How Austin Blomquist got from 0 to 200K Tiktok Followers with His Roofing Business

On this episode, Mike has on Austin Blomquist. Austin's focus in the contracting industry is eliminating the guess work for contractors and finding the most innovative and efficient way possible for contractors to get things done!

Austin has grown his social media presence significantly in the contracting industry! Austin shares with us how he does it and what you can implement into your branding to develop your social presence yourself in 2023!

ep 33

[00:00:00] Austin: Just be that guy that can answer questions, provide value, um, be a part of your community, and then just do more reaching out to other organizations instead of just doing the posts and waiting for people to come to you. Supply and

[00:00:12] Mike: demand is a fundamental principle

[00:00:14] Austin: of capitalism, and I really recommend using the right captions and the right hashtags so it can help get in that Google search.

[00:00:30] Mike: So, Austin, have you ever been

[00:00:31] Austin: golfing? Oh yeah, man, I'm a member at two different clubs. Mm.

[00:00:37] Mike: So maybe you know the answer to this question, why did the golfer bring two pairs of pants to golf? Mm,

[00:00:47] Austin: two different golf courses? Man, I don't know. .

[00:00:51] Mike: No, it's actually in case he got a hole in one.

[00:00:54] Austin: Oh bro. That's good. Dude. That's really. I like that one. I'm gonna have to use that .

[00:01:01] Mike: Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back, episode 33 of the Michigan Control Podcast, proudly sponsored by Ascend Digital. Wrap your set and the team over at Roofer.

If you need instant roof measurements and clean and pristine proposals, hit up the team at roofer. Say, we've got Austin Blomquist. He is, uh, internet sensation folks, uh, big on social media, short form video, TikTok and what have you. In fact, you can find him on TikTok, where,

[00:01:29] Austin: what's, what's your handle, sir?

At for TikTok? You can find me at

[00:01:32] Mike: roofer TikTok super intuitive. Thanks for coming, dude. I appreciate you spending some time with us.

[00:01:38] Austin: Yeah, thanks for having me, Michael. I've been, uh, waiting to get on the show and I'm happy we found some time. Yeah, no doubt. Um,

[00:01:46] Mike: funny. What you won't see in this broadcast is the fact that, uh, apparently there's some synchronization taking place between his cleaning lady and the, the cleaning crew at my office, because we both had vacuums wailing in the background about seven minutes ago.

So maybe we'll drop some uncut scenes. I don't know. I can't call. It's my show. I'll do what I want. Uh, dude. So short form video, it's important. Everyone says it's important, you know, you know, it's important. How important is it for a local roofing company to

[00:02:19] Austin: start doing short form video? Man, I'll tell you what, it's, it's not for everybody and you honestly shouldn't spend too much time on it, but it's good to be on social media for sure.

If you're a roofing company, I mean, you want to be on Instagram, you wanna be on Facebook, you wanna be on TikTok, Twitter, all that stuff. I think it's just important to have a strong, professional appearance and basically show the transparency within your. When I see, you know, roofing companies trying to go all in on social media, it seems like they're almost doing it to chase the wrong audience.

It seems like they're going after trying to target other roofing contractors, and I just see that as not really a good idea. I mean, you're not really gonna get any more homeowners to call for roof replacements if you're using captions that are trying to engage other roofing contractors. So I just think it's a good thing to.

But you gotta do it the right way and you have to know your why and you know, really understand what you're trying to do with it. But, um, I've, I've seen a lot of people get good results as far as recruitment on a national level. But as far as a roofing company that's just in a small little town, it's really hard to post this social media are these short form videos and get a lot of traction for just your local area.

You may get one or two people to say, Hey, that's my hometown, or whatever. What I find is that even the leads that I've gotten through my social media channels, um, they're not the highest quality leads. They're smaller houses. They're people that are in need, really want to deal. And really where I like to get my leads is like my Google listing.

Um, that's where 90% of my business comes from. But I need to have a good place to send those prospects so they can see who I am and what I. And so, um, you know, my roofer TikTok page is a lot different than how I would do social media for my roofing company. My roofing company's more like before and after pictures.

