Social media for plumbers: what to post between emergencies

Nobody chooses a plumber from a feed. They choose one from a phone, at seven in the morning, with a towel under the sink. So the honest first question about social media for plumbers is not what to post but why, and the answer is narrower and more useful than the agencies selling it will say. The feed does not win the emergency. It wins the moment before the emergency, when a neighbour asks the local group who they use, and somebody types your name because they have seen it three times that month. That is the whole job, and this article is about doing it in the twenty minutes a week a working plumber actually has.

What social media actually does for a plumber

Two things, and only two. First, it puts your name in front of the neighbourhood often enough that when somebody in the local Facebook group asks who they use, three people type it. That is not a metaphor; it is the single largest source of new work for a local plumber that we know of, and it runs on Facebook, in groups, where a business page's posts are seen by the people who will later answer the question. Second, when your name comes up on Google, next to four other plumbers, a profile with recent posts of real jobs and a real person looks like a business and a profile with a logo and nothing else looks like a lead generation site. Your Google Business Profile shows those posts, so the post you make for Facebook goes there too.

What it does not do is generate emergency calls, sell boiler installations to strangers, or need a strategy document. Anybody proposing a content calendar with pillars for a two van plumbing firm is charging for something else.

The six posts that make the phone ring later

• The job, plainly. What was wrong, what you did, how long it took. "Burst pipe under a kitchen sink, isolated and replaced in an hour." A photograph of the pipe, not the kitchen. This is the post, and one a week of these is the whole strategy.
• What it costs. "A dripping tap is usually a washer. Forty pounds and twenty minutes." The most searched question about any trade, answered in a post. It filters the calls before they come.
• The thing you fix most. "Why the boiler loses pressure." You know, the customer does not, and telling them kindly is the post people save and the post that gets your name typed in the group.
• The person who turns up. One person, named, in the van or at the door. "Dan covers the north side." A homeowner letting somebody into the house wants to have seen the face first.
• The area. "We cover Headingley, Meanwood and Chapel Allerton." It sounds boring and it is the post that decides whether somebody bothers to call, because a plumber twenty miles away is not a plumber.
• When to call and when not to. "A slow drain, try this first. Water coming through the ceiling, call now." It sounds like turning work away. It is the most trusted post a trade can make.

The van, and the other posts that do nothing

We have generated all of these for trades customers and watched them do nothing, which is the only reason we are confident listing them.

• The van. Clean, in front of a sunset, logo visible. It says you own a van. Every plumber owns a van.
• The certificate. Gas Safe, licensed, insured, in a graphic with a tick. Put it in your bio and in the footer of every post. It is not a post by itself.
• The stock photograph of a plumber. If it is not you, it is a lie in a small way, and homeowners are looking at it precisely to see who will come.
• The tip nobody asked for. Ten ways to save water. It is content, in the bad sense; nobody in the local group will type your name because of it.
• The holiday greeting. Post the emergency number and the hours over the holiday instead. That is the post people screenshot.
• The review graphic. A five star review set as an image. Post the job the review was about, and let the review sit on Google where people actually read them.

The licence number, and the customer's kitchen

Two rules that are easy to keep and easy to break. First, the licence number. If your state requires it in advertising, a social media post is advertising. California states it in one sentence: a licensed contractor must include the licence number in all forms of advertising, and California licenses plumbing contractors under the same board as everyone else. Most states have some version of the rule and the details differ; your board's page is the one to read. The practical answer is the same everywhere: put the number in your bio, in the footer of every post the way the examples here do, and stop thinking about it.

Second, the customer's home is in most of your photographs. Ask before you shoot, photograph the pipe rather than the room, keep the address and anything with a name on it out of frame, and never post the outside of the house. Nobody has ever objected to a photograph of their old stopcock. Plenty of people would object to their kitchen. If a customer says something nice and you want to use it, the endorsement rules are simple when nothing changed hands: ask, and post it as they said it.

Which platform, and how often

Facebook first, because that is where the local group is and the local group is where the recommendation happens. Your Google Business Profile second, with the same posts, because that is where the number gets recognised. Instagram third, same posts again, for the younger homeowners and because Instagram posts now show in Google search. Nothing else unless you enjoy it. One post a week, the same post everywhere, is more than enough; the goal is to be seen three times a month by the same neighbourhood, not to build an audience.

If writing the words is the part that never happens on a Sunday, that is what our product does from your website and reviews, and what a chat model will do if you tell it what the week's jobs were. The photograph of the pipe is still yours to take, and it takes eight seconds.