Flexible and Strategic: The Go-To Guide for Implementing Impactful Social Media Content

More than ever, consumers are turning to social media to find, follow, and engage with brands. In fact, a July 2025 Sprout Social survey found a 43% increase in users discovering brands and services on social, and a 42% increase in those learning about new products.

How can your building and construction brand stay active and engaged with curious users? Building a strategic social media calendar is essential for keeping your brand visible, organized, and aligned with broader marketing goals. By defining clear objectives, mapping content pillars, and aligning with seasonal industry moments, brands can transform their channels into powerful storytelling and engagement tools. Ultimately, a well-planned, yet flexible calendar helps building materials brands stay relevant, foster authentic relationships, and connect meaningfully with their audiences year-round.

1. Defining the Goals for Your Brand

Whether it’s a new product, boosting morale, or launching a new channel, defining goals is imperative to establishing a North Star for your content, from copywriting to creative ideation and activation. Here are some high-level goals and KPIs to consider:

• Brand awareness: Showcase product innovation, completed projects, or collaborations with architects/builders.
• Lead generation: Drive traffic to case studies, spec sheets, or project inquiry forms.
• Thought leadership: Position your brand as an expert on sustainable materials, performance, or design.
• Engagement: Strengthen community with builders, architects, and distributors.
• Recruitment: Highlight company culture, craftsmanship, or employee milestones.

2. Define Content Pillars to Guide Every Message

Quality. Reliability. Community. Innovation. Does your building materials brand have a set of core values or rallying cry to lead the company’s success? Map them out and create subsets of themes or topics that align with these core values. Align goals by channel or message to measure ROI and ensure your calendar has a clear strategy throughout the month, quarter, or year. Here are a few examples of generic content pillars and the themes that can be plugged in per pillar:

• Products in action: Case studies, product installations, architectural photos.
• Innovation & performance: Product R&D, testing, certifications.
• People & culture: Employees and partnerships.
• Education: How-to videos, sustainability features, continuing education.
• Events & industry: Trade shows, tours, partner projects.

3. Apply Integrated Marketing Communications Principles to Marry Campaigns, Launches, and More

Social media is often at the forefront of an integrated marketing communications (IMC) strategy: a process that marries messaging across your entire digital marketing ecosystem. Collaborating with sales, leadership, paid specialists, and others in your organization can help to streamline campaigns, product launches, and other aspects of your business. This helps to create a cohesive strategy across all fronts to capture broader moments, waterfall content, and more:

• Plug in important highlights from ongoing email campaigns.
• Launching a new landing page? Reflect its goals and visuals across your social content or use it to inspire trending short-form video.
• Use data and insights from paid efforts, such as Google Performance Max, to inform your content calendar and strengthen organic strategy.

4. Aligning Content With Industry Seasons, Cycles, and Events

Company events, trade shows, and industry holidays (Manufacturing Month, Women in Construction Week, etc.) can create opportunities for engaging content that’s fun and impactful. Tap into industry experts and capitalize on authentic, human interactions for spur-of-the-moment content or new topics. Some examples to consider:

• Trade show season can provide a wealth of Q&A interviews, product launch announcements, and thought leadership moments (IBS, KBIS, AIA).
• Construction season can feed how-to videos and behind-the-scenes installation stories.
• Industry holidays and awareness months can feed employee spotlights, informational content, and more.

5. Implement a Variety of Content Types and Formats With KPIs in Mind

Utilizing each platform’s unique features can skyrocket click-throughs, encourage the comments, and increase video views. While utilizing social media tools such as Hootsuite can streamline scheduling and content with some flexibility, never completely abandon native channel management to learn more about the latest updates and capabilities per platform. Also note your audience’s behavior and how they interact to your content in order to optimize. Are they architects searching for sustainable project materials? Contractors in need of decking materials? Consider these needs and implement them into your overall content.

Here are some examples of how BLD Marketing implements in a quarterly calendar:

• KPI: Brand Awareness / Content Type: In-Feed Videos; Instagram Highlights; Reels, Paid Social Campaigns.
• KPI: Engagement / Content Type: Carousels, Direct Message Automations, UGC Reshares, Paid Social Campaigns, LinkedIn Polls.
• KPI: Click-Thru / Content Type: Link Preview, Direct Message Automation, Single-Image, Paid Social Campaigns, LinkTree additions.

6. Allow for Flexibility and Pivots

Whether planned content is implemented per month, quarter, or throughout the year, never forget that social media is still a spur-of-the-moment marketing channel. Ensure you and your team have the bandwidth to develop planned content and still have time to act or react to of-the-moment events, fun trends, and any unforeseen changes in messaging or product launches to keep your calendar timely and relevant:

• Uncover and merchandise earned media coverage and user-generated content (UGC) when managing your channels.
• Recruit team members for fun trends that are relevant to your brand.
• Put guardrails and plans in place for product discontinuations, potential controversy, or customer questions.
• Actively search for opportunities during a trade show or busy construction season to capture of-the-moment content for posting.

7. Remember that Social Media is...Social (Relationship Building and Management)

Planning, developing, and posting content isn't enough: Community management is essential to ensure your brand is safe from scrutiny, remains current for curious audiences, and delivers strong customer service. Maintaining open channels of communication on social media means your customers or partners have a direct line to a knowledgeable team that can redirect them to product literature, provide installation instructions, or fast-track solutions when a crisis occurs.

Continually engaging with your audience and keeping tabs on your competitors can boost engagement, show that your brand is active and responsive, and ultimately create more opportunities to connect online and in person. Manage this by:

• Following brand partners and competitors for research and engagement.
• Resharing UGC content and identifying new content creators.
• Providing customer service and responding to inquiries with clear solutions.
• Monitoring for and mitigating potential risks and PR crises.
• Interacting with other brands, customers, and partners to develop meaningful, authentic relationships.

Bonus: 2026 Building Materials Brand Holidays

At BLD Marketing, we’ve leveraged industry-specific holidays to celebrate employees and highlight company accomplishments. Consider using these to fill your calendar with relevant content that speak to your audiences:

• January: National Technology Day (Jan. 6) – Showcase innovation in design or fabrication.
• March: Women in Construction Week – Spotlight female team members or partners.
• April: Earth Day (Apr. 22) – Highlight sustainability in materials and manufacturing.
• May: National Skilled Trades Day (first Wednesday in May) – Recognize skilled trade professionals.
• June: National Safety Month – Share stories about factory, jobsite, or installer safety.
• October: Careers in Construction Month – Highlight company culture and career opportunities.
• November: National Recycling Week – Feature manufacturing and material reuse efforts.
• Year-round: Trade show tie-ins (IBS, AIA, NeoCon, Greenbuild) – Leverage content from key industry events.