You already know that having an online presence is essential for any business, HVAC or not. There are so many free tools you can use to help increase your presence, like the various social media platforms out there.

However, just because a platform is popular doesn’t necessarily mean you should have an account and dedicate your precious time to accounts that won’t end up working for you or your company. You probably already have a Google Business Profile and Facebook page set up, but many people wonder… is Twitter worth it for HVAC and other contractor companies?

Short answer, yes. Twitter can be beneficial for a variety of reasons, even if you may not get as much use out of it as another company, like a clothing store. Just make sure you aren’t pouring all your time and energy into Twitter when it should be used along with your other marketing platforms and methods.

As a contractor, you probably won’t end up doing much advertising on Twitter unless you have a built-up audience or proven methods that work. However, you should take advantage of making a free account and posting organically.

User-wise, Twitter shows no signs of slowing down soon. With over 500 million tweets created a day and 23% of adults in the U.S. using Twitter, you will want to take advantage of all those potential customers.

Another reason you should be using Twitter is that its algorithm allows for much more visibility among users. While Facebook’s algorithm is much more time-based, Twitter has posts show up based on recency, relevance, engagement, and the types of media being used.

Twitter also utilizes hashtags to increase visibility among users. Although Facebook also has a hashtag function, it has been around on Twitter for longer so users are more familiar with it and utilize it while posting and searching more than they would on Facebook.

Much like how someone can message your company’s Facebook page and ask questions, users can also message your Twitter profile. Although you may not personally use Twitter, the data above shows that a lot of people do. Whatever you can do to make your business more accessible to customers will be beneficial.

Maybe someone wants to ask your company a question, but they don’t have a Facebook account. If they prefer using Twitter, their first instinct may be to search your company on Twitter and figure out if they can message you directly like many other brands and companies they follow. You will be able to actively respond and listen to what your customers have to say. You may even get some feedback that you haven’t heard on other platforms.

The same way posting blogs can help Google crawl and index your website and increase visibility, having a Twitter account can have a similar effect. Since 2015, Google has been able to crawl Twitter accounts, as well as what kind of content they are sharing, and that content can be used to help you rank higher on search engines and improve SEO.

While posting on Twitter, you can show off your expertise and deals, share your other social media platforms or blog posts, and more. Focus on keywords that you want to utilize or start ranking with on search engines and include those in your posts.

If you need more ideas about posting, look at competitors and how they are using their Twitter accounts, what hashtags they are using, who they are interacting with, and how they are doing that. If you are already posting on another website, use those past and future posts to help you generate content.

If you don’t have a Twitter account set up yet, no worries. It would be beneficial to start one, but don’t create an account just to have an account if you can’t dedicate some time to creating posts consistently. Your company’s credibility won’t be as high if you have an account but never post to it. People may think you don’t use social media at all anymore or your company has gone out of business.

So take the time to come up with some posts, gather your old posts you may have used on other websites, and create a social media calendar so you can get your HVAC Twitter account off the ground.