How to Promote your Construction Company on LinkedIn

September 2, 2022

LinkedIn is the modern Yellow Pages (and a box of chocolates). 

Getting Started on LinkedIn

Even if you don’t think your company is on the platform, you should search for it. 

You could be listed without creating a company profile. 

When people create individual LinkedIn profiles, they are prompted to list where they work. If they list your business, even if your business doesn’t have a Page, LinkedIn will create one for you. It will be mostly empty, but will list who works there and be searchable. So, you may have a Page and not realize it. 

Claim your page if it exists.

If you find you already have a company Page, you should get a little prompt telling you it’s an unclaimed Page. If you want to claim it, you’ll be taken through a verification process. Compared to platforms like Facebook, it is far less likely some random person will be able to claim your business Page. 

Creating your page is a guided process.

If you don’t already have a LinkedIn Page for your business, it can seem daunting to start one. But fear not! There are ample prompts for the exact information you need to fill in. 

The create a new page button should be at the top of your screen, where you’ll click something that says work. The last option in the list that pops up will be Create a Page. Once you click on it, you’ll be taken to a new section of LinkedIn and asked to fill in your company name. 

Be sure to have your details handy.

LinkedIn requires you to be specific about your business. You’ll be asked to fill in company size, whether you’re privately or publicly held and other details. For some of the details, you’ll have the option to display them publicly or not. Some fields you complete are just for LinkedIn’s own company reporting, so they know what kinds of companies are using the platform. 

Outside of the specifics, creating a Page on LinkedIn isn’t much different from what you’d do on other platforms. You’ll be given prompts for your company description, type of company, industry and hours. These will help potential customers and hires find your business when searching on the platform. 

Posting notes & tricks.

The content you personally post on social media is not the same stuff you put out as a company on LinkedIn. 

#1 Goal: Show people who you are as a company. 

Posting once a week on LinkedIn is a good starting point. 

Some companies are posting way more than that, and if you have the content to do so, go for it. It’s not going to hurt you to post every other day. Just be consistent.

There’s so much content on LinkedIn. If you’re not posting consistently, you will get lost in the shuffle. To keep up, you can post the same things you post on Facebook on LinkedIn if it’s appropriate for the platform. It will reach a different group of people, meaning you can reuse your content. 

Use a social media scheduling software to save time.

Posing to multiple platforms sounds like a lot of extra work, but there are ways to make it easier to post in more than one place. At MayeCreate, we use Loomly, which is a scheduler. You can write content months in advance, which is a huge timesaver.

Once it’s set up, you can choose from several different social platforms and publish to all in one go. You choose your platforms, type in your content, add a photo or video and schedule it on all the platforms at once. Then you don’t have to worry about remembering to post something manually in 3 or 4 different social networks and you’ll cut down on errors as well. 

How to connect with others on the platform.

Use tags (and post about your projects).

Project before and afters tend to do well, especially if you have partnered with other companies. Share photos of the project and tag the other companies in the post. Generally, on LinkedIn, posts with tags, even for just one other company, will do way better.

For example, we have a client whose LinkedIn account is less than a year old. We have posted content for them, thanking and tagging other companies they work with, and it gets 40-50 likes and a few comments. It goes over like gangbusters, all because they connect with the community in their industry.  

Share content from your company LinkedIn page on your personal LinkedIn profile.

Our commercial construction companies gain an audience really fast on LinkedIn, far faster than they do anywhere else. However, your audience isn’t going to appear out of thin air. 

Jump start your audience growth by sharing your company content on your profile if you have a company presence on LinkedIn. Not only will you get that content in front of more people, but both the company and you as an employee will gain legitimacy in what you’re doing. People who follow you personally will get to see what you do every day, and people who follow your company will know the staff cares about what they do. 

Have your employees link to you from their profile.

Encourage any of your employees who are on LinkedIn to list your company on their profile, and make sure they have the actual company Page linked. Then, anyone they follow, or anyone who follows them, will see your company Page’s content because they have a connection to those who work there. 

These connections your employees have can lead to more likes and followers on the company account. More often than not, you’re also going to be able to interact with a great audience who is invested in what you have to say.

What to Post on LinkedIn

Now to answer the million dollar question, what should you be posting about?!? Here’s a few suggestions we see working to get you started.

Humanize what you’re doing.

Show the faces of your company. 

Again, your people are probably on LinkedIn, so you can tag them. In all likelihood, they will share it on their account, showing your content to more people. 

Share work anniversaries or throwbacks to when staff started with your company. 

It’s fun to post a photo of someone when they started and a current photo side-by-side. They may have been fresh out of high school or college when they started and look totally different than they do now. 

These posts show the longevity of your company and how long people stay. While you’re giving your staff an attaboy, you’re also showing your audience that your employees like you enough to work with you from the 70s until now.

Share the fun and family moments.

Have a safety vest and hardhat fashion show or post your CEO going down in a dunk tank at a local charity event. When are the moments you feel most like your company is a family? Those moments of fun make great content for LinkedIn because they are work related but aren’t so serious. They show your company is human.

Make the most of video content.

You can go live on LinkedIn!

People are embracing live video, and you can go live on LinkedIn. Even better, the video is right at the top of your profile, meaning people don’t have to scroll to find it. There are a whole bunch of different ways you could use live video to promote your company. 

There are a lot of different ways you can utilize live video, whether it’s advertising something you’re doing or showing people you care about the people doing the work for your company. 

Before diving into video, make sure you’re following all rules and regulations. If you’re working on a project that can’t be photographed or videoed, don’t go live on those. However, if you’re doing something cool, and I say cool from the perspective of someone who does not work in construction, go live with it. 

Anything explosion-related from a safe distance makes a fantastic live video. 

