How To CRUSH Social Media As A Contractor (ft. Mike Kyle)

Mike Kyle
Viva Las Vegas. This is without a doubt, my favorite city in the country. I’ve been coming here every year for the past four years, and I cannot get enough. I love that IBS is here because it just gives me an excuse to come back every year. The reason I love Vegas is everything you might expect. The lights, theatrics. If you haven’t already tell. I’m kind of a theatrical person. The casinos, the parties. Because Las Vegas is just that. It is a giant party where you feel like a superstar, you’re living a life of luxury, and you come away having a great story to tell. But not only do you have a great story to tell, we all know what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But what if we had a brand as strong as Vegas, as a contracting company?

Mike Kyle
What would that do for your business? Because right here in this city, everybody, this entire convention center, I would say 98% of you have flown in to this event. And part of the allure of that is the conference itself. But also, we’re here to party for a few days as well. So what happens if we build a brand just like this for ourselves? And I want to talk through how I think about building a brand, because to me, brand is really a math equation of two different parts. Part one is visibility, and part two is reputation. When you combine these two things, that is how you’re going to get a brand for your company as strong as the brand of Las Vegas. But what even is visibility? I’m just kind of spewing some buzzwords, but nobody knows what I’m actually talking about.

Mike Kyle
Visibility is simply the process of being seen or the process of being made known. I talk to contractors every single day, and it blows my mind that they think that they can generate work and generate leads without actually telling people that they exist. Because visibility is just marketing. That’s all it is. It’s a fancy word for that. So whether that is your door hangers, yard signs, truck wraps, or my favorite, the reason that we’re all in this room today, social media and video. If you don’t know that, if you. If people don’t know that you exist, then how can we logically expect them to give us their money? Part two. Whoops, there we go. Social media is the ultimate visibility tool, bar none. It costs you $10,000 to get your truck wrapped.

Mike Kyle
You’re gonna spend a couple hundred bucks every single month getting direct mail sent out, a couple hundred bucks getting new yard signs printed. Social media is absolutely free, and it costs you $0 to start today. And even better, it’s the place where all of your ideal clients are. Is anybody familiar with NS builders, by chance? Nick, can you hands them up? All right, cool. Nick crushes social media. What would it be like if your contracting company had 75. I’m sorry, has 175,000 eyeballs on you every single day. Odds are those kind of numbers will change your business. And the reality is, though, you actually don’t even need that much. If you had 5000, 10,000, 15,000, you could get away with just that. But social media is the gateway to scaling your business to the next level.

Mike Kyle
In a previous version of this slide, I actually had a post from a Facebook group. Is anybody familiar with those Facebook groups? Local community groups? So there is. I traveled here all the way from Charlotte, North Carolina, and there is a pretty wealthy town called Waxhaw. There is a Facebook group called what’s up, Waxaw? Again, probably has your ideal client there. And there are 26,000 people in that Facebook group. So that is 26,000 people that are your ideal client, that have homes that are all the same style, that either need a new home or need upgrades in their home, and they have the money to spend, and they are all in one place. There is no other marketing method that can get you those kind of results in that way. And this brings me to part two. All right. Visibility.

Mike Kyle
We know we need to market our company, but what do we actually say when we get in front of our ideal client? And reputation is where that comes in. All reputation is what do you want to be known for? Or if you’re rebuilding your company, what are the things that you’re striving to become known for? And then you’re just going to tell the world about it. So on this slide right here, we have three different companies. Ford. We hear it all the time. Built Ford. Tough. Who drives a Ford pickup? F 150. There we go. Why? What’s the reason why? Durability. Toughness. Grit. That’s what they’re selling to us over and over again. And that is how we perceive the reputation of Ford. Number two, Walt Disney and Disney World. What’s Disney World? It’s the happiest place on earth.

Mike Kyle
Whenever we see commercials for Disney, it’s the kids having fun. It’s the rides, it’s the concessions. They’re selling this experience that when you come to Disney, you and your family are going to have so much fun for that week. And lastly, chick fil A. Chick fil A is known for a lot of things. They’re very good at this, whether it’s my pleasure, their customer service, the original chicken sandwich, and, you know, some other stuff being closed on Sundays. Those things combined make Chick fil a the brand that they are today. Have you guys started seeing their new campaign that they’ve been running commercials for? Basically what they do is they have a store manager interviewing a customer, and that customer kind of telling the story of what it was like to be in that chick fil A.

