Social Media Marketing

Contributed by Devon Palmer

Social Media Marketing for small businesses can be straight forward. You can get a marketing program started without investing tons of time and money. Pick the social media outlets that best serve your business and lay out a simple schedule of posts you can consistently put up. In the electrical world, I would recommend Facebook and LinkedIn, and also set up a profile on Google My Business.

Once you have the business profiles, and maybe create a personal profile while you’re at it, lay out a repeatable weekly schedule of what to post and delegate to someone on staff who is able and willing! A schedule might be:
• Monday post a photo of a staff member at work on a job site with the sentiment “back on the job”
• Tuesday a nice photo of a staff member with a very, very brief intro to who they are – putting some focus on your team will help past and future clients feel more connected to your company
• Thursday post a photo of your logo with text talking in detail about a specific service you offer or about an issue you frequently work on for clients, this helps portray the company as experts and professionals
• Friday post a photo from a finished job or of a happy client. Your company can post once per week or forty times per week—the big issue is being consistent over a long period of time and posting a variety of types of messages, some friendly, some showing off the team, some showcasing expertise.

If you want to maximize your impact on social media and really use it as a lead generation source you will also want to place ads to put your selling message in front of a wider audience. This takes more time, skill and obviously some money so I would advise getting a professional to help get you started. These ads can be geared towards getting people to click over to your website, to send your business page a message directly or to get the phone to ring, whatever you prefer.

Is the bottom still ahead of us?  We think so.

As we talk to lighting people in various lighting markets in the U.S. and Canada, we are learning that the current quarter we are in right now, might prove to hit even lower marks for revenue and profit.

Architectural design billing activity points towards a slow 6-12 months ahead. Contractor spending and contractor confidence continue to decrease.

Source: Inside Lighting