Well, “surprise, surprise!”, the top social media platform for tradies is…Facebook!

According to SensisFacebook has 15 million users in Australia, who diligently (and religiously) log on to their platform an average of 31.9 times per week! Somewhat astoundingly, the typical Facebook user also spends more than twelve and a half hours per week on the platform. That’s a whopping one and a half working days, spent trawling through the timelines of family, friends and the Pages of businesses they follow, like and support!

Word of mouth, or social proof will always be critical for tradies and as more and more people are going to Facebook first for service providers and supplier recommendations, a quick browse of your Facebook Page can showcase to a potential new customer your most recent projects, allow them to see customer reviews and testimonials and get a good feel for you and your business’ brand.

Pinterest – Surprisingly, Pinterest is converting sales at the second highest rate for suppliers, according to Basic Bananas (I’ve conferred with my peers in the marketing world on this and we’re all in agreement on this). I nearly fell off the chair I wasn’t sitting on, and mumbled “get trucked!” under my breath when I heard that. Pinterest’s ‘Save for Inspiration’ button is where the action’s at. Tradie suppliers are likely to do better out of Pinterest, as it’s a great platform for sharing product shots. Like Twitter, Google’s spiders can permeate, digest and index Pinterest content reasonably well too, which means that the content you post there will show up in search results in Google, providing you tag and describe your posts well.

Instagram – For now at least, the use of Instagram is on a bit of a case-by-case basis, mainly depending on the nature of your trade. There are some excellent building, carpentry and landscaping business pages on Instagram, for instance. However, the verdict is still very much out for plumbers and electricians, since these tend to be less visually-appealing trades. “Nice power outlet!”, or “Wow, look at that S-bend!?” are things you’re not likely to hear too often… Instagram does offer many of the same benefits as Facebook in that it does allow you to help tell the story of your business, and Instagram posts can double up as content you can share on your business Facebook page, so it’s worth being there too.

Twitter – We’re not super keen on Twitter for tradies just yet, unless you have a good relationship with a strong influencer who can retweet your posts regularly, because in reality, each tweet only has a super-tiny life of a mere 12 seconds! It’s valuable none the less, but it’s a veryfast moving platform and content is king there. There are some tradies on Twitter, but they tend to be those with much larger companies, and in Australia most of them and posting to Twitter in an automated way, and then sending the potential customer’s clicks on the Twitter post through to their Facebook Page or Instagram profiles. Twitter, is also much more about enabling B2B and for catching the news. Business related activity on Twitter is more about the regular Monday-Friday, 9-5 routine. 🙂

Google Plus – Rounding out our wrap-up of social media platforms, and one that can be perceived as a bit on the boring side – and is all too often forgotten – is Google Plus. It’s content is made public and it’s obviously a Google platform, so let’s face it – when it comes to SEO we all bow down to Google, in the hope that we can wrangle the beast to get our content to rank the way we want. Having a basic page on Google Plus can help get a jump start on the search engine rankings since business who are listed there appear on Google Maps, and ahead of the search engine results on desktop and mobile search. Google plus also connects well with email, so if you send quotes via email to customers it’ll help you out there too.

So….lots to think about. It might seem all a bit overwhelming, but that’s where we at Usforyou Australia can help out. Social media is SUPER important for tradies and you need to be there. Talk to us today to understand your business and your needs. We can get you up and running quickly and effectively.