Facebook Timeline cover ideas and examples for roofing contractors

It looks like Facebook Timeline is here to stay (at least for a while), as it is now mandatory for all business pages effective March 30, 2012. Not everyone "likes" it, but we do need to make the best of it. Have you noticed a very valuable piece of real estate at the top of your page? Yes, your cover photo!

How are you using the Facebook Timeline cover photo today? Are you not using anything at all? Is there an oddly-cropped picture of a job you've done, your logo, or maybe your crew or office staff? I think there is definitely an opportunity to get creative with this space. I have a few ideas, but I need your help to come up with a great list of ideas and examples.

For the RoofPal Facebook Timeline cover I show examples of some of the different services I offer roofing contractors and material manufacturers and distributors such as articles I have written and had published, some brochures, a roofing project recap presentation, a video blog, and a magazine ad. There are other examples of my work I will use in future Timeline covers as well, but the idea here is to quickly convey what it is I do and give a sense of the quality of work.

Here is an example I did for Rhino Tuff Roofing in Texas:

Here is an example I did for Starkweather Roofing in Arizona and New Mexico to line up a few nice pictures of completed jobs so potential customers know exactly what kind of roofs (size, slope, system, etc.) they install:

And here is an example I did for Arnett Construction in Indiana to give homeowners a sense of what hail storm damage to their shingle roofs looks like:

The possibilities are almost endless, and I will continue posting more examples on this blog post as I think of or come across more. Please follow or and subscribe to this blog to keep updated on the latest. If you have an example (yours or someone else's) that you think would be great for the roofing industry, please leave a comment in the box below and include a link to the Facebook page.

If you would like to create a Facebook Timeline cover photo for your roofing company, the image should be 850 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall to maximize the space without anything getting cropped out or having unused white space. If you would like me to design one for you, feel free to email me at Chris@RoofPal.com for pricing.

Are you on the recieving end of your own social media marketing?

If you are looking for a good way to evaluate how well your social media marketing is working, try being a recipient of your own content.

Not only should you spend time being a consumer of your products and services, you should also be a consumer of your own marketing (including social media). Think of your marketing efforts as another service offering. Is your social media content really a valuable service iteself?

How often do you go back to check your own blog for something you wrote in the past? If you do, it is a sign that you have actually posted valuable information. If you never go back to reference your own blog yourself, it might not be valuable enough for anyone else either.

The same is true for your social media accounts. I store links on my Facebook page in order to reference recent relevant content for my marketing newsletter and podcast. In other words, I am my own customer (I go back to remember what I published). How often do you check your posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+? If the answer is "never", then maybe the content you are sharing isn't as valuable as you think it is.

Much has been made of influence scores (Klout) and re-tweet or like/share metrics, but the simplest metric of all is to look at your own behavior. If you never go back to look at your own content (i.e., you find no value in what you publish), chances are that no one else does either. You can begin improving your social media marketing by publishing things that are of value to you. Do that and you’ll automatically begin sharing information that are of value to others.

If you would like an independent evaluation of your social media marketing, please email Chris@RoofPal.com for pricing (it's not as expensive as you might think).

Comments on your Facebook posts are more valuable than Likes

According to a November 2011 analysis from EdgeRank Checker that examined a random sampling of more than 5,500 Facebook pages and over 80,000 posts with links during October 2011, a comment on a Facebook post containing a link results in almost 5 times the amount of clicks of that link than a Like of a comparable post. For every Like a post gets, the link receives on average 3.1 clicks but for every comment a post gets, it receives on average 14.7 clicks. Overall clicks per impression were found to be 0.5%.

Wednesday and Tuesday is best for engagement, Saturday and Friday is worst
When sorting the average clicks and shares by day of the week, Wednesday's had the best share ratio (link shares compared to the number of fans per page) at 0.11%. Wednesday's also had the highest click ratio (link clicks compared to the number of fans per page) at 0.49%. Tuesday followed with a 0.1% share ratio and 0.47% click ratio.

Saturday fared worst for shares ratio (0.8%), while Friday saw the smallest clicks ratio (0.35%).

