If your construction business is using social media, how responsive are people to your messages? Are you getting likes, shares and comments from your followers and partners?
If not it’s time to make some essential changes to your social media campaigns.
Construction Business’ Go Missing on Social Media
The cold truth of social media is that great content can go missing.
Expecting to share something and the floodgates to open with people liking, sharing and clicking through are unrealistic in such an overpopulated marketing space.
People may see and acknowledge your message, but they might not feel the need to share or like it.
Traditionally used for fun and amusement, a viral response to your new construction product, service of case study is very uncommon. In some cases they may not even see it all.
There are ways to improve your chances with the inclusion of engaging images and repeating your posts at different times of the day, but the method of including @handles and tagging others instantly captures the attention of intended audience.
Social Media Shortcuts for Construction Business’
If you want to increase the reach potential of your posts here are five essential shortcuts you can make to your construction business social media messages to multiply your impressions, shares, likes and clicks.
1. Using the @ handle
On twitter, linkedin and Facebook you can use the @ function to include another person or company in your message.
For example if your business was involved with a particular housebuilder or project you might say:
“Great to see our system being installed by @housbuilder name at @project today”
Here’s a great example of how you companies finished tweet may look:
Using the @handle will notify the business associated with those social media accounts, who may choose to share your content to their social media audience of 1000’s, increasing visibility of your business to their audience
The Stats:
The key goal here is that by sharing using the @housebuilder and @architect handles it is possible to increase the “potential” number of viewers (impressions) and clicks (engagements) the tweet can achieve by creating the opportunity for it to be seen by significantly more twitter users than if it was only available to your followers.
Your twitter following may be 150, but there’s combined is several thousand. If both parties re-shared the content you would be visible to there audience creating potential for new relationships to be begin with minimal effort.
That is a worthwhile increase considering the minimal effort required and undoubtedly lead to your brand and those featured in the message being seen by new audiences. A benefit that your partners will surely value.
2. Image Tagging
Not keen on complicating your social media messages with @handles everywhere?
An alternative and more attractive method, is to attach a suitable image and tag companies relevant to the photo. This would also be the tidiest approach for including your own team in the message, to further increase the sharing potential.
As with the @handle approach the tagged company account will be notified, and in turn they may choose to like or re-share your content.
You may only be sharing the content once, but others are also increasing the reach and potential visibility of the message by extending the life of the message.
More than a Novelty
Tagging and @handles may seem novel, but they provide an example of how by working together with your partners beyond the initial transaction relationships can be enhanced further and new business opportunities can be generated.
3. The Hashtag #
Less about sharing and more about visibility and brand engagement the hashtag is a powerful tool for getting your business recognised when people search via social media platforms.
A construction company may always uses the hashtag #construction to appear in twitter social search for this topic. They may use other relevant hashtags such as #building and #sustainability to broaden their visibility to a relevant audience.
Short Term Power Hashtags
A clever way to use hashtags in twitter/facebook is to utilise the trends from panel down the left hand side of the news screen.
Using hashtags in your social media posts for a specific day e.g #wednesdaywisdom or #fridayfeeling can put your content in front of a much bigger audience.
An increase in impressions is guaranteed but don’t expect an audience to love or care about your content. Remember the trending hashtags are being viewed by millions of people who care little or have absolutely no awareness of your construction business. Employed in the right situation however, it could prove hugely rewarding.
Make the right judgement call when it comes to balancing short term impressions with the impact on your business. If you can make your mes- sage fit within the context it’s worth experimenting.
Below is an example of jumping on this royal wedding craze. It’s likely to gain little relevant traffic, but never underestimate the potential to be seen by someone relevant to your business.
Short term hash tags specific to construction events are a great way to increase the visibility of your message.
During the event Twitter users and event organisers will be following and engaging with the hashtag for the latest updates.
Event hashtags become competitive with companies keen to gain the spotlight, success is dependent on the content you are sharing but a concentrated effort will give your construction business excellent visibility and can help drive traffic to your stand, website or at your as minimum your social page.
Even if you are unable to attend a smart tactic may be to include the hashtag in your tweets as it will place your business in front of a a captive construction industry audience.
Below is an example of utilising the ecobuild2018 hashtag. Continuous use for all tweets during the event is essential:
Long Term Hashtags
A unique hashtag, used consistently can become a highly effective branding tool in your marketing efforts.
Used consistently and strategically alongside the right content it can tell a persuasive story about the ethos of your business.
The hashtag may be your company name, a strap line your company exclusively uses or a specific marketing campaign you are running.
Through consistent use your social media audience can access an entire stream of content related to your business simply by clicking the hashtag in your post.
People may also search for your hashtag using traditional search engines (Google), creating an additional route into specific content you are a promoting.
You can also monitor the performance of hashtags as a means to measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Marketing Campaigns
Companies with a large following adopt new hashtags to encourage people to get involved with their new marketing initiatives for launches and campaigns.
By encouraging their followers to use the new hashtag, they can identify their most valuable customers through their engagement with the hashtag.
The relationship can be enhanced by the hashtag creator choosing to share the customers content or following up with more personal communication.
4. Utilise Your Construction business’ Email Database
If the content of your social media message justifies it (a new landmark project, partnership or video) why not send a link to your social media message containing your content to your email database.
This could offer a number of significant benefits:
- Massively increase followers to your social media account (they may not have acknowledged you had a social media presence before)
- Increase shares and likes if people are logged in at the time as viewing your social media message. If you have
included @ and tagging those who tagged will see further benefits from your efforts to include them in your social media messages.
5. Direct Messages on Twitter
Maybe you want your original social media message to be clear and without the clutter of too many @handles or profile tags, but you still want the right people to see it.
An alternate method is to direct message (DM) a specific tweet to your followers to encourage them to interact with it. Direct messaging is only available to accounts that follow you back, but if the tweet is relevant to them it should lead to a similar response to @handles or tagging.
Another great benefit of using Direct Messages is you can send tweets that you feel are applicable to certain followers, even if the contents doesn’t feature them.
It’s a great way to get them to either re-share or action upon what you have sent them. If your tweet is important make sure it doesn’t get missed out by those who it concerns the most.
Construction Business Social Media is More Than Meets the Eye
Social media offers so much more to business’ in the built environment than may meet the eye. The potential leverage and coverage can serve to be of great value to your business.
Starting to use social media is a positive step, but to make that positive step a rewarding one it’s time to implement and measure the tools laid out here and really start making your content work for you via a sustained effort.
Starting to use social media is a positive step. But to make that positive step a rewarding one it’s time to leverage and really start making your content work for you. I hope these tips help your construction business take significant strides to stronger relationships and new business opportunities.
