Is Social Media Worth It for Contractors? Where It Pays and Where It Doesn't

I talked to a roofer this spring who was spending two hours a day making TikTok videos. He had forty followers. Nobody in his service area was seeing them. Meanwhile his Google Business Profile was missing his phone number.

So is social media worth it for contractors? Some of it is. The version most contractors try, posting content and hoping the algorithm sends it to someone with a leaking roof, mostly isn’t. The difference comes down to whether the person seeing your post is looking for a contractor right now.

Why Posting Content Rarely Brings In Jobs

Social media is interruption. People open Instagram to see their friends’ kids and watch videos, and your post about a new roof interrupts that. If their roof isn’t leaking today, they scroll past. That works for restaurants and lifestyle brands, where anyone might want the thing at any moment. It works badly for a trade people only need when something breaks.

Google works the other way. When someone searches “roofer near me,” they already have the problem and they’re ready to call. That’s intent, and it’s why ranking on Google as a contractor pays back faster than a posting schedule. You don’t need to go viral. What you need is to show up in the map pack on the day someone’s shingles are in their yard.

So if you have a few hours a week for marketing and nothing is set up yet, spend them on your Google Business Profile and on getting Google reviews first. Those keep working while you’re on a job. A post slides out of the feed almost as soon as you make it.

Where Social Media Does Bring In Work

There are places where the person who sees your name is actively asking for a contractor. Those are worth your time.

Neighborhood Recommendation Threads

Every suburb has a Facebook group and a Nextdoor feed where someone asks for a good electrician or a roofer who’ll actually call back. The answers come from neighbors, and a name that shows up three times in one thread gets the call. Nextdoor’s own 2022 figures say 89% of its members value neighbor recommendations for products and services, and Home & Garden is the category where the most recommendations get shared.

You can’t post your way into those threads, and you shouldn’t try. A business owner jumping into every thread to recommend themselves gets ignored fast. Claim your Nextdoor business page so neighbors can find and tag you, mention it to customers when you finish a job, and let them do the talking.

Photos for People Who Already Know You

Photos of finished jobs do well on Facebook for one reason. The people who see them already know you. Past customers, their friends, the neighbor who watched your crew work all week. When a homeowner shares the photo of their new deck, their friends now have your name. That’s a referral with a picture attached.

Keep it to what you’d do anyway. Take the photos on the job, post the best one, name the town. Ten minutes, not two hours. Then put the same photos on your Google Business Profile, where people searching for your trade will see them too.

Messages From Your Page

Some homeowners will message your Facebook page instead of calling. If you have a page, answer those the same day, the way you’d answer the phone. An unanswered message on a page with your name on it is a lead that walked in and got ignored.

What to Skip

A posting calendar full of daily homeowner tips is the first thing to drop. Paying someone to grow your follower count goes next, since followers in Phoenix don’t hire a roofer in Naperville. If a social media agency can’t tell you how many calls came from their work last month, you have your answer.

And if your website is slow or hard to use on a phone, fix that before anything else, because every channel sends people there eventually. The signs your contractor website is losing jobs take about ten minutes to check.

Where to Put Your Hours Instead

If I had a contractor with three hours a week for marketing, here’s how I’d split it. Most of it goes to the Google side, finishing the Business Profile, asking every customer for a review, and replying to the reviews that come in. A little goes to neighborhood threads and Facebook messages. Close to none goes to making content.

That split puts your time where people who need a contractor today are already looking.

We set up the Google side for home service businesses as part of every flat-rate website plan, from the fast site to the Business Profile setup. You run the jobs, and we make sure the people searching can find you.