Mike Kyle
I think there was one where it was like her dog had cancer and she came back with the dog, and they gave the dog, like, an ice cream cone or something. And that is how chick fil A is able to build a reputation. So I want to show you some contractors that I work with. This was a post from 3g builders and renovations from, like, three years ago, back before I started working with Joe. This is what he was posting on social media. It’s just a photo from an iPhone. It looks slanted. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be looking at compared to this. And let’s see if this will work. So, of those two, which one’s more luxury? Which one makes you feel something? Second one. And is it close? Not really. Not at all.

Mike Kyle
So when we are dialed in on how we’re going to present ourselves and what we’re going to say, that’s the difference between number two and number one. But I want to know, what do you want your company to be known for? Shout them out. Shout them out. Let’s make this interactive. What was that? Quality. What’s another one? Customer. What was that? Custom service. Satisfaction. All right, design. That’s a good one. Communication. Innovative. Innovative. All right, so now that we know what I want. So now that we know what we want our company to be known for, how do we actually show it? Because, again, it’s one thing to get in front of the ideal client, but if we are getting in front of them and we’re saying the wrong things, then it doesn’t matter. So I heard design.

Mike Kyle
If you do a design process, are you making posts on social media, showing the renderings, showing a consultation? Maybe you’re even live streaming somebody sitting in on their maybe you’re live streaming somebody sitting in on their consultation, and then you’re just kind of like, showcasing, like, hey, this is what we do as part of our process. I heard quality. You could do a this or that in terms of materials. And then you’re actually explaining, hey, these are two different options that our customers choose from. They normally go with this one, and here’s why. Another one was communication. I love this one. Does anybody send daily project updates to their clients? Like, hey, we just completed this. Yeah, saw some hands go up, screenshot that, and make a post and say, listen, we know that construction is stressful.

Mike Kyle
My fiance and I, we just bought a house last year for the first time. And boy, was that. That was something. That was something. Now, if I knew that you are so adamant about your customer service and your communication, and I am able to see screenshots of you texting client updates every single day, all of a sudden, my confidence in you, that, hey, listen, I know this could be stressful. I need somebody that’s going to communicate with me over and over again, show me where we’re at in the process. It’s only going to go up and I’m going to trust you more.

Mike Kyle
So if we do these things consistently, and that is the big word here, if we are consistently getting in front of our ideal client, and if we are consistently telling them, hey, this is what our company is about, that is how we are going to build a winning brand that wins over and attracts nothing but our ideal client. All right, Mike, this all sounds great, but where do I start? Who here? Let’s just get this quick question out of the way. Who here hates social media, but knows that they need to be on it? That’s what I thought. That’s what I thought. Who here is active on social media, but things aren’t going as well as they would like it to be? Is there anybody here that’s crushing social media? They’re like, nah, I’m good. Exactly. They wouldn’t be here. So the entire room.

Mike Kyle
The entire room has nowhere to go but up, which is great. Now, I know I’ve been teaching clients and contractors social media now for, give or take the past 15 months or so. And the thing I get back all the time is, where do I start? This is so. This is so overwhelming. Facebook, Instagram. What the hell is TikTok? Right? That’s why I’m going to help you out and I’m going to go through quickly the current state of social media platform by platform. We’re going to cover Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Because now that we know the brand part and how to build it, well, now let’s get into some of the actionable steps. Starting off with Facebook. Facebook is fantastic because the primary demographic that’s on it is your ideal client. I’m going to say that again. Your ideal demographic is on Facebook.

Mike Kyle
As I already mentioned, that post or that Facebook group. Waxaw. What’s up Waxaw? 26,000 people of your ideal clients specifically were in that group. Facebook is great as the catch all platform. And what I mean by that is the variety of posts that you can do on Facebook is unmatched compared to anywhere else. If you wanted to copy and paste a blog onto Facebook, you can do it as a text post. If you wanted to post before and after project photos, you can do it on Facebook. If you wanted to showcase a full on project walkthrough, you can do it on Facebook. Facebook, though specifically right now, I’m going to bring your attention to the very top bullet point. There is focusing on Facebook reels or vertical videos. I’m going to be using the term vertical and horizontal a lot.

Mike Kyle
I’d like to imagine that we know what that means. Simply put, if you are holding something and it looks like this, it is vertical. If it is sideways, left, right, it is horizontal. I had to make that distinction sometimes. So I just want to cover my bases here on Facebook. If we are posting videos that are vertical in less than 60 seconds, Facebook categorizes this as a Facebook reel. And a reel compared to a photo gets four times the amount of reach. I have seen this over and over again, to the point where posting photos, I do it because I have to, not because I want to. And then lastly again, just to bring that full circle to the beginning, if you join local Facebook groups, which they exist for, almost every community, interact with people, answer their questions, but do not sell.