Smaller pages have more devoted followers
There is a distinct correlation between Facebook page size and fan engagement. Pages with less than 1,000 fans had by far the highest shares and clicks ratios (over 1.1% share ratio and 0.3% click ratio). Following distantly were pages with 1-5,000 fans, with a share ratio of less than 0.4% and a click ratio of less than 0.1%.

In contrast, pages with more than 100,000 fans experienced the lowest share and click ratios. The data suggests that smaller pages are able to create more relevant content for their fans, which may be an indication that large brands should make multiple pages to narrow down their audience.

Social context ads increase conversions
According to November 2011 analysis from TBG Digital, Facebook Likes do have a place in driving conversions. Advertisements that leverage the social interactions that users are comfortable seeing in their Facebook news feeds perform better than those that do not.

The analysis was based on a single client (a popular entertainment brand that spent $60,000 across a 14-day period and accumulated 436 million impressions) that had a 32% improvement in purchasing intent when using social context ads as opposed to non-social context ads.

According to the analysis, social context ads are built with a text and image box with the addition of visible endorsements beneath the ad. The endorsements note the number of friends associated with a user who like the page, group, event, or application.

The cost-per-click remained constant between non-social context and social context ads, but in this study non-social context ads took 132 clicks to achieve a conversion compared to only 99 clicks for social context ads. When factoring in the cost per click, the difference in cost per acquisition equated to $44 when using social context ads. TBG Digital said there are limitations to the social context ad campaigns that are primarily due to the URL structure in the Ads API.

If you have any questions about social media marketing in the roofing industry or would like help improving sales from social media, please email Chris@RoofPal.com.

How to Get your Roofing Company Started with Social Media

If you own or work at a roofing company that hasn’t bought into social media yet, the message is simple: it is time to finally jump on the bandwagon! People are online right now talking about your company whether you like or not, so if you don’t engage in the conversation you risk losing your customers.

To get you started, here are seven sequential steps to follow that will help you develop a presence and be relevant on social media:

Define your offers and customers
The first thing you should do before engaging in online marketing or social media marketing is to write down exactly what it is you are trying to promote (new construction, re-roofing, roof maintenance, roof cleaning, reflective coatings, solar installation, etc.) and define your target customers (homeowners, HOA managers, building owners, property managers, facility managers, multi-housing associations, etc.).

Sign-up for social media
The big ones are Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn. I would also recommend blogging. I use Blogger since it is owned by Google and is favored in their search results. Facebook allows you to create a business fan page that allows you to get some decent analytics on traffic, but people have to find you or be recommended (as opposed to reaching out to them and offering to connect through a personal page branded as your company).

Identify a social media manager
Managing multiple social networks is a daunting task. It's not rocket science, but it does take time and skill. I recommend doing this before you start posting content, requesting friends and adding followers.

I also recommend using free tools like Ping.fm and HootSuite to gather mentions of your brand, industry or search terms and review the success of your posts through real-time statistics. However, I do not recommend using it to schedule your posts and Tweets though (for more, please read my blog post titled "Auto-Posting to Facebook Decreases Likes and Comments by 70%"). Once you get the hang of the free tools, there is also paid services like SproutSocial (plans range from $9 to $49 with a 30-day free trial) that does all of that plus it allows you to take all of those you are connected to and create contacts out of them which you can manage in the system and track engagement, has one inbox for all of your messages from all the networks, and allows you to track check-ins at FourSquare and Gowalla.

Post updates
It is important to have good content on your social media pages before you start adding friends and followers. When you try to find friends, the first thing they will do is look at the page to see if they want to follow you. You need to give them a reason to connect with you first. What kind of content? Provide valuable information about the industry. Post pictures of your roofers working and before & after pictures of jobs. On YouTube, post short videos of jobs (before, during and after), commercials you have made, how you practice safety, types of roof maintenance, video customer testimonials, etc.

Find friends and followers
Twitter and Google+ are by far the easiest to build a network. Search keywords like "need roofer", "roof leak", "roofers", etc. to find followers. Also consider terms your potential customers would use (for example, "property management", "property manager", "facility manager", etc.). Once you start connecting with people, these sites will begin to understand the kind of person you want to connect with and will recommend similar profiles. Also, find your competitors' profiles and offer to connect with the people with are connected with them.

