Social media for contractors: turn job sites into posts

Social media for contractors is easier than it looks, because every job already is a story: a mess at the start, people working in the middle, something solid at the end. You do not need ideas. You need to remember to take the pictures. Here is what to shoot at each stage of a job, what to keep out of the frame, and the one line some states require on every post that asks for work.

One job, start to finish

Take any project, a deck, a kitchen, a roof, and it gives you material for a month of posts if you shoot it at these moments:

1. The walk-through. The space as the customer lives with it today: the sagging deck boards, the 1990s cabinets. One wide photo from the doorway.
2. The plan. The sketch on graph paper, the samples on the counter, the material order. People like seeing that someone thought before they cut.
3. Demo day. Things coming down make the easiest clip of the whole job. Ten seconds is enough.
4. What is behind the wall. Rot, old wiring, a missing header. Show what you found and what you did about it. This is the post that proves you do not cover problems up.
5. The part nobody sees later. Flashing, footings, waterproofing, blocking for a heavy TV. Once the finish goes on, nobody will ever see it again. Your posts are the only proof it is there.
6. The crew at work. Hands, tools, a level on a fresh course of block. Faces only with permission.
7. The finish. The same angle as the walk-through photo, same spot, same height.
8. The handover. The homeowner's first look, if they agree to be in it. If not, the keys on the new counter work too.

That is eight posts from one job. A contractor with two jobs going at once never runs out.

The before photo is the one you will forget

Nobody forgets to photograph a finished kitchen. Everybody forgets the before, because on day one you are busy measuring. Two habits fix it:

• Shoot the before at the estimate. You are walking the space anyway. Take the wide shot from the doorway and note where you stood.
• Mark the spot. A strip of tape on the floor, or a note like "left corner by the window". The after photo only works if it matches the before.

For a long job, try a time-lapse. On an iPhone, Apple's own steps are: open Camera, select Time-lapse mode, frame the shot, then place the phone on a stable surface or a tripod and tap Record. A phone clamped to a stud for a full day of framing turns eight hours into a few seconds that show the whole day. More tips for steady, bright pictures are in How to take good product photos with your phone.

What to keep out of the frame

Missing fall protection. OSHA requires fall protection at six feet in construction. A photo of your crew on a roof edge without it is a bad look for any customer who knows the trade, and it puts the gap on public display, posted by you. Check every photo taken at height before it goes up.

The customer's address. House numbers, street signs, license plates in the driveway, mail on the counter. Crop them out, even if the homeowner is happy with the post. Say "a deck in the west side of town", never the street.

Family photos and personal things. Inside a home, the fridge door, the kids' drawings and the bills on the counter belong to the people who live there.

A competitor's mess. Fixing someone else's bad work makes a strong post. Naming them does not. Show the problem and your fix, and leave the other company's name and truck out of it.

Your license number may belong on every post

Some states treat a post that asks for work as an advertisement and want your license number on it. Two examples we checked at the source:

Other states have their own rules, which this table does not cover. The simplest habit works everywhere: put your license number in your profile bio and on every post that offers your services. It costs one line and answers the first thing a careful customer checks.

This is general information, not legal advice. Your state's contractor licensing board, or a lawyer, can tell you exactly what your ads must show.

Posts for the weeks between jobs

• Safety, shown. Each May, OSHA runs the National Safety Stand-Down to Prevent Falls in Construction. This year it was May 4 to 8, and OSHA asks companies to share their stand-down on social media with the hashtag #StandDown4Safety. If you held a toolbox talk that week, it is a ready-made post. If not, the same talk works any Monday.
• A material, explained. Composite versus pressure-treated, why you use a certain underlayment, what a vapor barrier does. Short, from your own experience.
• The rain day. What the crew does when the weather stops work: sharpening, cleaning, ordering. It shows a business that does not stand still.
• You are hiring. If you need good hands, a post about the job reaches people who already follow your work. Check the pay rules first: Posting a job on social media? Check pay transparency laws.
• Your service area. You do not have a storefront, so tell people where you work: the towns, the radius, the kinds of jobs you take and the ones you do not. For a short video version of any of these, see Reels ideas for small business.

From the truck to the feed

The photos are the part only you can do, because you are the one on site. The rest, picking the best shots, matching the before with the after, writing the captions and posting on schedule, is desk work that rarely happens after a ten-hour day.

That is the part we take over. You upload photos and clips from your phone, from the truck if you like. We turn them into posts, show each one to you for approval, and publish it. Starter is 8 posts a month, about two a week. Growth is 15 a month, and up to 4 of them can be short videos cut from your clips, demo days and time-lapses included.

It is not for every contractor. If your work comes entirely from referrals and your calendar is full for the year, you may not need posts at all. And if you are building a portfolio of high-end custom homes, a professional photographer with proper lighting is worth the money for the final shots. Everyone in between can see the plans.