Mike Kyle
When we are on social media, and this is going to be a theme I will be bringing up again in the future. When we are on social media, we are not selling. We are just letting people know that we exist. Moving over to our second platform, Instagram. Instagram a little bit different. We’re going super visual with Instagram specifically, our reels are still vertical, but instead of 60 seconds, they can now be up to 90 seconds. So we get a little bit more flexibility with what we’re able to create. And Instagram really starts this trend more towards entertainment than education. When I was running social media for our company contract or growth network for the first year and a half, I was posting basically only educational content because that’s what I was told to do.

Mike Kyle
But as I just started realizing more and more, it’s like, listen, people aren’t on social media to be educated. They’re on social media to be entertained. We then flipped our content format to being super entertaining. And our post by de guests probably tripled or quadrupled in views. And it was off of one change like that. Instagram is also fantastic for quick content and on the fly videos. Specifically, their stories feature Instagram Stories. Facebook has this too. It’s a post that disappears after 24 hours. So we just showed those two photos. We showed the fireplace, then we showed the bathroom. Well, maybe if we just completed that fireplace, but we don’t have the profession. We don’t have the professional photos done yet. Maybe we just do, like a quick walkthrough. But we post it as a story on our phone instead.

Mike Kyle
And that way, when we get the professional photos back, we then post them to our feed that doesn’t disappear after 24 hours. And now that kind of becomes our online portfolio of our work. Up next, TikTok. The wild west. Vertical videos up to ten minutes in length. But for the love of God, stick to less than 90 seconds. One, you will not have enough content to fill ten minutes. Two, if you don’t keep people engaged, they’re going to swipe away anyway. So we lost them. Next, use trending sounds and audio to get even more reach, right? That is the beauty of TikTok. And I understand. Listen, I only serve Reno, Nevada. I don’t care if somebody in Charlotte, North Carolina sees my post. Listen, I totally get that.

Mike Kyle
However, if we are able to build our following up, what we can then do is whenever we’re having a sales call, say, hey, by the way, can you check out this post on our TikTok? It’s actually very similar to a project that you’re interested in doing. And then they’ll go to your TikTok, or they’ll go to your Instagram and they see, oh, my gosh, cavalier construction has 50,000 TikTok followers. They must be pretty legit. And so, even if we’re not reaching our ideal client in our specific location, we can still pull bits and pieces from social media to help build our brand and boost our credibility even more. And TikTok skews significantly more entertaining than educational. There’ll be times where we’re laying in bed at night, scrolling through TikTok, and as soon as I see something educational.

Mike Kyle
Listen, I already just worked a twelve hour day. I don’t need to be educated or need to be learning right now. I just want to relax and have fun. So I’m going to be swiping only on entertaining content. And then lastly, that final point on that broad reach that I was just talking about, you can still get specific with your TikTok content based on the location and the hashtags that you use. So TikTok’s going to take your video and it’s going to send it everywhere, but ultimately, we can skew who’s seeing it based on different algorithms. The state of North Carolina has its own TikTok algorithm. Ohio has its own TikTok algorithm. California has its own tech talk algorithm. Excuse me, that’s a tongue twister. Try to say that three times fast.

Mike Kyle
If you are including hashtag California, hashtag Ohio, hashtag Cleveland, hashtag Miami in your post. We are now essentially guaranteeing that at least ten to 20% of those views are going to come from people in that area, which is obviously super beneficial when TikTok’s going to show it to anybody and everybody. And then lastly, we have YouTube. YouTube has stepped into the vertical content game with what they call YouTube shorts. 60 seconds in length, vertical, and anything that is horizontal, probably around a three minute video. Those are going to be your project walkthroughs. Those are going to be your client testimonials. Those are going to be your proven process video where you’re articulating what it looks like to be a customer of yours.

Mike Kyle
All of these things are videos that should be on YouTube first, and then you can take them and post them on your website. I get that question all the time. I have these videos. What should I do with them? Are they on YouTube? No. Okay, start there. And this makes it for a really great sales resource, too, because if I send somebody a Google folder, like, hey, watch these videos, like, that feels kind of weird. If I send you a YouTube link, are you going to watch that video? Probably because you’re more comfortable with receiving a YouTube video than a Google folder of a collection of videos. So when we’re on that sales call, listen, I understand that you’re looking to redo your master bathroom. We actually just completed.

