customers online.
Karan Mori, Marketing Lead at Magneto IT Solutions
How can home professionals generate leads on social media?
In today’s digital age, social media platforms have become a powerful tool for businesses to generate leads and reach their target audience. Home professionals such as interior designers, architects, and contractors can leverage social media to showcase their work, engage with potential clients, and generate leads. Here are some tips and tricks that are highly underrated but can help home professionals generate leads on social media:
1. Showcase Your Personality: Home professionals can stand out by showcasing their personality and personal brand on social media. This helps build a deeper connection with potential clients and differentiates the professional from competitors.
2. Share Behind-the-Scenes Content: Home professionals can share behind-the-scenes content on social media to give potential clients a glimpse into their process and workflow. This helps build trust and credibility with potential clients.
3. Use Instagram Stories: Home professionals can use Instagram Stories to showcase their work and services in a more casual and interactive way. They can use features like polls, questions, and quizzes to engage with their audience and gather feedback.
4. Leverage Video Content: Home professionals can leverage video content on social media to showcase their expertise and services. This can include tutorials, before-and-after transformations, and virtual tours.
5. Collaborate with Influencers: Home professionals can collaborate with influencers in their industry or related industries to increase their reach and exposure on social media. This can help to generate more leads and referrals.
6. Respond to Reviews: Home professionals should respond to reviews on social media and other review sites to show that they value their clients’ feedback and are committed to providing excellent service. This helps build trust and credibility with potential clients.
7. Offer Exclusive Deals: Home professionals can offer exclusive deals and discounts to their social media followers to incentivize them to book their services. This helps to generate more leads and conversions.
In summary, by combining these tips, home professionals can effectively generate leads on social media and build a strong online presence. It is important to be consistent, authentic, and engaging on social media to attract potential clients and establish a strong reputation in the industry.
Sarthak Vishal, Marketing Executive at Leadzen.ai
How can home professionals stay up-to-date with the latest trends and changes in social media marketing?
Social media is constantly evolving, and it can be challenging for home service business owners to stay up to date on the latest trends and developments. However, staying informed is crucial for success in today’s digital age.
1. Follow industry experts: Follow thought leaders and influencers in the home service industry who are active on social media. They are likely to participate in the latest trends on their platforms. There is nothing wrong with recreating what is already being done and making it your own! You can find some general social media tips and hot trends on @Wakeuppueblo or an active home service industry profile like @adamrchap for trends specific to the home service industry.
2. Attend conferences and workshops: Attend events that focus on social media and digital marketing. You can learn about the latest trends, tools, and strategies for leveraging social media for your business from some of the best in the social media game. Here are some of my favorites: Wake Up Bootcamp, 10X GrowthCon, or Inbound.
3. Follow popular social media blogs, forums, and newsletters: Always follow the newsletters of your social channels for the latest algorithm updates, and always use the latest features. These channels will favor your content when you do so. Here are some blogs I recommend: Hootsuite, Wake Up Brain Dump, HubSpot
4. Join Facebook groups and forums related to your industry: This is a great way to stay informed about the latest trends and connect with other business owners and experts in the field. This kind of network can be a safe place to ask for advice and trends from your peers in your industry, like the Home Service Expert group, or a social media coaching group like Wake Up Elite, where I teach people all of the latest trends and how to apply them.
5. Keep an eye on your industry: your social media should be catered to your desired audience; therefore, they will always have an appetite for the latest trends in your industry. You can find the most asked internet questions by the public by typing your industry into these platforms: Answer The Public, Google Trends, or Reddit blogs. This way, you can cater your content to the questions and topics that are most relevant.
Staying up to date on social media trends is essential for home service business owners to succeed in today’s digital age. By following industry experts, attending events, participating in online communities, and keeping an eye on industry trends, you can stay ahead of the curve and stay informed about the latest developments in the world of social media.
Jacob Rivera, Creative Director at WAKE UP
What are the benefits of utilizing machine learning for your social media strategy?
In content marketing, leveraging machine learning can significantly impact customer engagement. By utilizing machine learning algorithms, professionals can tailor their social media strategies with more precision. This technology allows for the analysis of user data and behavior, enabling the creation of personalized content and recommendations that resonate with clients. Whether it’s suggesting home improvement tips or offering insights on real estate trends, machine learning empowers professionals to connect with their audience on a deeper level.
Moreover, by automating routine tasks, such as responding to inquiries or scheduling appointments, professionals can free up more time for genuine interactions and building trust with their clients. In essence, machine learning becomes an invaluable tool, enhancing the customer engagement strategies of home professionals in the ever-evolving landscape of social media marketing.
Active Noon
How can e-commerce stores grow their social media presence?
