Pros and cons of each social media platform

With TikTok and Instagram becoming ever more popular you might have thought about using social media to win yourself more work. Maybe you’re even on a few platforms, but which ones will increase your customer base without you having to pour all your time into them? 

Here, the expert from Built spell out the pros and cons of each social media platform so you can maximise your time off the tools.

Facebook

✅ The most popular social media platform — more people = more prospective customers.

✅ Favored by Trades – There are numerous trade community pages on Facebook where you can promote your services to other firms that may need subcontractors.

✅ Local & Small Business Focus — Compared to other platforms, Facebook has a strong local focus, making it an excellent social media network for small businesses and trades that provide services in a smaller local region.

❌ Time – Creating and updating your Facebook with updates and compelling content is difficult, especially if you are a tradesperson juggling being on the tools and operating a business.

❌ Negative Feedback – A Facebook business page allows customers to leave feedback! This can be both positive and negative as a trade you need to be mindful that a disgruntled customer could leave a scathing review

Conclusion: Facebook is an excellent place to start for tradespeople who want to build their online presence; it allows you to locate consumers in your area while also promoting your services. We suggest beginning with Facebook and using it as a gateway to see whether social media is the correct path for you.

Instagram

✅ Visual — Excellent for ‘visual trades,’ but also for doing before and after shots, finished projects, videos, team photos, or great infographics on your services.

✅ Great features – Including reels, IGTV, posts, and stories. Instagram provides amazing features that allow you to interact with your audience in a far less formal manner than Facebook.

❌ Not great for non-visual trades – Sorry electricians & heating engineers I love a good fuse board upgrade or boiler installation as much as the next guy but customers might not find these posts as engaging! This doesn’t mean it’s not for you though it could be a great way to show off you and the team, your van or other projects like lighting or designer radiators you may have installed

❌ Less organic reach — Instagram isn’t designed for small companies; it has a less local focus than Facebook and fewer possibilities for converting people to your website.

Conclusion: Instagram is wonderful for showcasing those visually appealing projects you’ve worked hard on; it allows you to provide them with a distinct visual representation of your work.

TikTok

✅ Satisfying Videos – If you do particularly satisfying work, such as screeding, record a video of it and it could go viral like idealflooring, which has over 2.5 million followers.

✅ Humorous Content– or you may go the path of rdaviselectrical, who keeps the banter between plumbers and sparky’s going on TikTok.

✅ Viral Potential – Unlike Facebook and Instagram, TikTok’s algorithm will allow new accounts to get viral quickly!

❌ Only for brand awareness – TikTok Trade accounts are still few, and their profiles are mostly used for brand awareness rather than direct advertising of their services.

❌ Limited by filming/ editing skills – for many trades, remembering to snap a photo of a project is tough. Now add in becoming a skilled editor and videographer, and you may be overwhelmed!

Conclusion: TikTok has a lot of viral potential, but the time constraints and additional skill requirements may make it difficult to get into if you’re already a busy trade.

Twitter

✅ Rewards High Engagement – Twitter promotes messages with higher engagement to the top of the newsfeed, so obtaining likes and replies will help your tweets do well!

✅ Brand Identity – With the limitation on content twitter-like TikTok is great for creating a brand identity but may limit certain more sales-based marketing posts.

❌ Negative Criticism – Because responses to your tweets are more prominent on Twitter, negative feedback can be far more visible than on other platforms.

❌ Very Time Sensitive – Unlike other social media platforms, tweets can be easily ignored on Twitter, therefore timing your tweets is critical (to identify the ideal times to tweet, we recommend Twitter Insights or search ‘best time to tweet’ on Google to get a basic idea).

Conclusion: Twitter is a large platform that, when used properly, can help a brand’s identity grow significantly. However, it does have some limits for a smaller trade businesses; the 280 character limit means that there is a slightly larger barrier for effectively, engaging clients; it also has limited options for encouraging local companies when compared to platforms like Facebook.

LinkedIn

✅ Great for corporate or business clients – Do you do a lot of work with commercial or industrial clients? LinkedIn is for you as it will allow you to connect with more business/ commercial clients!

❌ Extremely Corporate – LinkedIn may feel extremely corporate, and when writing posts, the language is usually far more formal than on other social media platforms.

❌ Insights at a price – Unlike other platforms, some insights on your users/ potential clients come at a cost.

Conclusion: LinkedIn is designed for business-to-business relationships. There is limited room for individuals’ personality to shine through on accounts. Therefore, unless your intended audience is comprised of business or industrial clientele, we recommend focusing on other social media channels.

Built provides the trades expert advice on how to win more work online. Built works with BAXI, IDEAL & a variety of other boiler & heating brands to offer installers deals on websites, social media management & SEO.

https://builtfortrades.co.uk

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