Social media marketing in Newcastle, NSW: posts that bring customers.

It keeps you in front of the people who already know you. Past customers, the people they talk to, and anybody who looked you up. That is what it does reliably, and in a market this size those people are most of your next year's work.

The promise attached to posting is usually that it finds new customers. It does that occasionally, and it is not what it is good at, because the people seeing your posts largely followed you already.

What it does reliably is keep you present with people who could refer you or come back themselves. In a market the size of Newcastle that is a real job, because a lot of work here still moves on somebody mentioning your name.

What it does well

• It keeps the business in mind.

  With past customers and the people they talk to, which is where a great deal of local work actually comes from.

• It proves the business is trading.

  Somebody given your name looks it up. A feed that stopped two years ago answers a question you never wanted asked.

• It shows the actual work being done.

  Finished jobs, in the business's own photographs, which is far more convincing than any description of them.

• It gives people somewhere to message.

  For some Newcastle businesses more enquiries arrive here than through the website, and nobody has ever counted them.

A post that sells is advertising, and the ACCC sets out what has to be disclosed.

People check you first. A referral, a quote, a name from a local group, and before anybody rings, they look at your page to see whether you are real and still working.

Separate to the budget that reaches Meta sits the monthly cost of running them, which pays for building, watching and replacing what people see rather than for reach itself.

The moment that matters is not somebody discovering the business in a feed. It is somebody who already has the name deciding whether to ring it.

That check takes seconds and it is looking for very little. Recent activity, real work, and a way to get in touch. A page with those three passes it.

It is also why how often you post matters less than whether anybody replies. Posting fortnightly and answering every message wins more work than posting daily and leaving the messages unread.

The work as you do it. Finished jobs, the before and after, the team, and the answer to the question customers keep asking. Photographs you took, rather than anything designed to look like marketing.

The businesses that keep this up are the ones posting what they were already doing anyway. The ones that stop are the ones who decided to start producing content.

What actually works

• Finished work, photographed on the day.

  With a before and after wherever there is a before genuinely worth showing alongside it.

• The people who do the work.

  For a local business this matters considerably more than any amount of polish on the picture does.

• The question customers keep asking you.

  Answered plainly and in full. It is useful, and it is the post most likely to travel on to somebody else.

• Whatever is actually happening this week.

  A new van, a new hire, a job finished in a suburb you would like more work in.

The photographs have to be your own. Stock imagery on a local business page reads as stock imagery, and it undoes the one advantage a local business has here.

Count the enquiries arriving through it, and ask new customers where they found you. Followers and likes describe an audience rather than a result.

This channel is the easiest of all to judge on the wrong numbers, because the platform hands you numbers that go up whether anything happens or not.

What to count

• The messages and the enquiries.

  The actual conversations that started here. On some Newcastle businesses this is the largest single source and nobody had counted it.

• Where new customers say they found you.

  Simply asked on the call itself. It is imprecise, and it is a great deal better than nothing at all.

• How long the whole thing takes you.

  The hours are the real cost. Where it is two hours a week, it is competing with two hours of something else.

• Whether it is even still running.

  The most common failure is quietly stopping, which is worse than never starting, because the page now looks abandoned.

Followers are worth watching only as a slow trend. Bought followers are worth less than none, because the audience stops matching the people who would actually buy anything.

Pick one platform, take photographs as the work happens, and settle posting into a rhythm the business can actually hold. Every message gets an answer the same day.

The failure of this channel is almost never doing it badly. It is stopping altogether.

1. Pick one platform

Whichever one your customers are already on. Two accounts kept up, rather than five abandoned ones. One is a perfectly good answer.

2. Photographs get taken as the work happens

On a phone, on the day. What stops most businesses is not skill. It is that nobody took a photograph on the day.

3. A rhythm gets set that can actually be held

Fortnightly forever, rather than daily for one month. The failure mode of this channel is stopping, so the rhythm is chosen to survive a busy month.

4. Answer every message the same day

This is where the enquiries actually are. An unanswered message is worse than having no account at all.

5. Comments get replies

Keeping them brief is fine. It is visible to everybody else reading the post, and those are the people who have not decided yet.

6. Count what arrives

Messages, and where new customers say they found you. Then the hours can be judged against something real rather than a feeling.

Nothing happens quickly here, and that is normal. It works as a slow accumulation, and the businesses it works for are the ones still doing it a year later.

The order it happens in

• First the accounts are tidied up.

  Correct details, real photographs, and a way to get in touch. That is what the people checking you out are looking at.

• Then the posting rhythm starts.

  Whatever rhythm can actually be held. Very little appears to happen for a while, which is the part that makes people stop.

• Then the messages start to arrive.

  Slowly, and from people who already had the name. That is this channel working exactly as intended.

Where enquiries are needed this month, advertising is the answer and posting is not. They are different purchases, and it is worth being clear which one is being made.

Ask whose accounts they are, where the photographs come from, who answers the messages, and what the monthly report shows. The photographs question predicts whether it will work.

These are worth asking of any agency, including this one, so the answers given here are underneath each question.

• Whose accounts do these end up being?

  The business's own, with the agency added to them. An account created by somebody else leaves with that somebody else.

• Where do the photographs come from?

  Your own work, taken on site. Where the answer is stock imagery, the feed will end up looking like everybody else's.

• Who is going to answer the messages?

  Enquiries arrive here, and answering them is the part that turns into work. They go to the business here unless it asks otherwise.

• What does the monthly report show me?

  The messages and the enquiries. Follower growth on its own only describes an audience rather than a result.

This is the channel most worth keeping in house, because the photographs and the voice come from the people doing the work. The part worth handing over is usually the consistency.