If you’re not an Instagram devotee already, you might be surprised to learn just how much time this platform’s users spend ogling the visual content which populates their feeds. With 700 million active monthly users, that’s a whole lot of visual content being consumed…
With such fanatical usage, Instagram is also one of the most powerful social media platforms for businesses looking to market their product or service right now. Selling via this medium is big business, especially for the “Instagram influencers” like Kim Kardashian who make millions from single sponsored posts showcasing particular products.
Right now, 70.7% of US businesses use Instagram
Double the number using the platform in 2016.
Unlike Twitter and Facebook, Instagram feels like a more natural place for companies to run marketing campaigns – especially if they have plenty of visual content to share which users may be interested in. This boon makes Instagram a great outlet for painter & decorators keen to market their services & attract custom.
Want to harness the power of Instagram?
Here are a few tips to get you started…
Get #hashtagging
Hashtags are the route to getting your content discovered. Including around 10-15 hashtags, ideally concealed at the end of your post to prevent your content looking spammy, is widely considered to be best practice. There are some tools you can use to uncover the most searched-for and most relevant hashtags like Hashtagify.me. If you’re short on inspiration, these apps will help you find the right words to get your images found.
Try to keep your hashtags relevant as much as possible, without making them mundane. A broad spread of terminology is best, ranging from the practical to the aspirational. For instance #HighGlossPaint might help you get found by hyper relevant searchers while “Minimalist” might help you get under the nose of a much wider audience.
Get local
If your painting business is a local one, don’t forget to geo-tag your location and add a local hashtag too. Instagram is a very big digital world, so making yourself searchable for others in your area will ensure your business is more discoverable. Reaching out to other businesses in the area, by liking and commenting on their posts, will also help give you are more localised Instagram presence.
Get shared
The most powerful content on Instagram has to be UGC (user generated content). This content has the same effect as “Oooh, I love your top, where did you get it?”. If an Instagram user (be they a real life friend or an online personality) posts images of something you like, you’re much more likely to remember and discover the source of that product.
Persuading your clients to share images of your work on Instagram should be pretty easy – you are an amazing decorator after all! Although the older crowd may not be on board with the platform, many younger clients will be users (the key demographic is aged 18-29). Offering a reward, such as a 5% discount or a nice little extra, in return for publishing an image of their beautifully decorated property along with your Instagram handle will help the the word out about your business to their friends and follower – many of whom may be local.
Share something useful
It’s easy to simply post images and content which are purely promotional, but uploading content which is interesting and useful to your target market, such as guides to particular materials and maintenance or upcoming interior trend alerts, will make you much more followable on Instagram.
By Sam Butterworth, blog editor at Regal Floor Paints
The post How to boost your painting business via Instagram appeared first on The Blogging Painters.
Dry-ice blasting is one of the most efficient cleaning methods that deeply removes the surface of any items or equipment. The process is operated similarly to abrasive, sand and soda blasting. The carbon dioxide gas emulated through blasting the dry ice at a low temperature and high-speed process. After the surface has been blasted, there will be absolutely no residue of water, sand, grit and chemical reactions.
Mark has always had a penchant for inventing. Thinking outside the box has been a blessing (in disguise sometimes)! Haven’t you ever wondered why your cereal bowl didn’t have a built in sugar stirrer? Or why doesn’t every fishing pole come with a fish alarm? Well maybe not but his recent ideas will get your wheels spinning. “Why didn’t I think of that”? you will say when you try out the new SS720. So after all those years painting/staining the old fashioned way; you know straining, stretching, climbing, falling and everything else that goes with the profession its time to start helping others work smarter NOT harder!
What color paint goes best with various floor colors? How can you tell what a paint color will look like in a room, not just on a swatch? What paint colors are in? What colors are out? Homeowners and commercial property managers/office managers are interested in topics like these, topics of which paint contractors are experts. Covering home decorating broadens your reach into an even larger audience than DIY, and is yet completely relevant to your business. (Incidentally, all of these “tips” suggestions can be short — 200-400 words or even less — because they can hit specific issues. This adds up to less writing and more posts.)
At the end of a successful project, invite your customers to write a brief (3-4 sentences) review of their experience with your company. You can post these reviews on your blog (one review per post, or in batches), and add them to an appropriate page(s) on your main website. Positive user reviews naturally increase credibility for commercial and residential contractors alike, and also stimulate referrals — customers will be eager to show their reviews to friends, neighbors and business associates after they are published.
That is until a good friend of mine that does some handyman work began telling me about what a simple website has done for him and his company. He was in the same place I was almost a year ago, just relying on getting new customers through word of mouth, customer referrals, and leaving his business card anywhere that would let him. And then back in December one of our mutual friends pushed him to put up a simple website after getting tired of hearing him complain about how hard it was to make ends meet. Long story short the site started working. He now makes close to double what he would before and has so many calls some weeks he’s turning people away.
I haven’t had my phone ringing off the hook and I’m not ready to go out and hire more people quite yet, but I have got 3 new clients from something I worked on for maybe 8-10 hours total. The way I see it it’s like I have a little personal advertiser out there running around scooping up clients and sending them my way for close to nothing. I still haven’t figured out the whole social media aspect of things yet, but that will probably be my next endeavor and 
Cody 
If you prefer building long-term relationships with your online audience over making short-term sales, you need to step up your content marketing efforts. Your personal branding strategies should include replying to comments on your blog and social media channels. Extend your brand’s reach by commenting on the blog posts of influencers in the painting industry.
Consumers buy only from brands they trust. Earn their trust and loyalty by implementing content marketing and personal branding strategies that will establish yourself as someone who can solve their problems. Get to know their pain points and frustrations—like how to deal with peeling paint or what can be done with leftover paint at home. Then provide actionable solutions through how-to articles, tips and tricks, hacks, and DIY tutorials. If people see you as helpful and caring to their needs, they’ll be enticed to do business with you.
What makes your brand real and unique? Your content marketing tactics must reflect that by engaging people instead of just giving out information.
