Answering a Question in a Local Group

The reply most trades write

Somebody asks a question about a problem in your trade, and three businesses reply with a name and a telephone number.

That is an advertisement in a thread where somebody asked for help, and it is read as one.

Nobody is persuaded, the person still does not know the answer, and everybody watching has learned nothing about whether any of the three know anything.

The reply that works is the one that actually answers the question.

What a good answer looks like

• Answers the question asked.
• Four or five sentences, no more.
• Specific, with a figure if you have one.
• Says what you would check first.
• No conditions and no request.
• One line at the end saying what you do.

The fifth is what separates this from a pitch. An answer that requires them to contact you to find out the rest is not an answer, and readers notice immediately.

The audience is everybody else

Which is the thing to understand about this.

One person asked and two hundred people read the thread, most of whom will need your trade at some point.

The person asking may hire somebody else, and it barely matters, because the value is in the two hundred who watched somebody knowledgeable be helpful for nothing.

That is why the answer should be complete rather than strategically incomplete.

A thorough answer that loses this particular job wins several later ones, and a coy one wins nothing.

Businesses that understand this outperform businesses that do not, consistently.

A worked example

Somebody asked whether a particular repair was worth doing or whether the whole thing should be replaced.

Two trades replied with their numbers and one wrote five sentences: what determines the answer, roughly what each option costs, the specific thing to look at to tell which case they were in, and a note that below a certain age it is almost always worth repairing.

They finished with one line saying they do this work if it turns out to be the bigger job.

The original poster used somebody else.

Over the following two years that answer was linked to repeatedly when the same question came up, and produced work several times.

Five sentences, written once, on a Tuesday evening.

Say the honest thing

Including when it costs you the job.

Where the answer is that they do not need your trade at all, say so.

Where a cheaper option exists, name it.

Where somebody else is better suited, say who.

That is the single most persuasive thing you can do in a public thread, because everybody reading knows what the alternative reply would have been.

It also means the next time you say something is necessary, people believe you.

Keep it plain

Since the register matters as much as the content.

No jargon, no upselling, no warnings designed to frighten somebody into calling.

Write it the way you would explain it to a neighbour over a fence, because that is effectively what is happening.

Trade language reads as either showing off or as softening a sales attempt, and neither helps.

Short sentences, ordinary words, and a figure where you have one.

Do not argue with other trades

Which happens and is always damaging.

Another business gives an answer you think is wrong, and correcting them publicly reads as competitive rather than helpful, however right you are.

Where it genuinely matters for safety, say the safety point without addressing them.

Otherwise add what you would add and leave their answer alone.

Everybody reading can see two trades disagreeing and concludes nothing except that they need somebody to come and look.

Save what you write

Since these answers are the raw material for everything else.

A question asked repeatedly in a local group is a page your site should have.

Keep the answers you write in a document, and once a quarter turn the most common into a proper page.

That converts twenty minutes of goodwill into something that answers the question for everybody who searches rather than asks.

The best pages on most trade websites started as an answer somebody wrote to a person.

Do not link to your own site in the answer

Which is counterintuitive and consistently right.

A link converts a helpful reply into a piece of marketing in the eyes of everybody reading, and several groups remove posts containing them automatically.

Anybody who wants to find you after a useful answer will look at your name, which takes them one tap.

So the answer works harder without the link than with it, which is the opposite of the instinct.

Where the answer genuinely needs a reference, name the source rather than linking, and let them search for it.

Reply once, and not to the replies

A small discipline that keeps this cheap.

Answer the question, then leave the thread rather than responding to every subsequent comment.

A trade defending or elaborating on their answer through fifteen further comments looks invested in a way that undermines the original helpfulness.

Where somebody asks you a direct follow-up question, answer that one and stop again.

Twenty minutes a week only stays twenty minutes if the answers are written once rather than defended all evening.

The counter-case

This takes time and produces nothing immediately.

A business needing work next month will not get it this way, since the return arrives over years.

Some questions also cannot be answered responsibly without seeing the job, and a confident public answer to those is worse than none.

And in a hostile group, a helpful answer occasionally attracts an argument nobody needed.

Answer the question fully in four or five sentences, say the honest thing, add one line about what you do, and save what you wrote.

The reply

1. Answer the actual question.
2. Four or five sentences.
3. Include a figure if you have one.
4. Say what you would check.
5. Attach no conditions.
6. One line about what you do.
7. Save it for a page later.

Step five is what makes the whole thing work, since an answer that stops short to make somebody call you is recognised as an advertisement by every person reading it.

What paid visibility buys instead is covered in what a sponsored local post actually buys.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.