Leveraging Social Media to Maintain Relevance
Whether you love social media or not, platforms like Facebook, Instagram and others are definitely here to stay. It’s true these sites can be time-wasters, but they can also provide opportunities for reaching a broader audience and even gaining more customers.
Those of us who have been in the glass industry for a long time may be a bit behind the curve when it comes to social media. Still, it doesn’t take a large amount of time or effort to gain a presence on some of the more popular platforms. The key is to start small and see how it goes. It can be as easy as posting photos of a recent projects a few times each week to start.
Connecting on Facebook
I set up a Facebook page for my own shower door shop, Showcase Shower Door Company, over a decade ago. In addition to that I decided to start a group on Facebook for shower door installers, just as an experiment. I thought it would be interesting to see how many in the shower door industry might want to participate in something like that. At this point the Shower Door Professionals group has grown to over 1,500 members. The group has brought shower door installers, suppliers, and shop owners together, allowing members to network. There are many benefits that the group provides. Shops looking for help can let the community know that jobs are available. Members who are trying to find a particular part or extrusion can ask the community if anyone has one.
Getting started
Many businesses delegate the duty of posting information to social media to a team member. A younger employee may have insights into which platforms are most popular. In the glass business we are fortunate to have interesting and attractive projects to post, making it easy to keep things interesting. Even a small shop can easily come up with something to share at least a few times each week. If it’s hard to come up with original content one can find interesting things to repost that might keep their company name and logo in front of potential customers, for example.
Regardless of how you feel about it, there is no doubt that many of the customers we will have in future years will find our companies on social media. If you haven’t started developing a presence there, I highly recommend you look into it. If you would like to join the Shower Door Professionals group on Facebook you can find it at this link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/showerdoorpros/ I hope to see you there.
