When social media was in its infancy, it was mostly used by teenagers and college age people to share pictures, communicate with friends, and troll for dates. It has come a long way since then. If social media isn’t a big part of your business now, you’re getting left behind.
Not only does social media make the world aware of your business, it’s also a great recruiting tool and way to attract new customers and suppliers. I did a post on LinkedIn a few years ago of one of our trucks loaded with fabricated rebar, heading to a jobsite. A few days later a contractor from Illinois contacted me and said he needed rebar for an upcoming job in North Carolina and he didn’t know any suppliers of rebar in that area. He sent me the plans, we got him a quote, and we ended up with a $675,000 sale. If I hadn’t posted that picture we’d likely have missed out on that order.
We also use social media in our recruiting efforts. About four years ago I was looking for a CFO and I posted the opening on LinkedIn. About six hours later our current CFO responded and after he completed our hiring process, he was hired. He is one of the best hires I’ve ever made and without LinkedIn I might never have found him. Plus I saved $50,000-75,000 in hiring fees if I would have incurred had I used a recruiter.
LinkedIn is my favorite of all social media channels. I call it “Facebook for Business.” Most LinkedIn users are business people so our posts are seen by customers, suppliers, and the general public. I’ve made not only sales due to leads from LinkedIn but I’ve also made friends from other parts of the country and now we talk and swap tips.
My next favorite social media channel is Instagram. As we supply construction jobs across the Southeast and as far away as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, we post pictures of jobs we’re supplying as well as pictures celebrating the accomplishments of our associates. Those type of posts always do well, being liked and shared with friends and family, thus increasing our reach and followers.
What about Facebook? We still use Facebook to share job pictures and associate pictures but we find it less effective for generating new business than LinkedIn and Instagram.
Twitter? We have deemphasized Twitter as we didn’t get a lot of feedback from our Twitter posts.
Surprisingly to me, YouTube has been great for us. We record product demos done by our suppliers and post those as well as supplier generated video content. We get thousands of visitors every month to our YouTube site from contractors searching how to install the products we sell.
The best thing about the above social media channels? They are all free, so why not use them? If you don’t have great success, the only loss you will have is the time spent generating the posts.
If you are in business today and social media isn’t a part of your marketing strategy, you are missing out on more sales, new suppliers and new talent for your business.
Jim Sobeck is CEO of New South Construction Supply, a building products distributor based in Greenville with 11 locations in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. He is the author of “The Real Business 101: Lessons From the Trenches.” newsouthsupply.com.