As an e-commerce store owner, growing your social media is important to increase visibility and sales.
Start by defining your strategy – include your goals, target audience, and key messages. A clear strategy guides your content creation and posting schedule. Ensure your social media profiles are optimized and that they reflect your brand identity. Use a consistent logo, profile picture, and bio across platforms.
You also want to create compelling and relevant content. As an e-commerce store owner, highlight product features, share behind-the-scenes glimpses, and incorporate user-generated content to keep your feed dynamic and interesting. Engage with your audience by responding promptly to comments, messages, and mentions.
Utilize targeted ads to reach a broader audience. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer detailed targeting options to reach users interested in your products. Partner with influencers whose audience aligns with your target market. Their endorsement can introduce your brand to a wider audience.
No Labels
Social Media and Customer Service
How can home professionals build trust with their followers?
1. Connect with them on camera. Instead of posting a static Canva graphic, try creating a short-form Reel or TikTok of a team member answering a frequently asked question.
2. Consistency is key. Post regularly, respond to comments and messages, and stay active on your social media platforms.
3. Social media is a two-way street. If you want your audience to engage with you, engage with them. Take time to build relationships with them and build a community.
4. Build credibility through honesty. Tell your audience about a time when your team made a mistake and how they made it right.
5. Share your personality. Speak to your audience the same way you would speak to a friend or colleague. This helps your audience feel like they truly know you.
6. Provide value. Ask yourself: what’s in it for them if they follow you? Share tips and advice with and offer solutions to common problems. When people see that you’re genuinely trying to help them, they’ll be more likely to trust you.
7. Share social proof. Publish testimonials and reviews from happy customers and showcase your expertise through your content. This will help build credibility and trust with your audience.
Andrea Leo, Social Media Manager at Elevation Ten Thousand
How can home service professionals use social media to build and maintain a positive reputation for their business?
It is critical first to create a professional social media profile that clearly communicates your business’s values, services, and contact information. Use a professional profile picture and cover photo.
1. Share Customer Reviews and Testimonials: Share positive reviews and testimonials from satisfied customers on your social media channels. These can be screenshots of reviews on other platforms, videos, or graphics created from written reviews. This can help build trust with potential customers and show them that you have a track record of providing high-quality service.
2. Post Educational Content: Share useful tips and educational content related to your industry. This can help position you as an expert in your field and build credibility with your followers.
3. Respond to Customer Feedback: Monitor your social media channels for customer feedback and respond promptly and professionally to all comments or messages. This can demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction and help resolve any issues before they escalate.
4. Engage with Your Followers: Encourage your followers to engage with your content by asking questions, running polls and contests, or sharing behind-the-scenes glimpses of your business. This can help build a sense of community and strengthen your relationship with your followers.
5. Use Social Media Advertising: Consider using social media advertising to target potential customers in your local area. This can help increase your visibility and reach a larger audience.
By implementing these strategies, home service professionals can use social media to build and maintain a positive reputation for their business, attract new customers, and ultimately grow their business.
Rebekah Richards, Owner & Marketing Consultant at Jucebox Local Marketing Partners
How can home professionals use social media to resolve customer complaints and address negative feedback?
Social media is an open forum. Controlling the conversion is challenging.
There are two things to consider in getting useful outcomes from social media marketing.
The first is making sure you have a solid content calendar in place with regular posts expressing your thought leadership in your industry and showcasing your expertise and knowledge. This must happen on a regular basis to grow a loyal following and build trust. Value-added videos, photos, and written content are all important to social media users.
The second is in your ongoing conversation with people who post and interact with you on social media. Respond to positive posts with gratitude, answer questions promptly as the thought leader, and deal with negative comments as the expert or “adult” in the room.
People appreciate and respect the thought leader on social media.
Expert responses that are professional and make sense are the best responses to negative comments. This is powerful because your content will strengthen your position and turns a negative comment into a positive outcome for your company as people read the conversation.
It is not about responding to negative comments, it is about the people reading the conversion and what they get from it.
Your professional response to negative comments will build trust and help people see the bigger picture of what it will be like to work with you and your company.
Tom Young, CEO/Founder at Intuitive Websites
How can home professionals use social media to gather customer insights and feedback to improve their services?
Social media provides numerous tools and features that can be used to gather customer insights and feedback. This can include anything from polling customers on products and services, tracking customer sentiment, and providing customers with a platform to share their experiences.
Use social media to connect with and understand customers.
Social media provides home professionals with multiple tools to help them connect with, learn from, and understand their customers. Home professionals can interact with customers through direct messages, comments, and polls to understand their needs and preferences. These conversations can build customer trust and loyalty, leading to long-term business relationships.
