Social media for tradespeople: a simple plan for plumbers, electricians and builders

The honest answer

If you're a plumber, electrician, builder, plasterer, roofer or joiner, most of your work comes from people who already know your name. A recommendation from a neighbour beats anything you could post. That doesn't make social media pointless; it changes the job it does.

Your page is where a warm recommendation gets checked. Someone's been told "ring Dave, he did our bathroom" and now they're standing in the kitchen with a phone, deciding whether to bother. That's the moment your page either helps or quietly gets in the way.

So the target isn't thousands of followers or a viral video. It's a page that looks like a working tradesperson: recent photos, answered questions, real reviews, an obvious way to make contact.

Why it works differently for trades

A café wants strangers to walk in tomorrow. A plumber mostly wants the right people to ring, and often wants fewer people ringing about jobs they don't do.

What customers are actually deciding

• Are you real and local? A van, a face, a street name, a job that looks like their house.
• Do you do my job? Bathrooms, rewires, garden walls, emergency call-outs. Be specific.
• Are you busy? Recent photos suggest yes, which reads as "worth waiting for".
• Will I get a straight answer on price? Even a range helps, and stops the tyre-kickers.
• Will you turn up and be tidy? Reviews and photos of finished work with clean edges answer this better than any slogan.

None of that needs a designer. All of it needs a phone, a habit, and about fifteen minutes a week.

What to photograph (you already have it)

Trade content is the easiest content there is, because the work is already happening. You just have to stop for four seconds before you pack up.

• Before and after. The single most persuasive photo format in the trades. Two photos, one caption, done.
• The messy middle. A wall opened up, pipework exposed, a perfectly swept cable run. Customers find this reassuring; it looks like skill.
• Details. Neat silicone, straight tiles, a tidy consumer unit, a swept path. These are the things people can't do themselves.
• Your setup. The van, the tidy tool bag, the apprentice carrying something. It puts a person behind the number.
• Certificates and badges. Gas Safe, NICEIC, Which? Trusted Traders: a photo of the card is fine. Never claim one you don't hold.

A word on photographing customer homes

Ask first, every time. "Mind if I take a quick photo for the page? No house numbers or anything personal." Keep faces, number plates, keys and personal belongings out of frame. If in doubt, shoot tight on the work.

Captions that don't sound like adverts

You don't need to be a writer. A caption that works for a trade business has three parts and takes under a minute:

1. What it was. "Full bathroom strip-out in Ely, 1970s suite out, new tray and tiling in."
2. One useful detail. "Took four days. The old pipework was undersized, so we upgraded it while the floor was up."
3. How to ask. "Bathrooms are booking about six weeks out. Message the page or ring the number in the bio."

That's it. No hashtag stacking, no writing like an estate agent. Plain sentences from someone who knows the job land better than anything polished.

Two small rules. Be honest about lead times; it filters out people who need someone tomorrow. And never promise a price in a caption you haven't seen the job for; say "from" and mean it.

Let Google do the heavy lifting

For trade work, Google Business Profile is usually worth more than Facebook and Instagram combined, because it's what comes up when someone searches "electrician near me" in a hurry.

• Claim the profile and fill it in properly. Services, areas covered, opening hours, phone number, and a link to your site or page.
• Add photos monthly. Google rewards activity, and customers read recency the same way they do on Facebook.
• Ask for reviews while you're still on site. "If you're happy, a Google review really helps us." Then send the link by text. It takes ten seconds and works far better than asking a week later.
• Reply to every review, including the two-star one. Your reply is being read by the next customer, not the last one.

If you do nothing else, do this. A complete, active Google profile with twenty honest reviews will bring more enquiries than a year of Facebook posts.

What to ignore

Trade owners get sold a lot of nonsense. These are the things that won't help you:

• Trending audio and dance videos. Wrong audience, wrong tone, and it dates instantly.
• Branded graphics with stock photos of men in hard hats. Customers can smell it.
• Follower counts. Nobody hiring a plasterer has ever checked a follower count.
• Buying followers or reviews. It's dishonest, it's often against platform rules, and it's obvious.
• Posting every day. Twice a week, consistently, beats a fortnight of enthusiasm.
• Anyone who promises you "guaranteed leads" from social media. Nobody can guarantee that.

A week you can keep

Here's a rhythm that fits around site work. It's roughly fifteen minutes a week plus the photos you're already taking.

• Monday: post the best photo from last week with a three-part caption.
• Wednesday: one Google Business Profile update: a photo and a sentence about a job or a service.
• Friday: post a second photo, different job or a detail shot.
• Any day: reply to comments and reviews. Two minutes, not optional.

That's sixty to eighty posts a year, which is enough to look permanently active. If you'd rather not think about it, that's roughly what our £200 a month plan covers. We'll ask for the photos.

Start this week

Take one photo of the job you're on before you leave. Write three plain sentences. Post it. Then claim your Google profile and ask your last five customers for a review, the ones who were pleased and never got round to it.

That's the whole plan, and it will do more for a trade business than a year of clever graphics. If you'd like us to look at what your pages are currently saying, ask for a free page check; we'll tell you honestly whether you need help at all.