How roofing contractors can get more clicks on Twitter

Twitter is best used to broadcast and gather information. Creating a lot of interesting content to share with your followers should be your goal for the tool.

I was reading a blog post from Dan Zarrella last week and came across his research findings from studying how to optimize click-through rate of links that you include in your Tweets.

CTR: # of clicks on a link in a Tweet divided by total followers at the time

Without going through all of the details, here is what he found studying 200,000 Tweets containing links from highly followed Twitter accounts:

1. 120 to 130 (of 140 possible) characters is optimal.
2. Put the link 25% of the way through (at around the 30-ish character mark).
3. Tweet at a slower pace, with 1 per hour being best (I've made this mistake).
4. Use the words "via", "@", "RT", "please", and/or "check".
5. Check out paper.li - the phrase with the greatest positive effect was "daily is out".
6. Use more verbs & adverbs (action words), and fewer nouns & adjectives.
7. Tweet on the weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday had the highest CTR).
8. Tweet later in the day (2pm-1am had the highest CTR).

Honestly, I don't know if the results of this study relate to the roofing industry or not, but I thought it was interesting to share and definitely worth a try for a few weeks for those who use Twitter (by the way, I am @roofpal if you'd like to follow).

If you have any questions about this blog post, feel free to email me at Chris@RoofPal.com.

Is there a guaranteed way for roofing contractors to be successful using Twitter?

Many business books, blog posts, magazine articles, newspaper articles, television news segments and even tweets themselves have been written about what it takes for individuals and brands to be successful on Twitter.

Here are some of the common recommendations for success on Twitter:

Follow a lot of people. The more people you follow, the more likly it

is for people to not only follow you back, but to acknowledge you and connect.

Follow those who follow you. For many, this is a common courtesy and the smart move. If you follow back everyone that follows you, you wind up meeting lots of new and interesting people. The major debate around this is quantity vs. quality argument (if you follow back everyone, it makes your Twitter stream cluttered). If you only follow back those who are truly interesting to you, it's a better way to curate content and dive deeper into some of the meatier conversations. Both sides to this argument have valid points.

Tweet frequently and consistently. Twitter (like most of the Internet) is a live, real-time environment. If you don't tweet often, there is a likelihood that you (and your content) will get lost in the all the other tweets. If you tweet once a day and most of the people who follow you are not online then, your tweet is rarely seen or acted on. Real-time makes the amount of followers you have not as important as when individuals are actually online, connected, following and reading your tweets.

Tweet original things (not just links). If all you are tweeting is links and you are not spending the time to think of anything original to say, you won't get much attention. Those who are most successful on Twitter are those who create content in a very original way.

Make it personal, and respond to as many people as possible. If you don't respond, acknowledge and discuss things with people following you on Twitter it will be a useless experience. Those who truly have massive audiences and attention are the ones who respond back to anyone and everyone. The people that you respond back to will then feel special and this make them more likely to re-tweet your content and ask their followers to follow you too. Twitter is an online social network... not a broadcasting channel.

Or... do the exact opposite. Everyone has an opinion about why something is successful and why other things fail. Brands and individuals are constantly looking for both best practices and return on investment in social media. What we learn by looking at the commonly-held beliefs and then comparing them to people who do the opposite is that Twitter is simply an open publishing platform - it is a place for people to put content (short, 140 characters worth of text-based content), and that success can often come from not following the rules, but by breaking them.

Why? Just like blogs, podcasts and YouTube channels, Twitter is simply a publishing platform. Twitter and most other social media platforms allow individuals and brands to highlight, share and connect on the things that can't be explained in a traditional advertising campaign or through press releases. As with everything in life, people like real interactions between real human beings, and these channels are most effective when brands and individuals start doing the things that they think are interesting in the hopes that other's feel that way too. Often times, breaking all the "rules" is what it takes to stand out and be successful.

If you have any questions about or would like help using social media for your roofing company, 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.