Home professionals can better understand customer needs and preferences through polls, survey responses, and other interactive settings. Home professionals can get direct and honest feedback from customers on their products, services, and customer service. The insights gained from this feedback can be used to enhance products and customer experiences.
Use social media to track customer sentiment.
Social media analytics tools can track customer sentiment and view real-time customer feedback. Home professionals can monitor customer conversations on social media platforms and identify key trends in customer sentiment. This data can be used to understand customer pain points and identify areas for improvement.
Use social media to engage with customers.
Engaging with customers on social media allows home professionals to build customer relationships. This can include responding to customer questions or feedback and celebrating successes and accomplishments with customers. Building relationships through social media can lead to increased customer loyalty and more positive customer experiences.
Lastly, use the original “Social Post” to generate awareness and leads locally.
Yes, we’re talking about Direct Mail.
Even in the age of digital marketing, direct mail can be a powerful tool to generate awareness and leads for your business. And while it may seem old-fashioned, direct mail can be highly targeted and Personalized to reach your ideal customers.
Direct mail can be a great way to reach a local audience and generate awareness for your business. You can use direct mail to promote special offers, target specific demographics, or send a genuine Thank You note to existing customers and use a QR code to get them to complete a quick survey on how you could improve your services. Plus, direct mail is more personal than digital marketing, which can help you build community relationships.
Chantel Beauregard, Founder at Brandit360
What are some common mistakes to avoid when engaging with customers on social media?
It’s no secret that customers are more likely to purchase from a company they perceive as engaged, authentic, and personable. With the advent of social media, it has become easier than ever for businesses to connect directly with their customers. But with great power comes great responsibility. These are two of the most common mistakes businesses should avoid when engaging with customers on their social media channels.
1. Failing to Respond Quickly- When someone interacts with your business on social media, they expect a response—and they expect it soon. According to Sprout Social, “13% of US consumers expect brands to respond within the first hour of reaching out on social media, while 76% expect a response in the first 24 hours.” If you don’t respond in a timely manner, potential customers could think you aren’t paying attention or don’t care enough about their experience with your brand. This can be harmful when it comes to building trust and loyalty, which can lead to fewer returning customers. Our advice? Make sure you have someone monitoring your accounts regularly so you can respond quickly and efficiently.
2. Avoiding or Ignoring Negative Feedback- People will always provide negative feedback, no matter what you do. While many companies may try to ignore these comments or reviews, we strongly advise against it. Responding promptly and professionally to negative feedback is critical in maintaining a positive presence online. In addition, it shows potential customers that your business cares about their customers’ experiences. When responding to negative feedback, we recommend offering a solution within your response. Now, this can be as simple as directly answering their question or (if the issue is more complicated) offering a phone number and/or email for them to reach out to so you can troubleshoot the problem together.
How can home professionals improve their social media presence and engagement with customers?
The best way for home professionals to improve their social media presence is to build their social media channels into useful, local advice related to their field of expertise. Whether a business is providing roofing or plumbing services, homeowners appreciate helpful tips and information that is well formatted and provides useful information to maintain the investment in their home.
Alex Vere Nicoll, at The Brandsmen
Social Media and Content
What are some easy ways for home professionals to create content for social media?
Whether you’re an interior designer, a carpenter, a kitchen remodeling company or a professional organizer, there are tons of ways to showcase your work and create content for social media. A few ways to get people’s attention on Facebook and Instagram and make yourself and your business stand out include the following:
Before & Afters – Take some videos of your progress (whatever that may be!) and make an Instagram Reel or TikTok video. Or keep it simple and share a series of photos. Instagram’s algorithm loves carousel posts that allow you to add up to 10 pictures.
Tips and Tricks – Set yourself up as the expert. Share tips or simple “how-tos” that lend to your credibility. Think of the type of content or hacks that you love to “save” when you’re scrolling Instagram and try doing the same for your business. The goal is to get people to tap the save button when they see your post.
Behind the Scenes – Home professionals get to see things that most people don’t. You get to see what’s between the studs and what has to happen before the cabinets are installed, or the flooring is laid. Take some videos or photos of the things that may be “normal” to you but are far from normal for the average Jo. Share a post about the process or the stage of the build you’re in. Take a photo or video that shows what goes into home staging – where you source your products or why you chose the colors you selected. These are things that seem silly to you but will be super interesting to your audience.
End Results + Client Testimonials – Thrilled with the end result of a big project or feeling elated about a positive Google review? Use a free app like Canva to create a graphic that shows off the positive feedback or share a picture of your happy clients. If you can take a video of the big reveal, that’s even better!
In the home professional industry, there are always new trends to talk about or photos to share with your latest inspiration, but you’ll find what sets you apart is YOU. Don’t be afraid to show your face on your social media channels or get behind the camera as you make a video walk-through or explain your decision-making in the design process. There are content gems in the every day – you just have to train yourself to look for them!