Engage with friends and followers
Your first priority should be building a relationship with people, not pitching your roofing services. "Like" and comment on their posts. Congratulate them on successes. Show them that an actual human being is behind your company's profile and that you take the time to learn about them and care enough to connect with them. Most social media sites will inform you of birthday's that day. Wish them a happy birthday (and maybe offer them a limited time free roof inspection or discount on roof cleaning).

Stay current
Sign up for alerts to be emailed or even sent to your phone when people engage with you via your social networking sites (at least in the beginning) so you can quickly respond. Timing is everything with social media. People come in, look around and post, then get out. If you are responding a day or two after the fact, it is almost pointless.

If you have any questions about getting started with social media, or would like assistance setting up your roofing company's social media networks, generating content and making connections, please email Chris@RoofPal.com.

Auto-Posting to Facebook Decreases Likes and Comments by 70%

Automatically publishing content to your Facebook News Feed through 3rd-party applications like HootSuite, TweetDeck, and Networked Blogs receive an average of 70% fewer "Likes" and comments, according to a new study by Applum.

Why Does This Happen?

The difference is likely due to Facebook reducing the prominence of posts published by third-party API's - collapsing all recent updates from the same ones a user would otherwise see.

Likes and comments increase an individual post’s prominence in the Facebook News Feed, which increases impressions and improves the likelihood of clicks, so RoofPal's recommendation is for roofing contractors to stop using auto-posting applications and switch to manual posting if you want potential and existing customers to actually see your posts, Like them and comment on them.

Time vs. Value
Many roofing contractors also update Facebook automatically by syncing their Twitter posts or auto-converting their blog post headlines. This does increase efficiency by eliminating the need to copy and paste headlines and links from one platform to another, but it is not optimal as different platforms have different publishing capabilities and norms. For example, Facebook allows for rich media posts so authors can select a thumbnail image and caption along with posting a link and headline. It’s typical for Twitter accounts to post up to a dozen times a day, but that volume could be viewed as spam on Facebook. Auto-posts then appear robotic and less compelling to those who may see it in their News Feed.

Which 3rd-Party Apps are the Worst?
EdgeRank Checker has revealed empirical data that automatically-published posts perform worse than manually published ones. Analyzing over 1 Million Facebook updates by more than 50,000 pages with a combined reach of over 1 Billion fans (including duplicates). It then calculated the engagement ratio of the total Likes and comments on a Page’s post, divided by the total fans of the Page at the time of the post for the ten most popular third-party publishing APIs. Compared to the engagement of posts published manually to Facebook’s web or mobile interfaces, the reduction in engagement ratios of the top third-party publishing APIs were:
 • HootSuite – 69% reduction
 • TweetDeck – 73% reduction
 • Sendible – 75% reduction
 • Networked Blogs – 76% reduction
 • RSS Graffiti – 81% reduction
 • Twitter – 83% reduction
 • Publisher – 86% reduction
 • twitterfeed – 90% reduction
 • dlvr.it – 91% reduction
 • Social RSS – 94% reductions

The Bottom-Line
On average, posts published through a 3rd-party auto-posting application had approximately 70% fewer Likes and comments than those published through Facebook’s first-party interfaces (manually). Also, if a user’s News Feed contains multiple posts from a single API (whether from a single author or several different Pages and friends), the posts are collapsed and must be unfolded to be seen.

It is well worth the extra minute to manually craft a Facebook post by hand than auto-posting because you are sacrificing a lot of social media performance and return on investment to save what ulimately amounts to a very small amount of additional time and effort.

Questions? Need Help?
If you have questions about this post, or would like assistance with your roofing social media strategy, please email Chris@RoofPal.com.

20 Ways to Promote Your Roofing Facebook Fan Page

How are you spreading the word about your Facebook page?
Your fan page can be one of a roofing company's best sources of customer interaction and lead generation. The only problem is making people aware of it. You definitely need to educate your customers and potential customers on how to find you on Facebook.

