The current way of the cyber-world is social media. There’s no denying it. In the United States alone, 196.5 million people have a Facebook account, 77.5 million are Instagram users, and 67 million people use twitter monthly.
Most industries have tuned in to this large market and work tirelessly to maintain a positive and actively engaged image across these different channels. However, regardless of the huge traffic on social media, moving companies still do not seem to be utilizing these outlets as much as they could be. Here are some tips on which social media platforms to use, and how to generate the most traffic with interesting content:
Find the talent
Social media is something that younger people are generally better at, simply because it has been present for the majority of their formative years. If you don’t have the funds to create a part-time social media/marketing position, try creating an unpaid internship program. College students studying PR/Advertising are often willing to partake in unpaid internships if there is opportunity to learn and grow, and not too heavy of a time commitment. If you have trouble finding someone, try reaching out to local colleges and see if their communications department would be willing to add your job description to any discussion boards.
Content Ideas
Let’s be honest, moving is not the most glamorous or exciting industry in the world. That being said, there is strong untapped potential for interesting posts. Assuming you are already blogging and generating content about your industry (and if you aren’t, start now) here are some ideas on content for a moving company social media account include:
Client shout-outs:
Wish the families good luck in their new places that you just moved. If you make a genuine and heartfelt post wishing a family luck on their next great adventure in their new home that you just helped move them into, that creates a positive public image. Tagging the family in that post will also allow friends of them to see, and give you the possibility of being liked/retweeted/mentioned (which means more engagement and awareness, woooo!)
Employee features:
Each member of your staff undeniably has hidden talents somewhere, or has lived somewhere interesting, or has a cousin/brother/aunt/uncle that saw someone famous sometime. Choose a member of your staff, find out something interesting about them, and try to do an employee feature maybe once a month or every other week. This will give your social media a personal touch, and people online have the chance to connect with you and feel like they know who you are.
Events:
If your company has an awesome Christmas party, or does some type of give-back volunteer event, make a post about it! Again, that personal feel will make people more likely to use their service because they will feel a connection with you.
Instagram is the most recent of the social media trends. Although it has been around for several years, it consistently has high volume and traffic, and is a fairly easy platform to navigate. Instagram allows you to share pictures with captions that show up in a “newsfeed” type form for anyone that follows your account.
As a moving company, utilizing Instagram could prove to be very helpful if you have someone that takes interesting and aesthetic pictures and is able to come up with clever or intriguingly interesting content to go along with them.
Utilize hashtags that have to do with your business and the moving industry that will generate traffic to your page for people looking to find information on moving companies.
Similar to Instagram, Facebook will allow you to utilize photos of your business and what you’re up to. However, unlike Instagram, Facebook allows you to go into far more detail and give more information about your business (like where you’re from, what kind of organization you are). It also allows you to post meaningful content such as articles and videos, and repost content that other profiles have published. On Facebook, you’re also allowed to “join groups” that have to do with your industry and be a part of discussion posts relating to any topic of interest as well. All of these things will generate traffic and buzz it you utilize them. Creating a business page is easy, and HubSpot can help you create one with ease with the resources on their website.
Depending on the articles and blog you read, there are mixed review on whether or not it is necessary for businesses to have twitter accounts anymore. For the sake of traction and traditional social media marketing, it’s definitely not a bad idea to have one. Twitter will allow you to reach out to large audiences through the use of appropriate hashtags, and retweeting content from big names in your industry. Although media isn’t twitter’s main focus, there is still that factor of being able to post pictures along with your 160-character tweet.
Videos
Video are great ways to generate traction – you can post them on all social media platforms and you can edit them to be short clips that people can quickly view on twitter/Instagram. We aren’t talking about vlogging/selfie videos – these would be informational tips, testimonials, or how-to’s.
The whole point of all this social media stuff is good PR and generating business. If a potential customer is looking for a moving company for their next move and they remember that their friend Sally retweeted a post by a moving company last week, they are going to probably give you a look, and might end up using your service. Having a strong social media presence lets people get a feel for what your company is like, what you stand for, and