Rachel Kline, at Rachel Kline Creative
How can home professionals use social media to build brand authority?
Home professionals can use social media to build brand authority by providing useful, local advice related to their field of expertise, showcasing their work, engaging with potential clients, and generating leads. They can also publish informative and instructional posts on DIY projects and home improvements to establish their expertise. Additionally, incorporating “social walls” into their online presence can enhance engagement and foster a sense of community among their audience.
What are some best practices for creating content for social media?
If you want to create content that is engaging and will reach your target audience, all of the trends are pointing to posts with less text and more video. Internally, we’ve been working to perfect our live “talk show”, encite Live! We are also working on developing another segment, encite Insights, that will serve as another outlet to discuss the latest trends from a branding, marketing, and creative lens. These shows either air directly on our social platforms, or we promote the content beforehand on the channels that don’t currently support this kind of video.
Increasingly, people are just more likely to scroll massive walls of text. Sometimes, I log on to LinkedIn, and I’m immediately overwhelmed by the lengthiness of some of the posts, even when they’re from accounts or creators I have a genuine interest in. Much like the copy we write for our clients’ ads when it comes to what they’re writing on social, we think to tell them that it’s best to just get to the point. We also try to stress the importance of adding some sort of image or video to every post.
We also really preach (both internally and externally) the importance of repurposing your content and having it all work together. The likelihood of someone seeing every post on every channel is small, which means you can get away with re-posting especially dynamic blog posts, videos, or other content pieces you want to get as many eyes on as possible.
Sophie Mann, Director of Content Strategy at encite branding + marketing + creative
What are some best practices for posting content and interacting with customers on social media?
Many best practices exist for posting content and interacting with customers on social media. Here are some key ones:
1. Define your brand’s voice and tone: Before you start posting on social media, it’s important to define your brand’s voice and tone. This will ensure consistency in your messaging and help you build a strong brand identity.
2. Plan your content: Plan your social media content in advance. This will help you stay organized and ensure that you’re posting regularly. Use a content calendar to keep track of upcoming holidays, events, and other relevant dates.
3. Use high-quality visuals: Use high-quality visuals such as images, videos, and infographics to make your posts more engaging. Visuals are more likely to capture people’s attention than plain text.
4. Engage with your audience: Social media is a two-way conversation. Engage with your audience by responding to comments, direct messages, and reviews. This will help you build relationships with your customers and improve brand loyalty.
5. Monitor your brand’s reputation: Keep an eye on what people are saying about your brand on social media. Respond to negative comments and reviews in a professional and timely manner. This will show your customers that you care about their opinions and are willing to address any issues.
6. Use social media analytics: Use social media analytics to track the performance of your content. This will help you understand what types of content your audience engages with the most, so you can tailor your content to their interests.
7. Be consistent: Be consistent with your posting frequency and brand messaging. This will help you build a strong brand identity and keep your audience engaged.
8. Stay up-to-date: Stay up-to-date with social media trends and best practices. Social media constantly evolves, so staying informed about new features, algorithm changes, and other updates is important.
Posting content and interacting with customers on social media requires careful planning, consistent execution, and a customer-centric approach. By defining your brand’s voice and tone, planning your content, engaging with your audience, monitoring your brand’s reputation, using social media analytics, staying up-to-date with best practices, and being consistent, you can build a strong social media presence and cultivate loyal customers. Social media is a powerful tool for building brand awareness, connecting with customers, and growing your business, but it requires ongoing effort and attention to be successful.
How can home professionals use storytelling content for social media?
Home professionals can enhance their social media strategy by publishing informative and instructional posts on DIY projects and home improvements. These types of posts can capture the attention of potential customers and help establish the professional’s expertise.
In order to make these posts even more effective, home professionals should consider incorporating visually appealing elements, such as infographics or videos. The visual aids will not only make the content more engaging, but they will also make it easier for followers to understand and remember the steps involved in the DIY projects.
Furthermore, these posts can be used as a way to differentiate oneself from the competition. By providing a valuable resource that others may not offer, home professionals can showcase their unique expertise and attract more followers. This can also lead to increased shares and engagement, as people are more likely to share content that they find useful.
To ensure that these how-to posts are effective, it is important to use clear and concise language that is easy for followers to understand. The instructions should be broken down into manageable steps, and any technical terms should be explained.
Overall, creating a series of how-to posts can be an effective way for home professionals to increase engagement and build trust with their followers. By providing valuable information in an easy-to-understand format, they can establish themselves as an authority in their field and attract more customers.
Marija Mladenovska, Partnerships Team Lead at userp.io
What is the best way to plan and schedule social media posts?
