Why You Can’t Rely On Social Media Alone For Your Trade & Construction Business.
Let’s get this straight.
Social Media – done well – can be brilliant for your Trade and Construction business.
Communities get to know about you.
You can interact with people you don’t even know.
A place to collect reviews.
Take enquiries.
Show off your work.
Have recommendations land in your lap.
💛 We love it.
We even help our clients manage it.
This is by no way telling you that you should stop using Social Media.
Oh no.
What this is a lesson in, however, is why you should never rely on it.
Alone.
Without doing anything else for your brand and marketing.
And the dangers of this, if you do.
Sounds extreme.
And it kind of is.
Once you’ve read on, you’ll understand why.
So let’s start with the biggest and most important reason first.
1. Your Trade and Construction business does not own any of the social media platforms.
This is the big one.
You do not own any of these social media platforms.
Not Facebook.
Not Instagram.
Not LinkedIn.
You get the picture.
Which means they can do pretty much what they like, when they like.
Without consulting you.
They do not care how much time you have spent setting up your company LinkedIn Page.
They do not care how much money you have invested designing graphics for your Instagram.
⚠️ If Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook decides tomorrow that he wants to turn Facebook off, then he turns it off.
And they won’t be asking you first.
🏡 If all your Trade and Construction marketing efforts are pumped solely into social media platforms with nothing else then you, my friend, are building a house on rented land.
So let’s say they turn Facebook off.
Or LinkedIn. Or any of the others.
Or the platforms permanently breaks down.
Hackers for example.
Every bit of content you’ve ever created there?
Gone.
All the reviews left?
Like they never existed.
(Which is why it’s important to record all of your reviews. (Learn how, here)
Every ‘friend’ or ‘connection’ you have made on there?
Disappeared.
Unless they are your actual friends.
Or you have some of these folk in your phone book, of course.
But we all know a tonne of our social media buddies that are only linked to us through these platforms, right?
So they all go up in smoke.
All those direct messages – enquiries, conversations, potential leads.
Vanished.
If you’re going to invest everything you have on rented land, you have to do so knowing that the land can be pulled up under your feet.
At any time.
Real fast.
Let that be today’s food for thought.
2. The information we need is scattered across social media for your Trade and Construction marketing.
The best way for me to describe this one it to compare it to a website.
🟡 SCENARIO 1.
Let’s say you’re in the market for a new drill.
You see an advert on social media for what looks like a good bit of kit and a really good deal.
It’s given you minimal information but it’s sparked your interest.
On the advert there is a link to the main website.
You click it.
And you’re taken to a page that shows you all the details about this drill.
Everything you need to know.
You look over the page to:
✅ Check it hits the spec you’re after.
✅ Read the customer reviews.
✅ See what extras are included.
✅ Delivery times work for you.
And if it ticks all the boxes you enquire or you buy.
If it doesn’t?
And you realise you might need a drill that has a few different bits?
You make your way to the drills page on the website and start looking at other models.
It may even have an option where you can compare drills.
Bottom line.
Every bit of information you need on your next drill is on this one website.
Easy to find.
Quick to navigate through.
Chances are pretty high you’ll make a purchase.
Versus this.
🟡 SCENARIO 2.
Let’s say you’re in the market for a new drill.
You see an advert on social media for what looks like a good bit of kit and a really good deal.
It’s given you minimal information but it’s sparked your interest.
There is no website link on this post so you click to the Profile Image to take you to the builders merchant Facebook page.
The drill looks really good on their post, but you need it tomorrow.
And you need to know what other trades have said about it and this company’s service.
So first you go to the Facebook reviews tab and start scrolling.
There are hundreds of reviews.
About hundreds of different tools that this builders merchant stocks.
You just want to see what people have said about this drill.
You spend awhile scrolling through but find nothing.
So have to go to Google for the reviews.
Ok fine.
You get on with that.
But you want to know if the drill can be delivered tomorrow to you.
So you start scrolling through the builders merchant Facebook page to see if there is any delivery information as nothing had been mentioned on this post.
You can’t see anything.
No website has been listed for them for you to check deliveries.
No-one is picking up the phone.
They have an email address but you’re out on site.
This is not the best time for you to be writing emails right now plus you can’t wait for them to respond hours later (if at all) and miss the deadline for next day delivery, IF they even offer it.
So what do you do?
Jump onto Google and search for the drill there.
Someone else gets the business.
Ok so what is my point here.
A good website is built to give as much information as possible to potential clients.
All in one place.
