Social media in the construction industry plays a large part in bringing in new prospects, especially for a home builder or remodeler with a somewhat limited service area. This article outlines what you need to know about reaching your audience and capturing higher engagement rates than ever before.
Whether you’re an early-stage home project contractor or an established custom home builder who’s new to the social media world, there’s one thing you should know: It’s okay to start small, but you need to start now.
9 Home Builder Social Media Tips to Boost Engagement
Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just getting started with social media for construction, the following tips will help ensure you’re reaching your ideal audience with the right content.
1. Post Where Your Audience Is
Simply put, the best social media platforms for construction companies are the ones your audience is on.
As a home builder or contractor, your prospects are less likely to be on professional networking social media platforms and more likely to be on platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram. The goal here is to fully commit to one or two networks.
Facebook is a preferred platform for many businesses that offer local services and cannot travel outside of a certain radius. This is the ideal platform to connect with local patrons, interact with community pages, showcase your work, and host reviews from previous clients for your potential prospects to see.
Facebook is also perfect for establishing your business’ location, hours of operation, phone number, and website, and including an about section for the services you offer.
The platform has a large set of publishing tools that can help your posts shine and feel organic, even if you don’t have extended periods of time to spend creating your social content.
Remember that this is the place to let your personality shine and engage with your audience. If one of your prospects comments on a photo, comment back. If another interested individual messages you on Facebook Messenger, try to respond in a timely manner.
And let’s not forget about the unique opportunity to promote your business within Facebook groups. The communities where your ideal clients live are bound to have groups dedicated to community events, providing a place where you can promote your services. Just be sure to adhere to group rules and policies.
Pinterest was made for all things visual, making it the ideal place for you if you have stunning imagery to use on your page. Construction social media posts showcasing beautiful homes are the perfect way to find individuals who are ready for your services.
To ensure you aren’t connecting with the wrong crowd, be sure to include your city and state in your profile, captions, and pins. You’ll want people to know, without a doubt, that you are located in one specific area.
Also, keep in mind that individuals on Pinterest are initially looking for inspiration. They are looking for finished pictures, before and afters, and even floor plans they can use for their home project. Progress photos with just framing completed probably won’t perform well or get a lot of interaction.
Instagram should be used similarly to Pinterest, in that it is a highly visual platform where people often look for inspiration. Post pictures, Reels, and stories about project updates, your team in action, and finished homes you have helped create. Just be sure you’re sizing images and videos correctly so nothing gets cut off.
And don’t forget hashtags and location tagging. Hashtags can help categorize your business’ profile based on the kind of company you are and services you offer, while also drawing engagement from locals looking under area-specific tags.
For location tagging, keep it simple and tag your town or a nearby neighborhood. Users will use these locations to find you and interact with you.
Other Construction Social Media Platforms
- TikTok and YouTube are great for brands with access to professional-level production equipment and a sense of humor. These platforms are specific to video content and require a larger time commitment to produce exceptional content.
- Houzz and Porch are used by those looking to start a home project, making them great platforms for home builders with plenty of pictures of completed work and knowledge to share. These platforms are also great places for your happy customers to leave reviews. After all, positively reviewed companies usually win projects over those with no reviews or online presence.A final note about all of the social media platforms above is that they’re almost always used for awareness.
The users on these channels are exploring their options and seeing what’s out there. They might not be ready to sign on the dotted line, so be sure to direct them back to your website or encourage them to contact you so you can continue nurturing the relationship.
2. Personalize Your Profiles
Social media for construction companies can be a great place to let your business’s personality shine.
Showcase your brand in a consistent way via your “handle” or name on each platform, profile pictures, and cover photos. This will go a long way in terms of brand consistency and helping your audience find you.
In the same vein, make sure you add clickable social icons or your profile handle/name to your homepage, business cards, email signatures, and other marketing materials. While you use your social channels to promote your website and content, use your other channels of communication to promote your social media pages.
Also, include company slogans or mantras where appropriate in posts, use language that you would use in conversations with your prospects, and use emojis if that’s your cup of tea. This is your profile, and you want it to give off the right impression of your company.
Maybe you believe that social media posts for construction companies should be serious and professional. But in reality, people rarely want to comment or share posts that sound robotic or inorganic. Let your company culture shine here by talking about why certain projects are special — and your audience will reward you with engagement.
3. Showcase Your Work
We don’t want to burst your bubble, but stock photography is not the move for home builder social media posts.
You create gorgeous work, and your best tool for bringing in new clients is to showcase it. If your feed is full of obvious stock photography, this can hurt your credibility in the eyes of your audience.
Take photos of your crew in action, projects before you start and in the same place after you finish, and families seeing their completed dream homes for the first time.
At the end of the day, individuals are more likely to interact with a business profile that they think is real and credible. Having great imagery seems like a no-brainer, but it’s often overlooked by business owners. If you’ve fallen into the rut of pulling a stock image off the internet, try switching it up and seeing what kind of engagement it brings.
4. Share a Well-Balanced Mix of Content
On every social network, you need a solid mix of self-promotion, testimonials, and original content that’s of pure value to your readers. Need construction company social media content ideas? You probably have more to share than you think.