The social media space is constantly evolving, and it can be challenging to keep up without the right processes in place.
Start optimizing your workflows with a content calendar. Use this document to jot down ideas and plan out your posts on a monthly, quarterly, or even yearly basis. Planning posts ahead of time ensures that you have a steady stream of great content to share and engage your audience.
With a calendar, you can think carefully about which topics to cover, what holidays to celebrate, and how best to communicate your message—whether through text, video, or audio. Don’t be afraid to mix it up!
When you’re ready to schedule your posts, keep your target audience in mind. It’s essential to get a good understanding of the people you want to reach, what kind of posts they want to see, and when they are most likely to engage with it.
Find out what day or time they are most active, and keep an eye on analytics so you can make adjustments if certain schedules are not yielding results. For even more efficiency, use a social media scheduling and analytics tool.
Remember, though, that your plans aren’t set in stone. Revisit your calendar every now and then to ensure that your content is still relevant, accurate, and aligned with your business goals.
Haya, QA & Editorial Manager at Beanstalk Growth Marketing
What type of events or milestones should home professionals post on social media?
Our first advice is to decide who you want to be and be that person today.
“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” – Seth Godin.
Whether a business is home-based, online only, or in a brick-and-mortar office, the intention is the same. A clue can be found in the quote by Godin above. Events and milestones in the evolution of any business can be tied to the elements in the quote above. First and foremost, it is essential to remember that social media is about engagement and not solely about promoting your “greatness.” The more you can engage your audience by soliciting comments and interaction, the better the post will advance the “feel and sentiment” around your business. Or what some call “vibe.”
Innovative companies know successful brands are content producers. Brand Marketing is about creating demand for your services by communicating key messages to your audience in the places where they congregate, socialize and do business. Your purpose is to solve problems for your customers and celebrate that accomplishment. The content must align with the platform it’s shared on and the audience it’s shared with. Social media can give your followers a deeper insight into the intentions behind your actions so that you establish personality, credibility, and trustworthiness. The more authentic you are, the more likely you will impact those things.
Some typical milestones worthy of mentioning:
- Winning Awards
- Launching a new product or service
- Moving to a new platform to serve your customers.
- Promoting others in your space and their accomplishments
- Announcing a new client
- Staff milestones and new hires
- Case studies
- Testimonials from clients and friends
- Growth and anniversaries
The messaging must be consistent with the brand’s promise when creating social media, print, or billboard content. How it’s delivered will vary based on the medium. Social Media content should have some degree of personal connection and an opportunity for engagement. Interactive reels, stories, and videos of previous customers’ projects and their testimonials provide social proof that you follow through on your promises. Using “We” instead of “I” statements invokes a sense of trust and belief that an entire team is dedicated to them.
Tony Felice, Founder at The Felice Agency
What Instagram marketing strategies do you suggest home professionals should invest in?
Here are some Instagram marketing strategies that I suggest home professionals should invest in:
- Using hashtags
- Creating informative content
- Showcasing their portfolio or some skills
- Collaborating with other professionals or Influencers
- Engaging with their audience through direct comments on their posts and likes on their posts
- Utilizing Instagram Stories
Karan Bhardwaj, Chief Marketing Officer at Tekki Web Solutions
How can you increase social media engagement using captions?
Creating compelling captions for social media is important to enhance your engagement. To create better captions, start by understanding your audience’s preferences and pain points. Adapt your message to resonate with their needs and aspirations. Keep it concise and to the point while keeping it authentic and clear to understand. Ask questions or encourage interaction and gain responses from your followers that you can use to improve content or generate leads. It’s also beneficial to incorporate relevant hashtags to increase your content’s discoverability. Lastly, proofread your captions to make sure they’re correct.
Social media is a powerful tool with many features and benefits that you can use to your advantage. By following these tips, you’ll be able to create captions that not only grab attention but also foster meaningful connections with your audience, ultimately boosting your social media engagement.
Raul Tiru at GlobalOwls
Social Media and Your Website
How can home professionals drive more traffic to their website using social media?
The best way for a home professional to drive more traffic to their website using social media is with paid ads. When you are starting out, spending a thousand dollars seems like a lot, but whether you know it or not, your time is far more valuable. We see lots of people trying to use Social Media as an inexpensive way to drive traffic, but every seasoned professional knows it is the most expensive way (if you factor in your time or your employees’ time) and the slowest way to see results. Even more importantly, test it and look at your analytics to see if you are getting results. Not everything people do to drive traffic works.
