Social media what?

By Mike Draper

High tech is not the norm in the renovation industry.  Consumers, however, have adopted technology and use it every day. They use it for banking, for education and yes, for selecting tcontractors.  With scores of websites, pages and pages of information and opinions on how renovations should be done, homeowners are approaching their renovations from a whole new starting point.

Social media websites that provide reviews on homeowners’ experiences with contractors are easy to come across. Homeowners use these sites to read up on potential contractors and they form their own opinions from those reviews. While this might not seem fair to a contractor, since the contractor didn’t have any say in the review, the reality is that these sites are here and homeowners are using them.

This means that you, as a contractor, have to understand what the Internet is saying about you.  You can no longer put your head in the sand and ignore what is happening to your company online. If you choose not to acknowledge what is online then your online reputation is what is said online.

Don’t leave your company’s online presence on its own.  It is time to take charge of what is being said online about you, both positive and negative.  How you respond to comments posted about you says as much about you as does the original post.  So before you start to post replies to comments about your company, do some research about how to best respond to reviews about your company.

Finally – go to your favorite search engine and type in your company name.  You just might find you have a greater online presence than you ever knew.