When consumers are researching building products options for use in an upcoming project, recent consumer-facing research conducted by the Northeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association (NELMA) shows that they are more likely to turn to social media and home improvement shows on networks like HGTV and Magnolia. Their favorite social media channels: Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook.
NELMA has an existing strong presence on Facebook, and recently used the results of their consumer research to extend their social media outreach to include new and different platforms.
“If consumers are going to one or two platforms for their building products knowledge, then that’s where NELMA and our products need to be represented,” said Jeff Easterling, president of NELMA. “It can be a challenge to keep up with the various platforms and how best to represent our products to their various audiences; but consumer sentiment was clear: Pinterest is the best place to be in order to share inspirational photos and ideas, with Instagram a close second.”
Let’s dig deeper into all three channels and what they have to offer.
NELMA on Pinterest:
@WoodInspiration
While Pinterest does have a mobile app, it’s more of a sharing site for anything and everything in which people might be interested. Following the genesis of the platform name, Pinterest is like a virtual bulletin board: users can search for something about which they’d like to know more – let’s use wood flooring as an example. A user can search for wood flooring, and search results will deliver thousands upon thousands of images of wood flooring. The images might be categorized into design groupings – minimalism, neoclassical, contemporary, farmhouse, for example. or they might be individual photos – called Pins – posted and shared by homeowners along the way.
Once you’ve found a plethora of Pins to inspire you, it’s time to create a Pinterest board. In a nutshell: this is a virtual filing cabinet containing all of the wood flooring pictures you love in one place. Pinterest boards may be named whatever you want to call them – let’s call ours Wood Flooring – and the number of photos you can add – or pin – is limitless. The difference in researching and saving information virtually via Pinterest? The ability to search and save other’s information to your Pinterest boards.
Consumers who were part of the NELMA research outreach shared multiple stories of how they created DIY home improvement boards with their inspiration photos, and then shared them directly with spouses, roommates, architects, designers, and builders. And friends, for yet another perspective!
NELMA on Instagram:
@wood_inspiration1933
Much more familiar to most of us is Instagram, now owned by Facebook/Meta. Where Facebook deals in text and photos, Instagram puts photos front and center; you can post on Facebook without a photo or graphic (don’t expect much visibility), but you can’t post on Instagram without a photo or graphic.
What makes Instagram fun is that photos and videos can be uploaded easily and then enhanced with fun graphics, images, and selected music tracks. Instagram also offers Stories, a separate part of each account where videos and photos may be shared for 24 hours before disappearing.
Let’s go back to our search term of “wood flooring” to review the Instagram process. When we enter the phrase in the search bar, we’re shown results ranging from accounts with those words in the name, to various hashtags using the same words. So, you might find inspirational photos of wood flooring on a wood-related account, or it could be a hashtag on the personal account of someone who’s just installed wood flooring in their home and wants to show it off. Either way, the photos shared provide new levels of product inspiration.
NELMA on Facebook:
NeLMA (Northeastern Lumber Manufacturers Association)
Owned by technology company Meta, the story of the birth of Facebook has been chronicled in books and movies such as the popular “The Social Network” in 2010. If you don’t know the story, here’s the nutshell: Created in 2004 by multiple Harvard students and named for the photo book college students used to receive as freshmen, the social channel is now the grandfather of all the others. Boasting somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.9 billion users, Facebook is a massive platform for sharing anything and everything from home improvement photos to dog videos to political opinions.
NELMA on Social Media
“It’s all about the beautiful inspirational photos,” continued Easterling. “If consumers are looking for wood ideas, we need to give them wood ideas.”
And that’s exactly what the NELMA accounts do. Followers and fans of the NELMA social media platforms will be treated to a wide variety of project and application photos using Eastern White Pine and SPFs. Hashtags chosen to match what consumers are looking for will accent each post with the intention of driving traffic back to the pages and increasing audience reach.
“Wood is remaining strong as one of the top building products of choice,” concluded Easterling. “It’s strong, durable, easy to source locally, and beautiful. The list of projects that can be completed or enhanced using our wood gets longer every day; we’re excited to open the floodgates and share this information with consumers who are searching for home improvement solutions!”