You have to find the right way for your business. Try Facebook and Instagram, but also Reddit, Quora, Discord, Nextdoor, Linkedin, Pinterest, and relevant Blogs. Maybe try each for a month, going all in, and then double down on the one that works. In our business is all about the data, and we are constantly surprised by what works and what doesn’t. So you need to avoid the sunk costs fallacy and abandon anything that is not driving traffic, even if you have already spent a lot of time and money on it.
David Gaz, Managing Partner at The Bureau Of Small Projects
How to Integrate Your Website and Social Media to Increase Conversions?
Integrating your website and social media is a powerful strategy for building and engaging your target audience.
Let’s quickly define the role of your website and social media.
Your website provides complete control over your brand’s online presence, allowing your business to project a professional image to potential customers and partners.
Your website is the ideal place to highlight your products and services, and it allows you to use a wide variety of digital marketing techniques such as email marketing and paid search. Additionally, producing high-quality content and resources helps grow search traffic.
On the other hand, your social media serves as a powerful tool for building trust with potential customers, particularly when establishing credibility in a specific industry or niche.
These are some tips to integrate your website and social media to increase conversions and engagement with your brand.
1. Add social links and calls to action on your website to encourage visitors to follow your organization on social media.
2. Use social media for engagement and your website to sell. Social media is an excellent platform for interacting with your audience, while your website is ideal for providing in-depth information about your products and services and generating sign-ups and e-commerce sales.
3. Create long-form content on your website and repurpose snippets for social media posts. This is an excellent way of using your existing content to create engagement with your audience.
4. Incorporate live chat on your website to engage with your visitors in real time through social media messaging platforms. You can set up Facebook Messenger or leverage the GetButton.io service to activate various channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Snapchat, and others. By enabling your visitors to utilize their social media accounts for chat, you make it effortless and instinctive for them to contact your organization instantly.
How can home professionals combine SEO and Social Media to take their business to the next level?
How to Improve Your Social Media and SEO Strategy
- Always create high-quality content. Remember to make it helpful to readers and think about their pain points.
- Be sure to choose content that will drive traffic and increase the chance of it being shared on social media.
- Add social share buttons to your website’s content. AddThis is a great social sharing service that integrates easily with many website platforms.
- When using social media, make sure to optimize your brand’s profiles.
- Revamp any content on your site that is underperforming or of lower quality.
- Being active and engaged on social platforms can help you build relationships with users.
Jonathan Szewczyk at Neur
Social Media and Branding
What is the importance of branding on social media for home professionals?
The importance of branding on social media for home professionals is to create a cohesive brand image and identity that customers can recognize. Branding on social media helps home professionals promote their services, develop relationships with current and potential clients and showcase their professionalism. Through the use of visual elements such as logos, colors, design layouts, and other graphics, home professionals can create an easily recognizable brand presence across various platforms. This, in turn, helps to build trust with users, which leads to more business opportunities and customer loyalty. Effective branding will ensure that your message resonates with target audiences while helping you stand out from competitors within the marketplace.
Irina Gedarevich, Marketing Consultant at ESEOspace
How can social media help create brand awareness for home service professionals?
Social media can be an incredibly powerful brand-building tool for home service professionals. Through it, you can reach bigger and more diverse audiences than ever before. Building brand awareness on social media helps to ensure your brand stands out from the competition and increases recognition.
By following a few simple steps, such as setting up accounts across major platforms, like Facebook, Linkedin, and Google My Business, and interacting with customers regularly, you can make sure your brand stays visible on social media. Social media provides a direct connection between brands and individual users, enabling your brand to cultivate relationships with consumers in real time by responding quickly to comments and feedback.
Additionally, creating targeted ad campaigns on targeted platforms to target different demographics can greatly improve brand awareness amongst new customers. Perhaps more importantly, such an approach provides valuable insight into the brand’s user base in order to adjust future marketing efforts for greater success. By investing in brand-building efforts on social media, home service professionals can gain more recognition, create trust and credibility within their industry and gain more customers.
Daniel Glenn, Managing Partner at Clear Vison Media
How can home professionals use social media to build brand authority?
Home professionals can use social media to build brand authority and win business by focusing their efforts on a few key metrics and tactics. 1) Get Visibility 2) Build Credibility 3) Show Your Value. Here’s a playbook on how to use social media channels to your advantage.
1. Be Consistent & Active. Post regularly on all relevant social media platforms to stay top-of-mind for potential clients. Share images or videos of your completed projects, before and after photos, answer frequently asked questions and offer tips and advice specific to your expertise.
2. Localize & Engage. The best way to build brand authority is by engaging with your followers and the local communities you serve. Respond to comments, answer questions, and participate in conversations related to your service and experience. It builds trust and credibility with potential customers.
