Seven social media strategies to grow your small business

man in his landscaping company uniform stands in front of a camera.

Develop a strong online presence to build trust with potential customers.

Key overview: Seven website and social media strategies to grow your small business

Communicate what your business does and who you are appealing to. This should be clear within the first three seconds of a potential customer clicking on your website or social media channel.
Be where your customers are. While older customers might use traditional channels, gen Z and millennials are more likely to use Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to discover new businesses.
Boast about your team. Posts that feature people often generate the most engagement.
Show BTS (behind-the-scenes) footage. Telling a story from start to finish builds trust.
Collaborate. Using hashtags and tagging other businesses increases your chances of discoverability.
Start now. You’ll find out what works through trial, error and repetition.
Post regularly. A consistent presence on social media leads to stronger engagement and faster growth in followers.

A smiling man in a meeting room stands in front of a camera trained on another man working on a laptop.

The rules have changed

Word-of-mouth referrals have been tradies’ bread and butter for decades, but the way customers find you is changing. A strong online presence and some smart social media strategies are increasingly recognised as a powerful way for tradespeople to showcase their skills and build trust in a competitive – and digital – world.

In fact, how tradies communicate their expertise and professionalism matters just as much in winning jobs as the quality of the work itself¹.

Have a website you haven’t updated in a while? Thinking about posting more on Instagram or Facebook for your small business but don’t know how you’ll find the time? This isn’t the time to post randomly and hope for the best. Social media and your website can help grow your business – but only if you know how to use it. We asked the experts to share their best strategies.

Strategy 1: Communicate your brand clearly on social media

You have about three seconds to capture potential customers’ attention online, Aaron Kemp, a coach and mentor at Tradies Mentoring Tradies, says. “If your website doesn’t say exactly what you do in that first headline paragraph or who you’re appealing to, you’re going to lose [customers],” he says. “If your website takes too long to load on their mobile, they’re not going to stick around.”

Aaron recommends getting clear on your business vision and values and using them to shape the content on your website and social media. This can help you appeal to customers who share your values and clearly communicate what makes your business different.

“It’s about building the ‘know, like and trust’ factor – having a website and social media gives people that visual of the business,” Aaron says.

Strategy 2: Be present wherever your clients are online

For younger generations, social media has evolved from marketing into a trust-building tool². Research shows that gen Z and millennials – who Aaron says are more likely to use Instagram, TikTok and YouTube – are nearly 24 per cent more likely than the general population to use a brand’s social profile rather than their website when deciding what to buy.

“Why would they choose you over your competitor? It generally comes down to how you present yourself and how you’re turning up online,” Aaron explains.

Strategy 3: Make sure some of your posts feature team members

For many small businesses, posts that feature people generate the most engagement. Bec Jenner, who runs Sydney-based Generate Landscapes with her husband, Adam, says Instagram and Facebook have helped drive interest in and clients for their business, which they started in 2021.

The couple began by posting about plants and landscaping but quickly realised their growing following engaged more with posts featuring their team, like those marking birthdays, celebrating achievements and showing general goings-on onsite.

They now have more than 18,000 Instagram followers. “It’s really about building trust and connection through our team,” Bec says. “We’re careful to make sure that everything is very consistent and on brand: ‘We’re fun. We’re professional. We’re great people to work for.’”

A man taking a photo on a smartphone of small potted plants in a plant nursery.

Strategy 4: Take your customers behind the scenes

While professional photos of finished jobs and before-and-after sequences might seem ideal for social media, Bec says the opportunity to showcase projects from the “dirt up” is often just as appealing to potential clients.

“It might be something like showing how a retaining wall that needs strong engineered footings is built. It may not seem the most exciting, but it builds that trust that you’re not shying away from the level of detail and complexity that is involved with everything that you build. Then when you do see the beautiful end result, you can see it’s all started from somewhere.”

Strategy 5: Use hashtags and tag other businesses

Bec recommends using hashtags on Instagram posts because they help connect your content with similar posts. Be aware you can only use five hashtags per feed post or reel caption, so be sure they’re relevant to your content – think of them as labels that help the algorithm understand what a post is about, which boosts the chances of your work appearing in potential customers’ feeds. And don’t forget to use keywords people are searching for, especially towards the beginning of your caption or story. This will help the algorithm, plus your potential new audience, to notice it straight away. (One tip to find keywords? Start typing a relevant word in Instagram’s search bar and check the drop-down autocomplete suggestions.)

Bec also suggests tagging suppliers and other businesses you work with to create more opportunities for your content to be shared. “It might be your concreter, a supplier, or even where the team had lunch,” she says. “You’re wanting to attract as much business as possible, but you can do that by collaborating with others in the industry.”

Strategy 6: Start posting on social media right away

Even though building an online presence can seem like a big job, Aaron says a smartphone and a willingness to share what you’re working on can be enough to get started. “I find tradies can procrastinate over the things they’re not confident in, but if you’re not putting stuff out there, you’ll never know whether it works or not. Anyone can pick up a phone and do a post about the problem they solved today for somebody,” Aaron says.

Strategy 7: Post regularly

Businesses that post three to five times a week on Instagram see stronger engagement and faster follower growth than those posting less often³. Scheduling posts in advance can help you streamline the work and maintain a consistent presence on social media. Bec suggests blocking out one hour in your calendar every week on your quietest day to write and schedule posts. “That way it becomes more of a habit and not a chore,” she says.