Um, you know, showing, you know, the crew getting new, getting lunch from me. Little things like that just to show that, hey, I'm a good dude, you know, we're doing good quality work. The crew's happy, they're smiling. Um, here's some big jobs, here's some little jobs. Everything in. That's pretty much what I think that the customer wants to see, if you're gonna want to try to get leads from it.

Uh, I just hate when I see roofing companies have their social media all salesy, like, get a free inspection, you know, hail damage in your neighborhood. It's just like so scammy and, you know, salesy that I think they're doing it wrong. And so I think it just needs to be a safe place for, for homeowners to come and view your stuff and just so see who you are as a.

That's my defense on it.

[00:05:04] Mike: Yeah, that's, those are really good points. Uh, so if I'm hearing you right, it can still be productive and still should be something that you do, but it really comes down to what your expectation is and, and maybe for, you know, the guy in the middle, a small town in Wisconsin, the aim shouldn't be, can I get to a million views on this piece of.

because you know, maybe he gets 300 views and he posts a video a day that's helpful to people in this community. And that's more of a branding player, right? It's not so much, Hey, I'm gonna get 10 hot leads today. But folks that are on TikTok and Facebook and maybe YouTube, if they're seeing that consistently, it's similar to, I guess, a brand impression on a billboard that they

[00:05:48] Austin: drive past.

Yeah. So like is that, yeah. So if I wanted to target like the whole entire United States with a video, Let's just say I'm using like the product. Equipper say that you have an equipper, right? And for your roofing company, you want to show your market that you have this cool piece of equipment. Well, if you're trying to market to the whole entire 50 states, you would say like, Elon Musk bought 20 of these.

Every single person is going to be able to relate to that. But if you're trying to just target your local, You could use something like Mayor Schwartel. We use the equipper on Mayor ShoreTel's house and everybody knows Mayor Schwartel in their little tiny town. So, you know, like use your captions correctly and don't go after the big, you know, the big market.

Go after like the small things and like use like, um, you know, prominent places in your area like churches or other. You know, monuments that people recognize and try to make videos by that and talk about things in your community because it's gonna use, the algorithm's gonna pick up those keywords and it's gonna be able to then show it to that market.

So, like for example, I'm working with this laborers union, it's like one of the biggest laborers union in North America. And um, I've been able to do lots of recruit. For them, just because they're, they're more of a, uh, countrywide company. And so like people are down in, you know, Tennessee or here, here or here, and I can kind of connect the dots because they have the systems in place.

Um, but even for Michigan, like I'll say like I'll tag like Lake Michigan because they're trying to do a lot of recruitment just for Michigan right now. So I'll use different hashtags like Michigan State or um, hard workers of Michigan, different things like that. That's really what's going to work to target that local area.

Um, right now it seems like it hits the major cities like, you know, um, Dallas, Texas, and then I got Detroit and then I got Chicago, Los Angeles, like, you know, there, there it's hitting the major cities, but I'm at like 33% Michigan. So that just tells you I've been really trying to target Michigan with this labors union, but I'm still getting, you know, uh, results across the board, across the country.

That's, that's kind of my answer on that question is you have to be careful who you know, what you're writing in your posts because it's really going to determine who, where that video goes and where it's shown.

[00:08:19] Mike: Hmm. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's a really good point. Now, how does somebody understand what hashtags they should be using?

You know, if it is a local guy or if it is a national company, like they want to up their s how do they determine what, what hashtags to.

[00:08:34] Austin: That's a great question. So, um, you know, like roofer or um, metal roof, those things are all oversaturated. Like maybe a year or two ago you could have used that and went viral, but you should use metal roofing, Michigan, um, commercial roofing, Michigan.

Like say I'm a contractor in Michigan, for example, right? Um, you're gonna want to use local hashtags like, um, iron Mountain, Y M C A, you know, like things within your c. Try to be number one for that hashtag. So like for example, I, I service this city called Houghton, Michigan. Well, I make posts that use that, t