Can’t you imagine somebody starting the video saying, “Okay, you guys, here’s the deal. We’re going to count to 10 and press this button right here. Then that whole bridge is going down. Are you ready?” 

Go live with staff recognitions.

You could also go live with any internal staff recognitions, like giving awards or congratulating someone on a long career. Livestream part of those speeches and people who couldn’t attend in person can still watch. 

Everyone loves drone footage.

If you’re not ready to go live, another type of video content I never get sick of is drone footage. It gives such an interesting perspective on what you do every day. With drone footage, remember the longer it gets, the more people are going to stop watching. I’d keep it around 30 to 45 seconds and make sure it’s not the same thing repeatedly. 

Don’t forget your drone footage can have people in it.

I recently combed through a bunch of drone footage of people pouring footings like concrete footings for a building, and it was pretty awesome.

We interviewed one of our subcontractors, Bruce Bishop, about drone footage tips; you can listen to that episode. He was a great interview and did a wonderful job. 

Post time lapse videos.

Another fun video to post on LinkedIn is time lapse videos, especially if you’re working on a heavy construction project where things move slowly. 

You can do a time lapse and speed things up a bit in an interesting way. These videos can also be a little funny if there are people in them. With those, you’ll get a good depiction of what you do with a little bit of humor.

Experiment with ‘unboxing’ videos.

If you want to target a younger market, you could try an unboxing video. Let’s say you’ve got a whole bunch of new hard hats and safety vests, or you got everybody jackets for Christmas. Once they all come in, you could unbox them live. These types of videos can be fun to watch plus they show your audience that you care about your employees and you don’t take yourselves too seriously.

How do you know if you’re wasting your time on LinkedIn? 

Is anyone interacting with your posts? 

That’s your first indicator. If people are engaging by reacting or commenting in a positive way you’re on the right track. Even negative responses are still responses. Reactions to your post show that people are paying attention to what you’re putting out there. 

Some of our construction clients have employees who like to tease each other via the comments. So keep an eye on that. If that is not your company personality, stay on top of the comments so you can delete those as needed. Even if it does fit within your company personality, make sure it’s not off-putting to your audience. It’s completely relative and depends on who you are as a company. Think of your brand and how your audience interacts with you. If they know you as kind of silly and casual, then it’s totally fine. If your outward brand is serious, your posts and comments should be as well.

If your page is an interaction graveyard, keep an eye on your audience growth.

• If your audience isn’t growing make sure you’re telling people about the page and also sharing those posts on your personal LinkedIn feed.
• If you have a good size audience but they’re not interacting you may be posting the wrong content. Switch up your creative and see if that gets them going.
• If that doesn’t work then don’t be afraid to throw in the towel on posting frequently. You can just post once or twice a month to show people you’re not actually dead and move onto another marketing activity that may yield better results for your company.

Hiring on LinkedIn

Posting jobs on LinkedIn. 

It’s what the platform was created for. MayeCreate has found many amazing employees through LinkedIn. Though don’t let the “free” posting opportunity fool you. I have always had to pay to promote the jobs I’ve posted on LinkedIn if I want people to see them. 

They do have support for job posters. I have actually had people from LinkedIn reach out to me and say, “Hey, if you did these few things, your job listing would do better.” And as a person who’s not hiring all day every day I really appreciate that feedback and level of customer service. 

The thing I don’t like as much about posting jobs on LinkedIn is it’s not easy to manage setting appointments and all the interactions you have going on. It’s not a full-scale management system like Indeed. 

Don’t miss out on great applicants with poor LinkedIn management. 

Whether you are placing a job or even if you’re posting about it on your page, make sure the information is as accurate as possible. 

LinkedIn shows job posts to the people it thinks best matches what you’re talking about, so accuracy will help. Also, if people see the job posting and ask questions about it, or apply for it, then later find out the job isn’t quite how you described it, you’re wasting their time and yours. Not to mention they’ll probably hold it against your company too. 

Most job applicants are active and ready to talk back and forth using chat. 

When I reach out to people about a job on LinkedIn, they are pretty quick to respond. 

If you’re hiring through LinkedIn, schedule yourself time to check your LinkedIn messages to see what’s going on. Responding promptly reflects positively on your company and you. Don’t frustrate the need for your job applicants to take action that lowers the likelihood of them ultimately taking a job with your company.

Making LinkedIn Work for You

Beyond just posting there are a handful of extra things LinkedIn can do for businesses too. 

You can auto message individuals based on interests or demographics.

You can use third party services to automatically reach out to people of a certain demographic and message them to boost connections and facilitate new relationships. 

You can create blogs or groups to interact with people. 

Using groups is a great way to meet people and interact with those you already know. You can set up a mentoring group and pair more experienced employees with newer staff. Create a private group where people can ask questions about company-specific things. 

Because LinkedIn gets so industry-specific, if that’s how you want to use it, you can make deeper connections with people who are doing exactly what you’re doing. You can bounce ideas off of each other and learn from each other. 

Ads on LinkedIn can be super targeted.

If you are doing business-to-business marketing and want to place ads, you can get super targeted on LinkedIn. However, the cost of entry is higher. Your cost per click, meaning your cost per interaction on an ad, might be equal to that of Facebook, but LinkedIn requires a larger daily budget to run your ads then other networks. 

LinkedIn is a platform built on connection.

LinkedIn is more like a good old fashioned networking event than any other social network. 

You will see more content on LinkedIn from companies you do not follow, because it’s shared by people you know. And you’re more likely to see content from people you have interacted with on LinkedIn than on any other platform. 

Take advantage of the interested audience, and promote your company on LinkedIn. It’s an evolving platform full of tools to make your business even more successful than it already is.