To help you out, below is a list of 20 different ways to promote your Facebook page. Even if you only do a few of these things, you should start to get more fans and begin to increase your return on time invested.

1. Put your fan page URL in your email signature. How many emails do you send every day? That is how many chances you have for someone new to find out about your page. Free publicity!
2. Write a blog post about your new fan page. Give your blog readers five compelling reasons why they should join your fan page (tell them about the kinds of information you share on your page).
3. Tag well-trafficked fan pages in your status updates. Fans of those popular pages your target customers visit (that are at least semi-relevant) might see your page and click over, giving you some additional cross-traffic.
4. Ask your Twitter followers to join your fan page. Give some compelling reasons why your Twitter followers should join your Facebook community. If Twitter is the new water cooler, think of your fan page as an invitation to come in and chat. Maybe Tweet something like "Want more conversation than 140 characters will allow? Join us on Facebook at ” and leave the URL to your fan page.
5. Invest in Facebook ads. They are a lot easier than you might think and you can spend as little or as much as you want. You can pinpoint fairly accurately the demographic you are targeting.
6. Put a Facebook fan page widget on your blog and website. Have your website developer put a basic widget on your website and blog that automatically displays the last 5 or so Facebook status updates from your fan page. Visitors will see this content and a) know that you have a page and how to find it, and b) get a sense of the kind of information they have been missing out on.
7. Customize your fan page URL. Vanity URLs are a fantastic way to make your fan page memorable. For example, my Facebook page URL is http://www.facebook.com/RoofPal.
8. Put your fan page URL on your business cards. Combine offline and online by letting the people you meet in real life know about your fan page.
9. Put a link on your personal Facebook profile. You can put a link to your company fan page under the “Links” section of your personal page. This may remind your friends and family to share the link to your company page with their Facebook friends.
10. Leverage the power of your team. Ask everyone in your company put the link to your company fan page link on their personal profile.
11. Ask your Facebook fans to post a link. Simply ask all of your current Facebook fans to post a link to your company page on their personal profile. As long as you don’t ask this often, often times people are willing to help you out. This becomes a personal recommendation, or word-of-mouth advertising (the very best kind).
12. Put a tag in your YouTube videos. If you make compelling videos as a part of your content marketing strategy, throw in a well-timed Facebook fan page link at the end of your YouTube videos.
13. Put your Facebook fan page URL on your Twitter profile background. Many people still use the web-based version of Twitter, and your profile background is a prime piece of internet real estate. Cross-advertise and use one social network to promote another!
14. QR Codes for your page. Create a QR Code that takes people directly to your Facebook fan page and use that code in your marketing, stationary, email signature lines, etc. If you aren't sure what a QR Code is or how to create one, please read the article I published, titled QR Codes for roofing contractors.
15. Actually use your Facebook fan page. Use the “Tell Your Fans” feature on Facebook. With the tools built in, Facebook allows you to import a contact file or import your contacts from your email account. This is particularly good for when you’re just starting out and want to tell people you already know.
16. Add a Like box. Place a Like box in your blog and website sidebar so people can "Like" your content automatically when they are signed in to Facebook and browsing the web.
17. Use targeted keywords in a Google AdWords campagin. Use a keyword-based ad and direct people to your fan page. This is like Facebook Ads on steroids. If you’ve never used AdWords before, it’s fairly straightforward. Google the term AdWords to set this up.
18. Redirect your webinar guests to your Facebook fan page. If you use GoToWebinar, you can choose to send registrants to a URL of your choice after they sign up. This is where you can direct them right to your Facebook fan page.
19. Put your Facebook fan page URL in your Keynote or PowerPoint presentations. When you present, the last slide can be your contact information, complete with your company's Facebook fan page vanity URL. Most people are already on Facebook, so it’s a no-brainer to give them an easy way to connect with you.
20. Invite all of your friends. Facebook automatically suggests people and pages based on the connections and Likes of your friends. The more of your friends who Like your Facebook fan page, the more their friends will have your page recommended to them without you lifting a finger.

These are just some examples. What are some of the most interesting ways you’ve seen people or businesses promote their fan page? Let me know in the comments box below and share what you have found.