You may use Facebook every day but are you using it correctly to promote your plant hire company? We show you how.

It is easy to create a company Facebook page, but it is also important that you use it correctly. In the latest video of our How-To series, we show you how to promote your plant hire company correctly and effectively to gain followers on Facebook.

In Part 2 of promoting your plant hire business on Facebook, we discuss:

• Getting likes on Facebook
• What to post on Facebook
• Great ideas for posts
• The don'ts of Facebook posts

Part 1 of promoting your company on Facebook can be found here.

If you want help in promoting your plant hire business online, then you need to be listed on iseekplant. Click here to register your plant hire company for free.

<Video Transcript>

Part 2: Promoting Your Business On FB And Getting A Following

<Sally on camera> Welcome to our instructional video on how to promote your plant hire business through Facebook.  This is one of a two-part series of promoting your business through this incredibly popular social media tools.

One thing to remember about FB, and everything you do on this platform, is that people come to Facebook principally for recreation. FB is mostly about their private lives, interests, communicating with friends – however there is a place for business to be a part of the platform – but you need to be careful about how you join in on the conversation.

Simply setting up a company page on FB and pumping out your corporate messages won’t work – no one wants to read about how great your business is every time they want login to FB. If you are going to seriously use FB to promote your business then you have to remember that to build a ‘community’ around your business – it has to be more than just about your machines, or your company.

<title slide> Getting Likes

<screenshot with voiceover>

1. The first easy step is to invite all your friends. Under People on the left-hand side, select all the friends you want to invite to your page. My recommendation would be to select everyone you know.
2. Next – Go to the top of the page, in the corner of the cover image and click on the “…” icon – and select ‘Share’. Now, share your page on your own Timeline.
3. Encourage your staff to like your page, then ask them to share the page, in the same way above, with their friends, and invite their friends to the page.
4. Next – create a post to the page. Start by posting something interesting about your business. Such as  ‘Thrilled to announce XYZ Plant Hire was appointed to XYZ Project. Looking forward to starting the job’  or something similar. Try to post every day if possible or every couple of days in the start – in the next section, I’ll talk about what to post.
5. If you really want more likes, you can create an ad for your page. I wouldn’t suggest doing this until you have a lot of good content on there.
6. You can create an Ad by click on the ‘create an ad’ at the bottom of your FB page in the blue section.
7. Select ‘Promote your Page’ and select ‘Page Likes’
8. Go through the process below of identifying the kind of people you want to target, in the same way, you did when you set up your company page. Select locations, gender, age range, interests.
9. Down the bottom – set a budget. You can spend a couple of dollars a day promoting your page for more likes and slowly build from there. Decide on a small amount that you won't miss.
10. Then, you need to upload some images and text that will turn up in the ‘promoted post’ on people’s feed. Make sure it's relevant to your plant hire company and the text is clear and punchy.

<title slide> What to post on FB for a plant hire company

<Sally on camera> As I said before – people come to FB to relax and unwind, they don’t love a lot of corporate messages in their face. So you have to decide what about your business you can leverage to pique people’s interest – not just send them messages about your business.  You can occasionally send business messages through your page but do so rarely and sparingly. Instead, focus on building a community of like-minded people who start to know and recognise your business name and your brand, in the hope that in the future, when they need machines, they’ll remember your name.

<title slide> Great ideas for post for plant hire companies

<Sally on camera> You want to attract the most number of people from the industry to like you page, so ask yourself – what do my clients and customers like? What are their interests? Are there any common interests amongst my customers? What about my staff – do they have common interests? Also – another great way to build cool content onto your page is to sign up to all the industry newsletters and post content, news and opinions about issues in the industry.  One of the goals of posting content is to get people to share it around their networks – this is how you get additional likes from like-minded people. So the more relevant content on your page, the most likely you are to have it shared by people, and in this way, you get introduced to more people who like your page and so on. Some great ideas for posts include:

<voiceover over bullet slide> Some great ideas for posts include:

1. Funny jokes, images, memes and the earthmoving industry – keep this stuff clean, light and funny. Remember that anything you post on this page reflects on your company’s professionalism. There is a way to be funny on Facebook without crossing boundaries. If you are unsure about any content – DON’T POST IT.
2. Request stories and contribution – as for the ‘best example of…’ or ‘tell us about a time you…’
3. Cool machines and technology – if you come across any unusual machines or technology in the industry, post it on your page.
4. Pictures or videos of new techniques – guys in earthmoving love seeing new things in their space. If you see a really great final trim grader operator on site, film him working. Or, if you see someone doing something unique on a site, take a picture and show your followers.
5. Make sure any company updates you post include a link to your website for more information – driving traffic to your business site
6. Sign up to the industry news sites for great news articles on projects or other industry developments that your followers will care about. Post the link and a little bit of commentary about your thoughts on the subject, and invite others to comment.
7. Post updates about your staff and promote your business culture. If you have a team barbeque or team building exercise, or you do a ‘staff member of the month’ – post it on their page and get your employees to share it. Communicate to your audience what it's like to work for your business and what you stand for in your conduct as a service provider. This is a great way to begin building a relationship with new customers.

<bullets on slide> Great FB Post Ideas

1. Funny posts – pictures, memes, videos – within reason
2. Requests stories and contributions from followers
3. Cool machines and technology
4. Pics or videos of new earthmoving techniques
5. Company Updates with links to your website
6. Links to great industry news articles or opinion pieces
7. Staff updates demonstrating company culture

<Sally on camera> Now, there are some very serious warnings about using social media to promote your business. Social media can develop a life of its own, and sometimes, it's hard to know how your posts are being perceived by their audience. It is very easy to make an error that can blow up online quickly – anger people, offend them, inspire unwanted debate or cause people to look at your business in the wrong light, and once these social juggernauts get started, they are very hard to correct or slow down.

So I’m going to give you some advice that you need to think of every single time you post on your company page.

<title slide> The Don'ts of FB Posts

<slide with bullets>

1. Do not to post anything on your FB site that could call into question your safety protocols. Question whether the image is representing something that would contravene a site safety policy
2. Do not upload images of anyone drinking or acting foolishly in your business. They can post this on their personal pages.
3. Remember if you have an opinion about something – the stronger the opinion, the more opposition you will likely attract to it. So be prepared for some blow back if you get up on your soap box
4. Poor spelling, grammar and punctuation in posts makes your whole business look sloppy. Spell check every post.
5. Be careful about posting opinions about other services or products in your industry, unless these are positive. If you don’t like the ‘Machine Operator Accreditation Processes’ for example – this is not the forum to complain about them. Remember that all other people in the industry are trying, like you, to earn a living and publically slandering them, their field or their product will come back to bite you.
6. Be seen as supportive of industry change. If you use your FB page to constantly complain about new changes to regulation or other industry issues, you sound negative and can come off and not being ‘progressive’.

<Sally on camera> This concludes our video tutorial on what to post on your company profile page for plant hire companies wanting to grow their following on FB. We recommend that you start by posting every couple of days in the beginning, and once you have a big following, post more regularly. The more regularly you post, and the more interesting the content – the better chance you have of growing your audience.

If you want help promoting your plant hire business online, then you need to be listed on iseekplant. We have the knowledge and expertise to promote your business online, to the hundreds of thousands of procurement managers, project engineers and supervisors of mining and civil projects that are searching for machines online every day. In fact, thousands search our site each day looking for machines – you need to be there to be found.

To list on iseekplant is free – so please visit www.iseekplant.com.au and click ‘List my Business’.