When it comes to your social media marketing campaigns, what type of content are you posting to generate interest in your security company?

Lately we’ve been noticing marketing agencies selling “social media content packages” to security companies like yours. As part of the package, the agency posts articles or content to the security company’s social media properties each month. On the surface these posts may appear to be helping generate leads, but what is the actual content generating for you? Leads? Engagement? Brand awareness?

If you do a simple search for local security companies in Facebook or LinkedIn you’ll notice a lot of posts with topics ranging from “The 10 Best Things to Protect Your Kids on Halloween” to “5 Benefits of a Security System,” only to find out no one actually likes the posts. And if there are likes on the post, click to see who likes them. We’ll bet you nine out of 10 times it’s either someone who works at the security company, spammers trying to get keyword links or people from the actual marketing agency liking the posts themselves.

So, what’s the point? Why waste your money on marketing that doesn’t work? Disagree? Feel like crappy content helps in some sort of way? Well, give us a call because we have some magic beans we’d like to sell you.

So, what type of content does work? What will help your security company generate leads, brand awareness within your community, and engagement?

Social media is designed to be more of a tool to talk casually with your local community.

One idea that has proven to get engagement with potential customers within your service area is piggy backing off local police reports or posts — and best of all it’s simple to do. We simply check two or three times a week within our customers’ service areas on local law enforcement pages and simply share any news about break-ins, crime or community events they’re involved in. We have to admit, when we first started using this technique we were a bit skeptical, but in marketing you have to see what sticks and what doesn’t — and to our surprise, this method gets plenty of interaction.

Keep in mind, social media is not intended to be a channel where you simply tell your audience to buy security systems for $99.95; rather, it is designed to be more of a tool to talk casually with your local community. The sooner you learn this, the sooner you’ll find yourself getting into conversations with your followers and starting to actually generate leads. Remember, people want to do business with friends, not companies. The more you engage with your audience, the more you’ll appear to be a friend rather than a salesman.

This method often elicits questions from potential customers  asking how your security company can help with neighborhood watches or questions from homeowner associations asking if you can create packages that are geared toward their community. This leads right into another technique we are using to help our clients generate more leads: generating private Facebook pages and using these pages in conjunction with neighborhood watches. Some of our clients use this technique to sell security systems because customers get to join a private feed on Facebook and receive instant alerts on crime within their neighborhoods.

Of course nothing gets better results than taking pictures or posting short videos of your security company being involved within your community: Donate time to visit local children’s hospitals, feed the homeless, visit local senior citizen centers and simply talk or play games with them. During the event take pictures and add them to your Facebook company page. We guarantee your posts with community involvement will get more likes, comments and shares than 10 tips on whatever.

In reality, home security is not sexy; it’s not, exotic cars or the Kardashians. But if you can connect with topics that are controversial, create a connection or entertain, then you’ll start to see results.

Our goal has always been to educate the industry on marketing efforts that actually generate results and always will be. Don’t fall victim to meaningless content. Remember, quality over quantity will always prevail, especially when it involves your local community.

Until next time, believe in that big fat purple cow, and we’ll see you all at ISC West.