When it comes to Social Media, more often than not, we have to go looking.
For the details.
We don’t get everything we need in one place.
Because Social Media is about snippets of content and sparking interest.
Not giving us the entire full picture.
In most cases.
And if you’re not on top of your Social Media game, if we have to make too much effort to go looking for what we need, then we leave.
Just like if we get tired scrolling through that merchant’s page for miles on end trying to find another post about that drill to tells us if there’s next day delivery, for example.
And so we go search for your trade service elsewhere.
Even when you do have a first-class social media presence for your Trade and Construction brand and marketing there are, more often than not, pieces of information missing.
Information that is unlikely to be missing on a website.
Because that’s a website’s job.
To tell us everything we need to know so we can make a buying decision.
Or suss of if this is the company for us.
Social Media – when used in the best way – is to build the hype.
Show us the sizzle, not tell us about the sausage.
So to speak. 🌭
3. There is so much noise that your Trade and Construction marketing has to compete with.
Think of Social Media like a party.
A kids party.
To keep it simple.
And firing up your Facebook or Instagram app is like walking through the door of said kids party.
You are hit with a lot when that door opens.
🎶 There’s music going off.
🤡 A clown performing in the living room.
👶🏾 A couple of babies screaming.
🏃🏽♂️ Kids running in and out of every room.
⚽️ Cheers from older kids playing football in the garden.
🗣 A gang of parents talking in the kitchen.
☀️ Dave showing Stan his holiday snaps on the iPhone.
It's more like social media than we thought.
No-one even notices you are there.
Point being.
There’s a lot of noise.
And you need to cut through all the noise to find your kid amongst the hundred others bouncing off the sofas and hanging from the light shades.
Extreme.
Just like social media.
If you and your business are to get any attention on social media, you have to cut through the noise.
And that takes a lot of investment.
Work wise.
Energy wise.
Financially perhaps.
Imagine your Trade and Construction business is one of the kids at the party.
Well that might not be too bad if there are only 4 kids there.
You’re likely to get noticed.
But what happens if there are 50 kids at that party?
100?
100,000?
You catch my drift.
By relying on social media alone not only are you competing with tonnes of other Trade and Construction companies who may offer similar services.
Your Trade and Construction marketing still has to cut through adverts from other business types like florists, funeral parlours, knitting groups.
It’s a noisy place to get attention.
And if you’re going to get attention you need to be doing it consistently and correctly.
If not, you might as well be standing at the door of that kids party.
Unnoticed.
If you really think about it, being on social media is even more competitive than ‘real-life’.
Because you’re even competing with the likes of Dan’s holiday snaps.
Food for thought.
4. Social Media platforms always have total control for your Trade and Construction marketing.
Elon musk has just purchased Twitter.
At the time of writing this.
So what does he have instore for us?
Will Tesla cars have a Twitter button on the steering wheel?
Will Twitter only be accessible from your Tesla driving seat?
Who knows.
The point is, Twitter is now under new ownership.
Which means there is a super high chance that a lot is going to change over the coming years.
Because it’s his business.
How annoying, time-consuming and frustrating have you found it when Facebook made changes to the platform.
Or Instagram.
When you knew where an important button was, now it’s moved.
Or they removed a certain tool.
It happened for us.
Remember Video Facebook Cover Photos?
You might not.
It was utilised enough in our opinion.
Anyway.
The Cover Image is the top panel on a Facebook page behind the profile image.
Well.
There was a time they allowed video to be uploaded there.
We created a bunch of awesome videos for our Trade and Construction clients.
It was possibly our favourite Facebook tool.
Great from your Trade and Construction brand and marketing the second someone lands on your page.
Then what happened?
One day, we were doing the usual posting for our clients and we noticed that the Facebook Cover Photo was blank.
All greyed out.
For all of our clients.
Where we had always had a video.
So we contacted Facebook.
(Which by the way, was super difficult to find!).
They told us they discontinued video cover photos.
Just like that.
No warning.
The developers felt that not enough people utilised the function…
…it was our favourite function!...
…so they removed it.
❌ And I had to be the barer of bad news to my decorator client who had just paid us the week before to design, create and uploadhisFacebook Cover Video!
Thankfully, he was very understanding.
Plus we had in our terms that we can’t take responsibly for social media platform changes.
We used the video for something else anyway.
But it was disappointing for our client and felt disastrous for us.
Proof in the pudding.
That you could be working on something epic for your social media pages.
With a videographer.
A designer.
A social media manager.
