Most of the business owners I talk to around Lancaster have a Facebook page they set up years ago and have barely touched since. There is a logo that is cropped wrong, a phone number that may or may not be current, and three posts from a busy week in 2022. Then somebody tells them they should be “doing more on social media” and it goes on the list with everything else that never gets done.
Here is what I actually believe about Facebook for a local business: you do not need to post every day, you do not need video, and you do not need a content strategy. You need your page to answer the questions people already have about you, and you need to show up often enough that you are not a stranger. That is a job you can do in about twenty minutes a week.
Why the page matters even if you never post
When somebody hears your name at a ballgame or gets your card from a neighbor, a lot of them look you up on Facebook before they look anywhere else. It is the fastest way to check if you are real. They are not reading your posts. They are looking at four things: is there a phone number, do you cover their area, do other people around here seem to know you, and does this look like a business that is still operating.
If your last post is from three years ago, that fourth question gets a shrug. Not a no, but a shrug. And a shrug is enough for them to keep scrolling to the next name somebody gave them.
The twenty minute a week version
Forget the marketing advice you have heard. This is the whole plan for a business owner who is on a roof or under a sink all day.
- Fix the top of the page once. Current phone number, the areas you serve in plain words, your hours, and a button that lets someone call or message you without hunting. Do this one time and it keeps working.
- Post one job a week. Not a promotion. A job. A before and after, a truck at a site, a finished deck. One photo and two sentences about what it was and where it was. That is a post.
- Answer messages fast. Facebook shows people how quickly you reply. A page that answers in an hour reads as a real business. A page that takes four days reads like nobody is home.
- Say thank you in public. When somebody recommends you in a local group, reply to them. It costs nothing and everybody else in that thread sees you being decent.
- Repost the good word. If a customer says something kind, share it with a line about the job. That is your proof, and it came from somebody else, which is worth more than anything you could write about yourself.
Local groups do more than your page does
Around here, the county buy and sell groups and the neighborhood groups are where somebody types “anybody know a good electrician” at nine at night. Being a person in those groups is worth more than any amount of posting on your own page. Not selling in them, just being present and answering when somebody asks a question you actually know the answer to.
Most groups have rules against outright advertising, and honestly that works in your favor. The owner who helps out and is known by name gets recommended by other people, and a recommendation from a neighbor beats an ad every single time. Read the rules once, then just be useful.
What to post when you have nothing to post
The reason most pages go quiet is that owners think a post has to be interesting. It does not. It has to be evidence that you exist and do good work. When I am stuck, these always work:
- The job you finished this week, with one photo.
- A heads up that is useful this time of year, like what to check before the first freeze.
- A question you get asked constantly, answered in three sentences.
- The truck, the crew, or you. People hire people.
- Where you are booked out to right now. Nothing makes somebody call today like hearing you are filling up.
The part nobody tells you
Facebook is where people confirm you. It is usually not where they find you. Somebody searching for what you do at the moment they need it is on Google, and that is a different job with a different payoff. The mistake I see is an owner pouring hours into posts while the place people actually search for them is half empty or points at the wrong phone number.
Get both pointing the same direction. Same name, same number, same service area, same story. When a person checks two places and sees the same business in both, that is when they stop comparing and pick up the phone.
Do the small version and stop worrying about it
You are not going to become a social media company, and you should not try. Fix the top of your page, post the work once a week, answer messages like you would answer the phone, and be a real person in the local groups. That puts you ahead of nearly every competitor in this county, because most of them are still sitting on a page from 2022.
If you want to know where you stand, I will do a free write up of your site and your Google presence and tell you plainly what a customer sees when they look you up. No obligation, and I include your options in the report so you can decide what is worth doing and what is not. If the answer is that you are in decent shape, I will tell you that too.