Morgul Marketing

    Social media for HVAC companies working the five boroughs

    An HVAC company in this city is not selling to a homeowner with a driveway. The systems are older, the building decides more than the customer does, and the person who called you may need a board's permission before a wrench moves. Social media here is credibility built in public: proof that you have worked in buildings like theirs, that steam does not scare you, and that your paperwork will not stall a job in the week it was meant to start. The content nobody has made is sitting in basements you already visit. What follows is what to film, what a building will let you film, and when to publish it.

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    A knocking radiator is one complaint shared by a whole line of apartments

    Steam heat and prewar risers produce failures that repeat vertically through a building, so one clip is useful to a great many people at once.

    A banging radiator, a main vent that stopped venting, a top floor that never gets warm while the second floor cooks. In a steam building those are not separate problems, and a super hears about all of them in the same week.

    Film the fix plainly. The valve, the vent, the pitch of the radiator, the noise before and the quiet after. A clip that cures a knock somebody has lived with for years buys more goodwill than anything you could pay for.

    Aim it at building staff. A super in Astoria or Riverdale watches something useful and remembers where it came from the next time a managing agent asks him for a name.

    Ductless work in a brownstone is the other set worth owning. Line hides, condensate routing, where an outdoor unit can practically sit on a rear facade. Owners search for exactly that and land on sales pages instead of answers.

    The freight elevator books the day, and the stair carry is the picture

    Access is the constraint that decides a New York job, and it is the one thing a photograph of a finished install can never show.

    There is no driveway. Equipment comes off a double parked truck, crosses a lobby on somebody else's schedule, and finishes the trip in a freight elevator booked days ahead or up a stairwell built for furniture.

    Film the carry. Four flights with an air handler, a landing turn that barely clears, the moment the crew has to set it down. Somebody weighing a Westchester quote against a Brooklyn one has no other way to understand the gap.

    The elevator window also decides when a camera can be out at all. If the building gave you a morning, the crew is moving the whole time, and whatever gets filmed happens between loads. Plan for two shots rather than a shoot.

    Put the constraint in the caption without complaining about it. The stair carry is a large part of why your number is what it is, and showing it argues the price better than defending it on the phone a week later.

    An alteration agreement can decide whether a camera comes out at all

    In this city the building, rather than the customer, often controls what may be photographed inside it.

    House rules and alteration agreements sometimes speak to photography and filming directly, alongside insurance, working hours and elevator use. A shareholder saying yes is not the same thing as the building saying yes.

    Ask the managing agent before the job rather than on the morning of it. The question takes a minute in the same email that carries your certificate of insurance, and it saves an awkward conversation in a lobby.

    A building that says no is not a closed door. Roofs, basements and mechanical rooms often sit outside the part of the agreement anybody cares about, so ask about those separately instead of treating one refusal as the end of it.

    Managing agents remember contractors who ask. Across a portfolio, being the shop that raised the question before it turned into a problem is worth more than the clip would have been.

    The board calendar sets your posting calendar, and it turns over in the fall

    Work in this city waits on meetings, so the content that wins a spring project has to run in autumn.

    Heat complaints start as soon as the weather turns, and a board hearing them in October is deciding on a capital repair through the winter. Content published after that decision arrives too late to matter.

    Late summer and early fall is the window for boiler evaluations, what a survey involves and what a board packet usually contains. The audience is paying attention because the season is about to test them.

    In midwinter, switch to the failure actually happening. Uneven heat, a cold line of apartments, one riser starving the top floor. Supers are searching those phrases at seven in the morning.

    Spring belongs to cooling, in a market where a great many buildings have no central cooling at all. Ductless and through-wall content, plus the approval that comes with it, should be running before anybody is hot.

    The wider practice behind this, from what to film to what is worth paying to push, sits on one page.

    Questions we get

    Do supers and managing agents really use social media?
    Some do and many do not, which is why the aim is a name a colleague can hand along. What happens more often is that a super watches a clip another super sent him and remembers it when a managing agent asks for a recommendation. Building staff move useful things around inside a small world, and that is where the value turns up.
    Parts of Queens speak languages our crew speaks. Should we post in them?
    Yes, and few competitors will be doing it. If your technicians handle a service call in the language a building's residents use, saying so in that language is a real advantage in Flushing and across much of the outer boroughs. Post the same clip twice with two captions rather than standing up a second account nobody has time to feed.
    Can we post photos from inside a co-op?
    Ask the managing agent first, because here the building often decides. House rules and alteration agreements sometimes speak to photography alongside insurance and elevator use, and a shareholder's permission is not the same as the building's. Raising the question early tends to be remembered well, which is worth more than the picture.
    Is a four flight stair carry actually worth filming?
    It is the clearest pricing argument a New York shop has. A shareholder reading three quotes cannot see access, and access is often what separates them. Film the climb with the equipment, including the landing where the crew has to set it down, and the objection usually stops coming up at all.
    How long before this shows up in the schedule?
    Longer than in a suburban market, because work here waits on a board meeting and on a heating season. Give it a full winter before judging it. The signal to watch for is recognition: a super who knows your name before you introduce yourself, or a managing agent who asks whether you would take on a second building.

    Written by KC Thompson, Morgul Marketing. Updated .

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