Did you know that there are over 2.8 billion social media users globally?
This means that any business not using social media for promotional purposes is missing out on a huge opportunity. Customers are also statistically more likely to trust your business, if you utilise social media. Social media for tradesmen is no different than for any other business and is just as crucial to your marketing, as trade insurance is to your protection. Here’s our guide covering social media for business tips.
What social media can do for your business
Social media is a fantastic way to promote your trade, generate leads and reach out to your customers and target audience. Regardless of whether it’s a service or a product you’re selling:
- It gives you the opportunity to quickly develop and grow a relationship with your customers and target audience; building up a rapport can strengthen the power of word-of-mouth. Getting the word out about your business is one of the strongest tools that you can harness as a tradesman.
- Social media is one of the best tradesman advertising tools that you can utilise. It’s cost-effective and cheaper to use than traditional marketing tools, but comes with greater impact and reach, due to millions around the world using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram multiple times a day.
- As a tradesman utilising social media, you will have to build and manage your online profile regularly, but the returns on this will be great for your business. Statistics have shown that 75% of businesses that use social media, reported an increase in sales over the period of a year.
How to get the most out of your social media pages
Marketing tips for tradesmen:
Do’s:
- Support your posts with images – this catches the eye of customers and makes it more visually appealing. The images could be of your products or services, or work that you are currently carrying out.
- Be professional as how you carry yourself online speaks volumes about just how professional your business is.
- Reply to comments from customers regularly, as this is part of providing great customer service and showing your customers that you care.
- Reach out and follow those in your industry.
- Keep your brand consistent across the different social media platforms, as this will help build your brand credibility.
- Include your business hours and contact details such as phone numbers and an address so that your customers can contact you.
- Have an ‘About Us’ section to fully inform your customers of what your business actually does.
- Use a Facebook for business account and not your personal Facebook page.
- Include reviews.
- Share information about your business, products or services.
- Have a website too! Link back to your website from your social media pages.
Don’t’s:
- Don’t spam and post constant messages – once a day should suffice, but a lot of businesses only post 2-3 times a week.
- Don’t overload it with the hashtags, as this can become annoying for your customers.
- Don’t be unprofessional as this can reflect back on your business as a whole.
- Don’t ‘like’ your own posts, but you can encourage customers or employees to share your posts, increasing your brand visibility.
- Don’t delete negative comments – it’s better to respond and acknowledge the problem. Deleting posts will affect your business’ image and cause PR issues. It’s more effective to be proactive and show your customers that you actively deal with issues and care about customer feedback.
- Don’t rely on automation. Automation is spammy and causes your brand to lose its ‘human touch.’ Make your brand more personable and interactive – customers like knowing they are interacting with a real human being, rather than a computer.
Now that you know how to promote your trade on social media, online marketing for tradesmen will come naturally to you. Looking for trade insurance quotes too? Contact Business Choice Direct Insurance Services Ltd today to safeguard you and your tradesmen business.