How do you make a crew that installs precast concrete walls interesting on social media? That’s the question I put to Melanie Whittaker of You Are Your Marketing on Unscripted SEO, using the kind of client I actually work with: a team building fireproof walls for communities, a job nobody thinks to film. Her answer was simple and it doesn’t need a single extrovert on the payroll. Film the work, let the crew explain it, and make your website do the heavy lifting for every buyer who never opens a social app. Melanie writes about PR and visibility on her own site. You can listen to the full episode here.
Melanie learned this in restaurants, not construction. She worked front of house on a holiday island in Spain, where “there are many, many, many restaurants on this island,” and after 2020 she started shooting the photos and videos and writing the posts herself. Her point carries straight over to home services: if what you sell looks the same as the next company’s, the content has to show something the next company doesn’t.
Film the work, not the personality
You don’t need your installers to be performers. Melanie was blunt about it:
“You need to do videos of the work being done. Now, the guys who are doing the work don’t have to be full of personality, but show behind the scenes.”
At the restaurants, food was just food. What she filmed was the moment: a dish served with a bit of a show and the customers reacting to it. On a job site the moment is the work itself. A wall going up, a damaged ceiling coming down, a crew finishing a repair the homeowner was dreading. She expects this to matter more every year, because “people wanna see behind the scenes.”
Let the crew explain the job, then ask for the call
Here’s the weekly routine she’d set up for a company with staff:
- Go out to wherever the team is working that week and shoot a new video.
- Ask the worker “do you want to just talk us through what it was you were doing there?” Only if they want to talk.
- Explain the why, not just the what. Why that step, why that material.
- End with the ask. Her script: “now that you’ve seen this video of how we do X, Y, Z, if this is something you’re looking for, press on this link, click the link, book a call with us.”
Her example was water damage. Someone’s had a leak, the house is a mess, and they find a video of a crew walking through how they put it right. “If you saw a video like that, you’d be like, oh my God, these guys know what they’re doing.” That’s the whole sale for a scared homeowner: proof of competence before the phone rings. In a dull industry, showing the work done competently is the most persuasive content you have.
Your buyers split by age, so one channel won’t reach them
I brought a study from BrightLocal into the conversation about how people find home service businesses. As I quoted it on the call, about 26% of Gen Z find service businesses through social media, and that falls to 5% of boomers. Flip it around and search engines are the main route for 74% of boomers but only 42% of Gen Z. Those are my figures from memory on the recording, so check the study before you build a budget on them. The direction is the point: a video-only strategy misses older homeowners, and a search-only strategy misses younger ones.
Your website has to do the heavy lifting
Melanie agreed some buyers will never see your social accounts. That’s why she doesn’t put all her eggs in one basket, and why she starts every client at the same place:
“Your website has to do the heavy lifting. It has to tell people who you are, tell people what the business does. The videos need to do the talking.”
So the job videos don’t live only on Instagram. Embed them on the service pages. A boomer who finds you on Google lands on the same proof a Gen Z buyer scrolled past on their phone, and either way, in Melanie’s words, “it’s an easy decision.” Then make the next step obvious, whether that’s booking a call, sending an email or filling in an inquiry. “You’ve got to make them move to action.”
Don’t build the plan around going viral
Melanie hates the word viral and doesn’t let clients use it. For a service business her reason is practical:
“Okay, let’s say you do go viral. Have you got the resources and the capabilities to deal with it?”
A crew can only take so many jobs a week. Steady videos that answer the questions your buyers already ask will fill a schedule. A one-time spike you can’t staff just generates bad reviews. Pick two or three channels your customers actually use, post the work every week, and stop measuring success by views.
The full conversation, including Melanie on building a community in 2026 and why podcasts earn trust faster than a feed, is in the Unscripted SEO recap.
So what did your crew do this week that a homeowner would want to watch? Who on the team could explain it in two minutes? And does your service page show any of it?