Social media
Sold properly it is the cheapest proof you can own.
For a landscaper the photograph is the product. For a gas engineer it is where your service reminders get seen a second time. For a scaffolder it is thirty site managers on LinkedIn. Same service, eight completely different jobs.
Nobody follows a plumber, and that is not the point
The advice given to trades about social media is almost always the follower version: post consistently, build an audience, engage. It is advice borrowed from businesses whose customers want to hear from them regularly, and no homeowner wants a weekly update from their plumber.
What a trade account is actually for is proof. When somebody has your name and is deciding whether to ring, a lot of them will look. What they find — recent work, real jobs, a business that clearly still exists — decides the call more often than anything on your website. The audience is not the followers. It is the twenty people a month who check you out before making contact.
Once that is the goal, most of the standard advice inverts. Posting frequency matters far less than what the last nine posts look like. Reach matters less than the fact that the work is obviously yours and obviously recent.
What we actually do
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Work out which platform is your customer’s.
For a landscaper it is Instagram, for a scaffolder it is LinkedIn and thirty site managers, for most domestic trades it is the local Facebook groups where recommendations get asked for.
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Build the posting around the work you already do.
Photographs from jobs you were on anyway, not a content calendar that needs inventing.
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Make the grid do the proof job.
Somebody checking you sees nine posts. Those nine decide it, so they get treated as a page rather than as a feed.
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Show the parts customers worry about.
Tidy sites, protected floors, finished edges, the van leaving. The reassurance is the content.
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Get the job details into the caption.
What it was, roughly where, roughly what it cost. That is what makes a post useful to somebody deciding.
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Keep it going without it becoming your evening.
A photo routine on site that takes a minute, and we do the rest.
Eight trades, eight different answers
For a landscaper the photograph genuinely is the product and the account can carry the business. For a gas engineer it is a place service reminders get seen a second time. For a builder it is a build diary that outperforms every other kind of post. For a scaffolder it is not consumer social at all.
The trade pages below argue each of those out, including the three where the obvious answer is the wrong one.
The first ninety days
- Weeks 1–4
The right platform chosen, the profile rebuilt as a proof page, and a photo routine that survives a working week.
- Weeks 5–8
Posting steady, captions carrying job detail, and the local groups worked properly where they matter.
- Weeks 9–12
What people actually looked at is visible, and the mix shifts towards it.
What good looks like
- The last nine posts would convince a stranger on their own
- Posting comes from jobs you were doing anyway
- The captions say what the job was and roughly what it cost
- You are present where your customers ask for recommendations
- It takes minutes a week of your time, not evenings
Questions we get asked
How many followers should I be aiming for? It is close to irrelevant. Twenty of the right people checking you each month matters more than two thousand who will never buy.
How often do I have to post? Often enough that the last post is recent. Weekly is plenty for most trades.
Do I have to be on camera? No. The work photographs better than you do, and it makes the point more directly.
What about paid social? Occasionally worth it for area launches and seasonal work. For most trades the same money does more in paid search, where people are already looking.
Find out what your website is costing you
Put your website in and we'll tell you what's losing you work — speed, mobile, your Google profile, reviews and the pages you're missing. Two minutes, no call unless you want one.