3. Share Your Expertise: Prove your value by sharing your expertise and offering valuable information to your followers. Write blog posts, share articles, or post videos on your active channels to showcase your knowledge and capabilities. Even more importantly, have customers provide testimonials. Reviews are highly influential when it comes to finding the right home professional
4. Collaborate with Others: Partner with other complementary services, product companies, or influencers on marketing efforts to get more attention. Small businesses can work together to generate sales leads and earn business together. It’s a win, win. Social Media is an online window to your business. Make sure you represent yourself well.
Dave Korinek, Founding Partner at Magnetic Creative
How can home service professionals set up their brand guidelines for social media?
Let’s start with content, which would consist of posts that are relevant to the target audience and focus on topics that help to build trust. This could include a mixture of informative content – such as expert tips, transformation photos, testimonials, and behind-the-scenes snippets – to demonstrate that they have a deep understanding of the task at hand and are entertaining. After all, they are performing a service where people should feel the safest – their homes – so they want to come across as relatable humans. Curating and commenting on content from other industry professionals can help to establish up-to-date knowledge and authority in the field.
For engagement, home service professionals should respond quickly and politely to customer inquiries and complaints through social channels using empathetic, friendly, and authoritative language to convey a positive brand image consistently.
Finally, when it comes to analytics, home service professionals should track key metrics such as website visits, conversion rates from social media campaigns, and competitor trends to measure the success of their efforts and gain insight into customer needs.
These steps will help to build brand guidelines by allowing home service professionals to:
- Identify their target audience.
- Provide the model and content that will best resonate with them.
- Refine their digital strategy to promote their business and continue driving engagement.
- Gain a better understanding of their marketing efforts.
- Utilize the insights gained to focus on what works and modify what doesn’t to ensure their social media presence is effective and successful.
Amanda Weston, Founder at Blogs By Jarvis
What is the importance of a graphic design service for social media content?
Social media has evolved into one of the most effective tools in a brand’s arsenal for reaching out to its target audience. In fact, it is critical for businesses to recognize and value graphic design in social media marketing for their brands.
Graphic design is required by everyone. So, a better question would be, who doesn’t require graphic design?
The primary justification for this requirement is visual and creative publicity. In this day and age, where we come across countless well-known personalities on social media and competent experts and business specialists needing to reveal their material in the most useful way, design services on social media have become necessary.
Graphic design can assist a company in communicating with its target audience. A company uses this service to inform customers about the company’s mission, products, and services. It attracts customers and engages them in the product, as well as creating a distinct identity in the market.
You only have a few seconds to catch their attention and a minute to pique their interest. The effectiveness of your social media designs is critical.
Good graphic design in social media marketing is critical to capturing your target audience’s attention. Allow your customers to associate you with your social media designs, and they will return at some point to learn more about your products or services.
In reality, they are more likely to publicize your work and share it with their colleagues and acquaintances. Your target consumers will be able to recognize your brand more if your social media designs are consistent throughout.
Ezra Acebron, Operations Manager at DotYeti
How can home service professionals get involved with influencers on social media to reach more potential customers?
Home service professionals can work with influencers to effectively promote their services on social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. It is the best way to promote because it will attract a lot of attention, increasing awareness while also establishing credibility and trust among customers.
Here’s a step-by-step guide by Excellent Publicity on how home service professionals can collaborate with social media influencers to reach more potential customers:
1. Identify relevant influencers: Look for social media influencers on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube who have large, engaging followings and who may be interested in the products or services being offered. Look for influencers in a range of genres, including lifestyle, vlogging, comedic skits, and more.
2. Create engaging content: Collaborate with the influencer to create engaging content that highlights the home service professional’s services, such as social media posts, videos, and blog posts.
3. Share the content on social media: Share the content on the social media channels of both the home service professional and the influencer to increase its reach and exposure to both audiences.
4. Strong CTA – The call to action should be creative in order to elicit an immediate response from the audience. One effective strategy is to provide a promo code in the influencer’s name, giving their followers a discount on selected services.
You can also provide direct hyperlinks that redirect to the landing page on the influencer’s social media page to gain the most followers. Plan deliverables to include special offers and promotional codes. Word-of-mouth publicity is one of the most effective ways to increase the audience’s interest.
You can consider hiring a professional and experienced team, like Excellent publicity agency, that will consider all factors for a creative campaign. They can assist in the selection of influencers, script curation, cost planning, and campaign execution, thereby increasing brand recognition and website traffic.
Sakshi Thakkar at Excellent Publicity Agency
Social Media and Offline Interactions
How can social media help home professionals sell their services?
Social media not only gives home professionals a direct line of communication with current and prospective customers, but it also provides an opportunity for those professionals to tell their stories. In the process, you can build trust, position your brand as a thought leader, increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, and more – especially when social media is used in combination with other marketing efforts.
