I own a house painting company and post to four social media accounts daily.

A friend who saw me post so often on social media assumed I was getting tons of direct, measurable painting leads from my social media posts. She was even considering hiring someone whose sole responsibility would be posting on Social Media for her business.

I assured her this would not be a good use of her finite marketing dollars.

You see, I get almost NO direct business from social media posts. source.

This is worth repeating – in my case, posting 4x a day on Social Media does not bring in any measurable amount of painting business.

In fact, if I weren’t already maximizing my marketing dollars elsewhere, social media would be the first thing I’d drop.

So why do I post?

Branding:

I consider Social Media as a way for prospects to become aware of my painting company’s brand in case they need a painter.

This way, if someone gets my direct mail, sees a Google Pay-Per-Click ad, or sees one of my lawn signs, they might think, “That logo is familiar to me,” in a way that your neighbor’s kind face might be familiar.

If the internet is a super-highway, consider your Facebook and LinkedIn posts like outdoor billboards.

And while you probably wouldn’t pull over your car on the highway to buy life insurance from the billboard right then and there, the hope is that the billboard’s message sticks with you once you’re ready to buy.

Since I’ve already maximized my marketing budget in other lead-generating ways like direct mail, pay-per-click, and SEO, using social media to give another brand impression of my company works for me as part of a larger strategy.

Since it takes a person about seven times to see your message before they take action – Social Media, for me, is just one of those times.

How social media can help your search ranking (SEO):

Whenever I post on social media, I give a nugget of information to the audience and then add a link to my website to “learn more.”

When additional traffic heads to my site, not only is the person clicking rewarded with more information on the topic, but Google gives my site credit for expertise and increased traffic. And expertise increases my website’s placement in future search results.

So even though I’m not getting DIRECT leads from social media, the posts themselves drive traffic to my site, which lifts my search ranking.

A tenet of my blog is to explain what’s “normal” so you’re not comparing yourself to some unrealistic metric.

So, if you’re posting on Social and not getting many (or any) quantifiable leads, you’re completely normal.

Now don’t you feel better?

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