- Can you reuse any press coverage or recent awards you’ve received and share it on Facebook?
- Can your photographer take new lifestyle shots and share the images on Pinterest?
- Can a graphic designer create branded graphics for Instagram?
- Can you think outside the box and create posts that address problems, concerns, or interests your clients have that are relevant to your business?
If you have a low budget and no branded content to share, consider starting a blog about common home builder topics. Share peeks behind the scenes and showcase how you’ve helped clients redesign their living space or build the home of their dreams.
Don’t be afraid to do a little research either. You can look at other companies similar to yours and see how they are utilizing social media. You should never copy their content ideas, but you can take inspiration on how you can deliver your company’s remarkable features to draw in customers.
Social media post ideas for construction companies can be as simple or as complex as you want them to be. If you’re truly looking to gain customers and leads through these platforms, you’ll need to dedicate time, labor, and resources to developing your social presence.
It’s time to get creative, and this is when a freelance writer can come in handy, especially if you don’t have an in-house writer who’s comfortable with and knowledgeable about creating social media content. You can also work with an agency experienced in social media strategy for construction companies to handle everything on your behalf.
5. Use Video
Video allows your audience a deeper dive into a specific project and allows you the opportunity to continue building brand awareness and personality. This is where you can show your expertise in the industry by pointing out special designs and unique materials, as well as explaining why your craftsmanship is built for life.
Unfortunately, iPhones aren’t always the best for capturing professional-grade videos. They’re fine for a quick story video on Facebook or Instagram, but if you’re truly looking to wow your audience, invest in something that will make your projects look amazing. We love the Go-Pro range of products because they’re great for mounting to capture time-lapses.
The key takeaway here is that video assets can be as simple or in-depth as you want. It might be tempting to create an hour-long video showcasing the tiled backsplash throughout a home’s kitchen and bathrooms. But don’t underestimate the power of a quick 5-minute video that will pull your audience in and leave them wanting more.
For further engagement, ask your audience to answer a question or provide their opinion in the comments section.
6. Engage With Your Audience
Speaking of engagement, interacting with your audience is a quick win in your social media efforts. Your audience wants to know that there is an individual behind the screen that is excited to interact with them. Answer your direct messages, reply to comments, and go the extra mile by interacting with other business accounts in your area.
You’ve heard the saying “You get what you give,” and social media engagement is no exception to that rule. Your audience will welcome you with open arms when you play the game and look at social media as a two-way conversation. Plus, you’ll get more followers and make important connections in the process.
7. Start Networking and Social Listening
You have to consume social media to win at social media marketing for construction. The good news is that in this arena, it’s okay to steal — it’s called “sharing,” and you should do it often as long as you give credit.
Set aside at least ten minutes each day to read your feeds and interact with your network. No matter what platform you use, you need to be actively following influencers, experts, brands, and publications in your industry. Retweet their articles, like their posts, share their updates, comment on their blogs, or link to their content.
8. Try Your Hand At Social Media Advertising
Paid social media advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn is an indispensable tool for construction companies looking to showcase projects, engage with the community, and reach potential clients.
What sets social media advertising apart is its precision in targeting specific demographics and interests, allowing construction firms to reach individuals in their target areas who express a genuine interest in home improvement, renovation, or construction services. Plus, social media advertising can be used with any budget — big or small.
A word of caution: Consider the timing, as holiday seasons can be competitive, and avoid over-targeting, which may affect results. Experiment to find the perfect approach for your company.
9. Measure Your Growth
One of the most important parts of leveraging construction social media marketing is to measure your performance and growth. If you don’t know where you started, how will you plan to improve?
The analytics tools within business accounts for social media are surprisingly insightful. With these tools, you can determine when your audience is online, the kinds of posts they already enjoy, and the posts they aren’t particularly fond of.
From here, you can make internal adjustments to boost your engagement. If you notice that a post you published two weeks ago on a Wednesday at 2 PM got more engagement than a post from last Wednesday at 11 AM, try posting again at 2 PM to see if your likes and comments go up. Small changes like this can make a large difference in your engagement.
Additionally, if you find that your audience isn’t loving your detailed post captions, try a shortened version for a while. This could indicate that your content is not easily digestible and needs to be a high-level overview to really grab the attention of your audience.
Keep in mind that these recommendations or examples may not relate to your construction company social media posts directly. You will need to spend a little bit of time digging into the “why” of your analytics.
Grow Your Business With Construction Social Media Marketing
Home builder social media marketing is a time-consuming but important reality for any construction business. It will help increase your Google search rankings, give your brand a human voice, and allow your clients to start a conversation with ease. Now, you just have to stay consistent.
Abandoned presences are worse than no presence at all. When you enter the social media space, you’re building a relationship with your audience, potential customers, and brand enthusiasts. Don’t let them down by starting a great social media effort and then going silent. In the world of social media, consistency and effort are key.
Still, at the end of the day, you’re an expert in building dream homes — likely not in social media. That’s where an agency can partner with you to create outstanding results.
Agencies like LAIRE work in social media on a daily basis, keep up with trends, and have strategies best suited for each industry they work in. So if you have questions about how your home building company can up its social media game, let’s talk.