However, with numerous social media platforms out there made up of billions of combined users, it can be difficult to know where to start. Simply being on social media isn’t enough to make a true impact on your business – you need a strategy, and that begins with setting specific, trackable goals. Setting objectives is a way to hold yourself accountable and gives you an opportunity to pivot your strategy if those objectives aren’t being met. Identify what success looks like for your brand on social media, whether that’s building awareness around a new product or service, increasing newsletter sign-ups, or creating positive sentiment around your brand. From there, setting key performance indicators, such as impressions, followers, or clicks, can help track progress.
Keeping your customers top of mind is also key when developing a social media strategy – what are their challenges? Their pain points? And how can your content help solve those? Consistently posting authentic, valuable content on the platforms where your target audiences are active can help keep them engaged, keep your brand top of mind, and get you one step closer to achieving your business goals.
Kelly Bradley, Account Supervisor, PR & Social Media at 2.718 Marketing
How can home service professionals combine traditional marketing strategies with social media efforts?
When planning your marketing strategies, find ways to combine both traditional and social strategies that can dovetail into each other to be most effective. Traditional marketing incorporates print advertising and other forms of promotions. Social media can take those promotions to a whole new level through engaging content and visual imagery.
Examine your topic for your print marketing campaigns and find ways to make those messages more visually appealing, and translate that into your social media campaigns.
Bring your marketing to life
Use the uniqueness of your social media channels to bring your promotions to life. Social media can promote engagement as well as showcase your brand and visual assets in a very visual way.
Do you work with customers and have a visual way to present your work? Use carousel photos with before and after photos to showcase your work visually. Both Facebook and Instagram offer image carousels that can showcase multiple images with your post caption. Carousel images offer a more engaging way to showcase your work.
Do you have emergency services that are triggered by events? (for example, A roofing company that offers emergency roof repairs after hail storms). Prepare social media campaigns that can be used when storms hit using real images that you’ve collected over time. By creating – and approving – your content ahead of time, you take the guesswork and stress out of preparing your posts.
Contests can drive engagement
Brainstorm ways to encourage your customers to follow you on your social media channels. Social media contests are a great way to engage your followers on social media. Creating a contest that can be promoted in your traditional marketing, and driving people to your social media channels, can grow your followers and, at the same time, ensure that they are the right customers for your business.
When planning your marketing campaigns, utilizing both traditional and social media marketing can keep your services top of mind. And more importantly, with the proper planning and strategies, it can promote a richer customer experience and therefore grow your followers.
Donna Galassi, Blue Zenith Design + Strategy
How can home service professionals use social media to their advantage at a trade show?
1. Entice, Engage, Educate. Those are the core principles of every trade show booth. Tapping into the knowledge that comes with Home Service Professionals is key to bringing those principles to life.
2. Social media can be the bridge to attendees to show them WHY they NEED to stop by your booth. Your posts should follow the same model.
3. How are you enticing attendees to stop by your booth, and why does it matter to them? Is there a contest? Is there an exciting speaker? Is there a demo of your services that will WOW them?
4. What are you doing to engage with attendees prior to the show? If you share social content, make sure to respond to all the comments. You should be speaking with your audience and not at them.
5. Is there something you can teach your audience that will make life easier or solve a problem? Are there questions you get on a regular basis you can answer? For free. No strings attached.
Coming up with ideas for social content can be overwhelming. Start by making a list of the questions you receive regularly. Answer those in the form of posts. Focus on the value you will give to the attendee, and you’re already winning. Get the story started through social so attendees can’t wait to stop by and meet you. It doesn’t have to be complicated, it just needs to be different.
Jay Menashe, SVP & Marketing at EDE Corporation
What are the benefits of using social media analytic tools for home professionals?
Using social media analytics tools adds great value to your marketing strategy. These tools provide insights into the performance of your social media efforts and can direct you to make better decisions about your online presence.
Analytics tools help you understand your audience better. By analyzing demographic information, engagement patterns, and popular content, you can adjust your posts to connect with your target audience.
Moreover, these tools track key performance metrics, such as likes, shares, and comments. This data allows home professionals to assess the success of their marketing strategies, identify trends, and optimize their strategy for optimal results. Home professionals can identify which platforms and content types generate the most leads or conversions, allowing them to allocate resources more efficiently.
Hot in Social Media
In today’s digital age, there is no shortage of tools and strategies available to help you increase your brand awareness and strengthen relationships with your customers. By following the expert tips and advice provided by our social media marketing experts, you can gain a strong grasp of this ever-evolving landscape.
From creating compelling content to leveraging the latest social media platforms, you need to build a successful online presence and engage with your target audience effectively. So, start your social media journey on the right foot and discover the power of a strong digital strategy today!