Morgul Marketing

    Atlanta, GA

    Social media for pool builders who take down a tree before they dig a hole

    In most of this metro the back yard sits under trees, so the first machine on a pool job is usually not the excavator. Something comes out, the street watches it come out, and your company gets judged on that before anyone sees water. Two more Georgia facts follow it. Red clay leaves the site on every driveway and sidewalk within sight, and for a few weeks each spring pollen turns the deck, the cover and the surface yellow. Add the subdivisions north of town built around a shared swim and tennis club, and you have the four things that decide what an Atlanta pool builder should be filming and when.

    The tree comes down first, and the street reacts to the tree

    Under this canopy the most emotional part of a pool project happens before the excavation starts.

    Across the older intown neighborhoods and the northern suburbs, the tree canopy sits directly over the yard where the pool is going. Something usually has to come out, and often more than one thing.

    Neighbors care about the tree more than the pool. A large hardwood coming down on a street in Decatur or Brookhaven gets watched, photographed and talked about, and your crew is standing next to it in every one of those photographs.

    So film it honestly and say why. Shade over the water, roots into a shell, limbs hanging over an open excavation, a canopy that would drop leaves into the skimmer every fall. Show whatever replanting happens, on the day it happens.

    Tree work is also the one part of a pool job with an audience that has no interest in pools. People who will never build one watch a hardwood come down in Sandy Springs, and what they remember is whether the stump and the brush were gone by the end of the week.

    In a swim and tennis subdivision, the private pool is a conversation the street already had

    Much of the northern half of this metro pays dues for a pool it shares, which changes what a private one means.

    The subdivision has its own pool, the household pays for it, and the children swim on the team. A family building their own is stepping away from something the neighborhood organizes itself around, and people notice.

    Some of the reaction is envy and some of it is practical. Whether the dues still make sense, whether trucks will use the common drive, whether a construction summer ruins the street.

    Content aimed there should stay on the household's own reasons rather than on beating the community pool. A parent who wanted somewhere to be at six in the evening, a small yard used well, a swim lesson that did not require loading the car.

    Timing is the other thing that street notices. A build running through swim season sits next to a club calendar of meets and lessons, and a household with a hole in the yard gets asked about it every week. Showing a job that finished before the season, or started after it, speaks to a scheduling worry that a design post never touches.

    For a few weeks every spring your finished work photographs yellow

    Pollen lands on the deck, the cover and the water at exactly the time of year a pool company most wants to show finished work.

    Spring here coats everything in a yellow film. Decks, coping, covers, cars and the surface of any pool that is open, and it comes back the morning after anyone cleans it.

    So the finished photography for a job that wraps in that stretch is worth taking later, or taking early after a rain has knocked the air clear. A client who sees a yellow deck in your gallery reads it as a dirty pool, whatever the caption says.

    The season is a subject on its own. Owners want to know what pollen does to a filter, whether it stains a plaster finish, and what to do about a cover carrying a layer of it. Answer that and you are useful in weeks when nobody is buying a pool.

    Plan the calendar around it. The photographs that carry an account through the buying months are easier to take in October, when the canopy is turning and the water is still clear, than in April.

    Red clay leaves the job long before your crew does

    The last thing a street judges is not the pool. It is what the trucks left on the concrete.

    Georgia clay gets on the drive, the sidewalk, the road and the neighbor's apron, and it does not rinse away the way ordinary soil does. A wet week during excavation puts it everywhere.

    Which makes the cleanup a real part of the job and, unusually for this trade, a part worth filming. A driveway washed down at the end of a dig is a short clip that answers a question every homeowner on a finished street is quietly asking.

    Do the same for the yard. Grade, sod, the ruts where the machine came through the side yard, the fence panel that came out and went back. In Marietta or Roswell the ground around the pool is most of what a visitor actually sees.

    The parts of this that would read the same in Dallas or Chicago, from answering a public complaint to how often to publish while the crews are buried, sit on our national pool builder page at /industries/pool-construction/social-media.

    Questions we actually get

    Do we need a drone?
    Not for this trade and not under this canopy. Almost everything that persuades a pool buyer happens inside the hole, and a phone at the edge of an excavation showing grade, clay and the wall going in beats an aerial that could be any back yard anywhere. In most of these yards the trees block the shot regardless, and airspace here carries permissions worth checking before anybody launches.
    A neighbor asked why we took down a healthy tree. What do we say?
    Put the reasons on the record before the saw starts rather than defending them afterward. Film the canopy over the pool footprint, the roots running toward the shell, the limbs hanging over an open excavation, and say what each one would have meant. Then show whatever goes back in. A street that saw the reasoning in advance reads the removal completely differently.
    Our client's subdivision has its own pool. Will posting the job annoy the neighbors?
    Only if the post is framed as an upgrade on the club. Keep it on the household's own reasons, which are usually about the evenings, the little kids, and not loading the car. The neighbors in that subdivision are not your enemy, they are the next several jobs on that street, and they are watching how the construction summer went more than they are watching the tile.
    Everything we shot in April looks yellow. Is it worth reshooting?
    Yes, and it costs you one visit. Go back after a rain, or wait for fall when the water is still clear and the pollen is gone, and take the finished set then. Keep the spring footage for the build sequence, where a yellow film on a cover is honest and nobody is judging the finish, and keep it out of the gallery a buyer scrolls.
    How much of the cleanup is worth showing?
    More than you would think, because red clay is the part of your work the whole street sees. Show the drive and the sidewalk washed down, the ruts regraded, the sod going back, the fence panel reset. A homeowner in Alpharetta or Smyrna deciding between two builders has no way to judge a shell and every way to judge what your trucks left behind.

    What is different here

    Residential pool safety requirements sit in state law, but the permitting path, setback rules and barrier inspection practice are administered locally, so what a homeowner actually experiences varies by municipality. Safety features are a legal requirement rather than an upsell, which is worth reflecting in how a quote page is written.

    Pool Construction & Renovation Social Media Strategy & Execution elsewhere

    Written by KC Thompson, Morgul Marketing.

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