And at the drop of a hat, these social media platforms can delete, change, add and stop anything they want that can turn your entire trade and construction marketing plan on it’s head.
Another big reminder why you need to be mindful if social is your only form of Trade and Construction marketing.
5. You have no control over negative reviews for your Trade and Construction business.
This one is very interesting.
And boils down more to Facebook, LinkedIn’s and even the likes of the review platforms like Which?, more than the Instagram’s of the world.
Online client reviews are a game-changer for your Trade and Construction business.
Collecting as many rave reviews as possible for your potential future clients to see, could be just the nudge in the right direction they need.
They do so much of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to your brand and marketing.
*If you need a little help nailing more money-making reviews for your Trade and Construction business then check this out.
The downside of these platforms, naturally, is that you can’t control the negative reviews.
If someone if going to leave one – whether it’s true or not – it’s a tough grind getting them removed.
If you need a little help knowing how to handle a negative review in your business, then you’ll want to check this out.
Whereas if you think about your company website, you decide what content goes on there.
And we are all for scattering reviews across your whole website, not just a testimonials page.
And of course, you are not going to be promoting a negative review on there, are you?
So all the reviews you use across your website, brochures and other arketing material is going to be all the great reviews people have left for you.
Right?
Whereas on social media, you don’t get to hide any negative ones that have been left.
Because the social media channels leave control in the hands of those leaving them.
Not you.
Yes, you can contest them with the platform if they are untrue.
But that could take weeks.
If it’s even removed at all.
There are ways you can handle any negative reviews left to help protect your brand (be sure to check here for help on this) but bottom line, negative reviews are pretty much out of your hands.
And you’ll have a fight on your hands when it comes to contesting them with the platforms.
6. 🛑 If you are hacked or locked out, your Trade and Construction marketing stops.
🔒 Have you ever been locked out of your Facebook account?
Or your Instagram?
Happens to so many people I know.
It’s happened to me.
My account was hacked.
Facebook noticed it and locked my account for safety.
But I couldn’t get back in.
That sense of panic.
Adrenaline pumping through you.
Just like it was that moment Gareth Southgate was about to take that penalty.
Are all those connections gone forever?
Will you ever have access to it again?
It's gripping stuff.
If you are relying solely on social media for all your Trade and Construction marketing, then when you are locked out of your accounts, all your marketing stops.
Just like that.
Well that might not cause you a huge problem for a day or two.
But what about when that day or two turns into a week or two?
Or a month or two?
We’re not seeing or hearing from your business.
But your competition are still consistently popping up.
Your visibility goes down so what might happen to your enquiries?
Someone recommends a friend or colleague to check out your Facebook page, for example, and the first thing they notice is that you haven’t uploaded anything for months.
Might they think you have ceased trading?
Post pandemic, could be a possibility.
Might they think you’re not on the ball with your marketing?
Does that mean you’ve taken your eye off the business too?
You’d be surprised what conclusions folk may come to themselves.
And whilst all this is going on, you’re battling with the likes of Facebook and Instagram to get your account back online…
…along with thousands of others.
There’s no quick fix.
When I was locked out of my account, I got back in after 5 days.
And I was lucky enough to have a friend who worked at Facebook who was helping me.
I’ve known others fight for months to get access back.
Waiting for the Facebook Folk to get back to them.
Imagine the impact this had on their Trade and Construction business when their entire marketing plan was on Facebook.
Disastrous.
⭐️ PRO TIP: Make someone you trust an admin of your Trade and Construction Facebook page too. So, if you are ever locked out, they can still access and help you manage the page whilst you get your account sorted.
Don’t rely on Social Media alone to market your Trade and Construction business.
It really is that simple.
⬇️ Why You Can’t Rely on Social Media Alone For Your Trade And Construction Marketing Rundown:
1. You don’t own any social media platforms. They are rented land!
2. We may have to search hard to find specific information about you.
3. Noise and competition to consider.
4. Features on the platforms can change at any time.
5. No control over negative reviews.
6. If you’re hacked or locked out, your marketing stops.
Need a little more help nailing your Website for your Trades and Construction marketing?
Course you do.
First. Let’s work out where you are with all things Websites.
Got 3 minutes?
Take our Trades Quiz to discover how you score with all things ‘Off The Tools’.
We have heaps of tips, tricks, and hacks for your Trade and Construction business in our cheat sheets, videos and ideas waiting for you on the other side… i.e., your results page.
So, you can improve your score. And NAIL your Trade and Construction business.
Nice.