Optimizing roofing captions for Instagram is one of the most efficient ways to scale your roofing company’s social media presence in 2024.
According to Statista, Instagram has 143.35 monthly users in the U.S., which means optimizing Instagram captions can have broad implications.
Monthly Active Instagram Users in the United States (Source: Statista)
Best Practices for Roofing Instagram Captions
The key to optimizing roofing Instagram captions is appropriately reflecting your company’s brand, authority, and mission statement through the caption.
Avoid captions you wouldn’t publish on your company website or verbalize in a conversation with a client.
To stay on track, stick to the following principles:
- Use a Keyword That Matches the Image
- Avoid Impulse Posting
- Utilize Emojis
- Include a Call to Action
- Avoid Overdoing Hashtags
- Insert Humor or Puns When Appropriate
- Be Human, Not Robotic
Showcasing recent reviews from real customers serves as great content for an Instagram post and an accompanying caption.
How The Instagram Algorithm Works In 2024
Instagram’s algorithm favors fresh, up-to-date content. Roofers should post consistently about recent projects, weather-damaging storms (when relevant), and cutting-edge industry trends. By sharing timely content, roofers provide the algorithm with what it craves most.
Engagement Optimization
Posts that are provocative and evoke emotions from Instagram users are the most likely to receive engagement (clicks, comments, interactions) and reach a broad audience.
While some roofing companies have leaned into this strategy, you must also walk a fine line between engagement and absurdity. You don’t want to post anything that will reflect poorly on your brand and cost you sales or customers.
Finding the appropriate sweet spot is how you benefit from the algorithm without risking credibility.
Instagram Stories
The algorithm that drives the Instagram feed — where you see a steady stream of reels and still images from people you follow and sponsored posts — is tricky to crack artificially, and let’s be frank; most people don’t want to see a company’s self-serving content.
However, Instagram Stories have allowed companies to improve their visibility and create a welcomed alternative to overly-staged content that so many complain about with Insta.
In fact, Later, an Instagram scheduler platform identified authenticity as one of their Instagram marketing trends. (They also have a great article about how to use Stories as a business to make the most of Instagram for roofers. Give it a read!)
Stories tend to get more play these days, and Facebook even introduced this feature into their platform, given the warm reception. This is a fantastic way to set your roofing company apart from the rest and to show up uniquely to potential customers.
Share some behind-the-scenes looks at roof repairs (don’t forget to hashtag those roofing keywords. #roofrepair), spotlight your fantastic team with some quick interviews focused on fun questions (like favorite foods, TV shows, or most beloved thing about your city), and share your posts on Stories too.
Remember: users may interact with Stories but miss your post on their feed, so show up on both to maximize access to your great content.
Content Marketing For Instagram
A Forbes article about Instagram Marketing gave sage advice: “Post often and proactively engage with your audience.” Not only are you shooting for quantity (frequent posts), but quality matters, too.
If you plan to foster relationships with followers — or even try to reach those who don’t already follow you via sponsored posts — you’d better think about what they want to see from you and deliver that.
Every marketing channel aims to increase your brand awareness and (hopefully) increase sales, but lead with industry expertise to establish yourself as an authority in the roofing services realm.
Follow with a desire to deliver content that is helpful beyond an explicit CTA (“call to action”), such as warning signs that [your] roof might be damaged after a hailstorm.
Prioritize Relationships For Awesome Instagram Marketing
I shared earlier that active engagements, such as comments and DMs, are the name of the game to perform well with the current Instagram algorithm. To keep this from becoming forced or painful, approach Instagram as an online community with a massive potential for an invaluable referral network.
Think about it: Followers essentially allow you to market to them regularly.
This is amazing! And while the focus isn’t just on gaining new followers — although that will likely follow as you offer must-see content and interact with other users and brands — it’s a great mindset to anchor your social media strategy.
Use Captions and Stories Questions To Interact With Followers
While you don’t need to do it with every single post (that could get annoying), be sure to invite Followers to comment on posts via the captions you write for a given image.
It doesn’t have to be explicitly related to roofing, as you may get more responses by asking users to share their worst home repair experience or best moment in their current home.
Stories, as previously discussed, are an entertaining, authentic way to capture the attention of Instagram users. You can include stickers and text to increase your appeal, including the Questions function, which allows you to pose a question and collect responses.
You can share these responses after the fact or simply use this as a launching point to interact with respondents via Direct Message.
Some questions you could pose on Stories to initiate communication:
- How do you feel about our current weather? Love or hate? (Could be a fun poll, too!)
- Metal roofs are all the rage… How do you feel about them? (#fixerupperobsessed)
- Tell me your favorite neighborhood in town to house hunt!
- What is your biggest concern when hiring a home repair professional?
- What was the biggest factor when choosing a new roof for your home?
Example of Instagram Stories and Questions feature for business engagement
Instagram Direct Messages: Response Time Matters In The Algorithm
If I recall correctly, I’ve seen the “magic threshold” as less than 4 hours of response time to demonstrate good engagement with Instagram users who send Direct Messages (“DMs”), which are basically private messages sent within the app. However, the goal should be reasonable and helpful.
If you can set up notifications to let you (or whoever is managing your social media marketing) know when there is a new DM, this will increase the likelihood that you can respond in a reasonable time frame.
With about 145 million monthly active users, it makes sense to utilize this platform for as much of their communication as possible. While comments may not be as time-sensitive in terms of responsiveness, you should still encourage ongoing engagement by, at the very least, liking the comments on your posts.
Ideally, you comment via the reply function, demonstrating to other followers that you’re genuinely plugged in and desire to cultivate relationships. This goes a long way and will help keep your content in view for more and more users.
Treat Instagram As Another Lead Channel
At the end of the day, you don’t have to employ every tip and trick out there to leverage the Instagram algorithm to boost your roofing SEO. But if you focus on treating this platform and its users as legitimate lead opportunities, you’re far more inclined to optimize well and reap the benefits of this robust network.
