Social Media For Contractors: How Often Should I Post? [Infographic]

how often should I post on social media?

As a contractor, you’re busy. Maybe you’re busy enough that you’ve written off social media altogether. When you’re dumping time into Twitter and Facebook but not getting much traction, it can seem like a huge waste of effort. Sometimes you feel like social media for contractors just isn’t worth the energy.

I know that feeling, and so do thousands of other contractors around the country. Sometimes it seems like your posts and messages are invisible.

I’ve already written a few posts about social media visibility. Knowing where your audience (in your case, your ideal homeowner) hangs out online is important, and so is the effective use of hashtags. If you want greater visibility, check out those posts. They’re still very useful.

In this post, though, I want to talk about time, rather than visibility. You time is short and precious… how much and how often should you post on each of your social networks?

I’ve embedded an infographic from Buffer (in conjunction with SumAll), a leading social media scheduling tool, below. It will tell you exactly how many times to post per day on each platform.

Click here to skip down to the infographic.

This subject comes up often with my clients, so I want to throw my hat into the ring, too. Knowing how many times per day to post is important, but knowing why you should find a social media system (and schedule) is even more important.

Social Media Frequency

There are several reasons why social media posting frequency is important. To get the most value out of each social media platform, you need to demonstrate your expertise, as a contractor, and provide value to your homeowners. Consistently sharing useful content is the easiest way to provide that value.

You have to strike a balance between informative versus annoying, as Buffer says. You want to post enough to show you’re involved, and to show you care about providing value and catering to the needs of homeowners. You also don’t want to spam your followers. If you think your following is small now, wait until you tweet fifteen times or more a day.

Believe me, you could be much less successful than you are now. Never underestimate the negative power of spam.

There’s an even more important consideration when it comes to social media frequency, though– your time.

If you know how often to post, you won’t spend nearly as much time on social media. Eliminating guesswork and putting a system in place can save you quite a bit of time.

Even when you know how many times, per day, to post, you’ll still need to find optimal posting times and test which types of content resonate best with your target homeowners.

From Dan Wilkerson of LunaMetrics:

The reality is that the best that you can do is forecast what might be more ideal times or frequencies to post at. To ‘know’ the BEST is an impossibility. You can only predict and measure. It’s important to place the discussion in this light is because speaking in terms of prediction and measurement implies an ongoing cycle, whereas speaking in terms of ‘knowing’ implies an end-all be-all solution.

So, you’ll have to test, but you can test within your system.


What to Post

Very briefly, I want to address providing value and showcasing your expertise one more time. Homeowners probably don’t care about the ins and outs of metal roofing materials, but they probably care about metal roofing’s environmentally-friendly nature and how it can save them on energy costs.

Share these types of content:

  • DIY projects or home improvements (especially in video form)
  • Photos of aesthetically pleasing homes
  • Funny stories from the job site
  • Inspiring stories from contractors and construction professionals
  • Local and community events
  • Local news, especially if it’s uplifting
  • How to save money in the home
  • Home maintenance tips
  • Your own content, especially before and after photos

Another quick tip most contractors (and most businesses, really) miss out on– don’t assume you know what homeowners want to see. Do a little research. Ask one of your customers in person the next time you talk to them. It doesn’t have to be a long conversation, and the results might surprise you.

Save Time with Scheduling

In a post from earlier this year, I covered this more in-depth, but social media scheduling tools will also help you save time.

You can find a few pieces of content as you browse the internet at home or in your truck, put them into your social media scheduling tool of choice, and be done with social media for the day.

The two free tools I recommend are Hootsuite and Buffer. They’re easy to learn, and it’s easy to make a habit out of using them regularly.

You can keep your social media queue full, without having to regularly log into your accounts and manually post. It’s a great time saver.

That being said, I recommend you manually check your accounts, once per day, and respond to any and all homeowner comments or questions. Saying ‘thank you’ when it’s appropriate, even just over Twitter, can generate massive goodwill.

Infographic

You’re probably not using Pinterest or Google+ much at this point, and most B2C contractors don’t focus heavily on LinkedIn, either. Though, it’s smart to log in to LinkedIn every few days; it’s a useful tool for any professional.

The research from Buffer recommends posting to Twitter three times, per day and to Facebook two times, per day. The infographic and this post explain the reasoning. Check it out below:

How often to post on social media

To visit the original post, click on the image or click here

Social media for contractors doesn’t have to be a total time suck.

You can find great success and save yourself a world of time by sticking to a social media system and using scheduling software. Remember, social media is never about instant success. If you stick with it, though, you can demonstrate your expertise and provide value to homeowners in your area, and, they’ll be more likely to think of you the next time they need a job done.

You don’t have to waste time on social media anymore.

To your marketing success!

-Brodie

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