Mike Kyle
We just completed one for a previous client that actually lives about five minutes from you. Do you want to see it? Yeah. All right, I’ll send you the video, and then you send that YouTube link, and all of a sudden, they’re now more engaged and they’re more bought into you as the contractor to complete their work. So we have covered every single social media platform. We have also covered how to build a brand. Now let’s get into how to actually execute on all of this. Number one, I touched on it a little bit. Entertainment and highlights. Be education every single time. You need to actually make content that people want to watch. And that sounds so stupid and so easy, but people forget about it. Just if you’re making a piece of content and you’re like, I hate this, don’t post it.

Mike Kyle
Because if you hate it and you’re the one that’s making it, what are the odds that anybody else that’s watching it is going to give a damn about it as well? Next, again, reminding yourself, why are people on social media to be entertained? To kill time. They’re at a family function and they hate their family, so they’re going to sit off in the corner and swipe through Facebook. We can catch people at any point of the day with social media because we all have downtime. And I’m looking around right now, there’s some people taking notes on their phone. There’s some people on Facebook right now in the back of the room. We’re always on it. And then lastly, if you’re very unsure about what you should be making in this entertainment or this highlight reel space, simply ask yourself one of two questions.

Mike Kyle
Number one, does this match what the leaders in my space are doing? If you go into Instagram right now and you type in kitchen remodel, bathroom remodel, basement remodel, you’re going to see posts that are performing well. Take inspiration from that, and then also ask yourself, does this content also match what my consumer is watching? Ib’s warned me not to do this. I might do it anyway. Who here hates HGTV? Anybody who hears clients watch HGTV. There we go. It doesn’t matter what we think about them. Our clients are used to watching it. So if we’re now able to make content that replicates that format, it’s now content that our clients are used to seeing.

Mike Kyle
And now they’re able to associate us with a version of HGTV, right or wrong, but HGTV has a brand, it’s super powerful and they make a ton of money. So they’re doing something right there. Next. Your post should favor you. I’m sorry. Your post should favor your client and not you. It’s not about you. It’s not. I’m sorry. When I audit contractor social media, the number one post that I see all the time is check out this bathroom we just completed with a photo of the bathroom. Cool. Dude. I don’t care. I don’t care. There’s nothing in that post that makes me care. But if you now flip that and you tell the story of the client. Hey, this is Jim and Pam and they’re about to have their first kid.

Mike Kyle
And so we came in and we wanted to give them a brand new bathroom. So that way, when they have their newborn, they have more space to be able to kind of move around in the bathroom because it was outdated. So we came in, did a design, demoed, installed, and touched everything up. And now Jimmy and Pam have a brand new bathroom that they feel secure when their new baby is born. How much better does that sound? And the very least, it paints a picture of your client. So now if I’m reading it, all of a sudden, I am now in the shoes of your client, and I am feeling the exact same pain that they were originally experiencing before hiring you. And as a pro tip, if you include the location of your client in the post, it’s going to perform better.

Mike Kyle
Not in terms of stats, but in terms of getting people bought into you and your company and building that reputation. Because if I see that somebody just completed a bathroom remodel in Medina, Ohio, which is where I’m from, that means something to me. I know exactly where that is compared to, hey, we just completed this remodel for somebody that’s in Dallas, Texas. I don’t care, but somebody that’s in Dallas cares. And so we’re just trying to build those associations and get people really bought in to us and know, hey, oh, by the way, we also service Medina, Ohio. Going along those lines. Do not under any circumstances, sell on social media, ever. I’m gonna let that sink in for a second. Unless you’re doing a crazy sale or a crazy special or a crazy offer, don’t do it.

Mike Kyle
This on the left is the most common Facebook post I see from contractors ready to upgrade your lifestyle. We just completed this project. Give us a call to discuss your blank insert information here. This post, I’m going to move down here. 32 likes. Not bad. Two comments. Not great. And six shares. Okay, this is from my guy Vinny. After we talked, I said, vinnie, you gotta tell stories of your clients. This was his next post. Exciting news. We just completed this retaining wall project for the Azazah family in New Orleans. There’s the city. He goes through the entire story of the project. And this post, 62 likes. It doubled. 19 comments. It eight x’ed and it had the same amount of shares. And in the comments, there were people literally asking, how can you do this for me?

Mike Kyle
Because on social media, people want to sell themselves. They don’t want to be sold to next. Aim for efficiency. I understand, you know, editing a video takes some time, but if you notice the nuance of what I was saying going through each platform, there are some commonalities between. Between a few of them. Number one, if you have a vertical video, again, vertical, that is less than 60 seconds, it can go to Facebook, it can go to YouTube, it can go to Instagram, and it can go to TikTok. One, post four different places. If you have project photos, it can go to Instagram and it can go to Facebook. It’s okay to post the same thing to multiple platforms. I promise you it’s okay. Because what’s ultimately going to happen is, listen, it may flop on Facebook, but on Instagram it may get 10,000 views.

Mike Kyle
And then all that just keeps compounding over and over. Next, and this is my favorite thing I’m probably going to talk about in this. Every aspect of a project should have its own highlight reel or photo spotlight. If we’re remodeling a kitchen, what are all the things that go into that? There’s new paint, there’s new countertops, there’s new storage, there’s new floors, new fixtures, new backsplash. What am I missing? I’m at six right now. Cabinets, hardware, appliances. That’s nine. If I go ten, I’ll drop this. So we’ll just stick with nine. That is nine different posts off of one project for your social media. That is efficiency like you would not believe. And let’s just get cool with 1010 is a before and after photo of the space or before and after walkthrough of the space. We kind of just.

Mike Kyle
I showed you this clip earlier, but I just did this post for one of our clients. I posted it on Facebook and I posted it on Instagram. We’re not on TikTok yet. We’re ramping up to that with him, but it’s going to go there as soon as we start. I believe this is my last tip. Equipment only matters if you use it. The amount of times that I have heard from different clients saying, I just bought this drone. I just bought this new canon camera. I’m so excited. I talked to them three months later. Hey, how’s it going? Yeah, I haven’t used it since I took it out of the box. Cool. All right, so you just dropped 34567 grand on equipment and you didn’t use any of it. So I like to shoot for practicality.

Mike Kyle
In fact, I’m recording this entire presentation right now on my phone in the middle of the room. It’s in my pocket all the time. It’s always on me. It’s light, it’s quick. Let’s use that. Let’s use what we have. We don’t need to spend up if we’re not going to use it anyway. And then number two, don’t be afraid to hire professionals to do this for you. I have a lot of thoughts around this. You all in this room have so many things going on as business owners, you guys are managing jobs, you guys are trying to hire new people. There’s business fires happening 24/7 do you guys feel like you have a lot of time to make sure that all these photos get taken and all the videos are done? Who’s here to struggle with that? Anybody?

Mike Kyle
I don’t know how to fit social media into my schedule. Totally get it. Best advice, outsource that thing. My favorite thing you can do here is add on an extra thousand dollars to each job and then take that money and hire a professional photographer or a professional videographer to capture it for you when the job is completed. Because I’ll tell you what, this does one of two things. Number one, you now have the media that you need. And number two, it’s actually going to show you. Oh, wow. I can charge more for my work and I can make more money doing this. That’s pretty great, because the difference between a client specifically spending $115,000 on a bathroom compared to $116,000 is nothing. So, as you all probably can tell, I’m very passionate about this.

Mike Kyle
And as somebody that has studied contractor social media for the better part of over 15 months, I can confidently say that 90% of contractors suck at social media. And great news, that includes your competitors, too. Which means not only do they suck and you suck, but you now know, oh, wait a second. If everybody’s bad at this, and I’m the only one that’s good at this in my area, I now have an avenue to win. And that is how we are able to build a brand online, through video, through social media, so we can become the Las Vegas of the construction industry in our area. Here’s my gift to you. If you scan this QR code, it’s absolutely free. I’m not even asking for your email because I’m such a nice guy.

Mike Kyle
You can get access to a one page social media guide that goes through the four platforms. So you just have that. And if you weren’t able to take notes on the entire, on the four slides, it’s all in one sheet for you, which is super awesome. Number two is a social media checklist. It goes platform by platform and it kind of goes over the things that I look for when I’m auditing a client’s social media for the very first time. And I believe there’s one other gift in there, too. But honestly, at the moment, I forgot what it was. But there’s a third one in there. What was that? There we go. Thank you.

Mike Kyle
On that note of camera equipment, what I did was I put together a one page sheet with links to the equipment that I use on a day to day basis. So instead of having to go spend out and figure out, all right, what camera do I want to buy, what mics do I need, anything like that? It’s all in one sheet for you. Are there any questions? Can you just do this for me? I can. And as a matter of fact, if you want to chat more, this is my email. You can send me an email with the subject social media. I’m more than happy to chat about how I can do it for you.

Mike Kyle
Or I’ll hang out either in this room or I think there’s a speaker right after me outside in the hall, and we can chat more about the whole philosophy.