Washington, DC

Social media for pool builders with no room to stand back and few clients willing to be named

A pool behind a rowhouse in the District goes into a yard with brick walls on three sides and nowhere to put a camera, for a household that may work for an agency or a federal contractor and will not put a name to anything. Those two facts remove the two images this trade sells with everywhere else, which are the wide shot of finished water and the owner saying it was worth it. What is left is still plenty, and most of it is unusual. A crane morning with an hour set weeks ahead, close work nobody bothers to photograph, and a first swim that arrives months after the final invoice because winters here are real.

The crane morning is the only shoot in this trade with a date set weeks ahead

A pick over a rowhouse roofline runs inside a closure window somebody applied for, so it is the one day a camera can be planned around.

Most of what happens on a pool job happens whenever the ground and the crew allow. A pick on a District street is different. The window is applied for, the hour is agreed, cars come off the curb the night before, and everyone involved knows the date long before it arrives.

So treat it as a scheduled shoot rather than something to catch. Two positions on the sidewalk, one wide enough to hold the whole pick and one close on the load coming over the roofline, and somebody whose only job that morning is the phone.

If the pick moves for weather the shoot moves with it, which is easy to absorb if the plan already names a second date and a second person.

Nothing else on the job produces a sequence like it, and the whole thing is over before the crew breaks for coffee. One morning planned properly returns more usable material than a month of yard visits.

A rowhouse yard gives you no place to stand, so the hero shot is built from pieces

The finished photograph this trade runs on needs distance, and a District back yard does not have any to give.

A yard between two party walls is a few strides across. There is no far corner to shoot from, the fence line sits at the edge of the water, and the neighbors' upper windows are in every frame available from ground level.

The wide establishing shot simply does not exist on those jobs. Borrowing one from a Falls Church or Bethesda yard fills the gap and gives the game away, because a Capitol Hill owner can tell the picture was taken somewhere else.

Build the finished piece out of close work instead. Coping meeting old brick, the step and the bench, water against a party wall, equipment tucked where nothing shows, the gate rebuilt after the machine came through. Shot in order, the pieces read as one yard.

The one real vantage point is upward. A second floor window, a roof deck or a rear stair landing gives the only frame that holds the whole pool, and it is worth arranging on the last day rather than improvising at the reveal.

Households that work for the government cannot hand you a testimonial

Much of this client base lives under rules about lending a name to a company, so the format has to change rather than the ask being repeated.

Federal employees, contractors and cleared staff answer to ethics guidance about endorsing a vendor. Whether a particular household can appear in your material is a question for their own ethics office, and not one you should be arguing with them about at the reveal.

Which means the on camera client, the quote with a full name and the family saying it was worth it are unavailable across a lot of the District, Arlington and Silver Spring. Asking again does not change it, and pressing puts a client somewhere they should not be.

Replace the person with the record. A sequence running from the first machine to the first fill proves more than a quote does, and it belongs to you rather than to somebody's employer.

When a client does want to say something, let them write it and let them choose what name goes on it. A first name, a neighborhood, or nothing at all. Take it as they wrote it rather than tightening it into marketing copy, because the wording may be the part they had to clear.

A pool finished in October is not swum in until May, and the review lives on the far side of that

Genuine winters put months between your last truck and the customer's first real experience of what they bought.

The dig season here ends. A project that wraps in the fall gets closed and covered, and the household spends the winter looking at a tarp.

An owner signing off in October is reviewing your crew and your invoice. The same owner at the first opening in May is reviewing a pool, and only one of those two reviews has ever sold anybody a project.

So put the opening date on the calendar the day you close the job. A short message on the morning the cover comes off, with a photograph you took standing there, earns a warmer and far more specific answer than any request stapled to a final bill.

The habits that would read the same in Nashville or Phoenix, like what to do when somebody asks for a price in a comment or how a public complaint should be answered, are worked through on our national pool builder page at /industries/pool-construction/social-media.

Questions we actually get

There is nowhere to stand in this yard. How do we get a finished shot at all?: You get it in pieces and from above. Shoot the close work in sequence, coping against brick, the step, the light in the water at dusk, the gate that went back in, then find one high frame from a second floor window or a roof deck for the single image that shows the whole pool. Arrange the high frame on the last day, when the site is clean and the client is still expecting you.
Our client is a federal employee and says they cannot endorse us. Can we still use the job?: Usually yes. The restriction they are describing is about endorsing a company, not about whether a contractor may show work they performed. Show the pool, keep their name and their block off it, and let them confirm anything they are unsure of with their own ethics office rather than taking your word for what is allowed.
Is a crane morning worth sending a second person out for?: It is the one morning where the answer is yes. The hour is fixed weeks ahead by the closure window, the machine sets once, and the sequence cannot be recreated later at any price. Everything else on a District pool build can be filmed by whoever happens to be standing there, which is why the exception is worth staffing properly.
The job finished in November. When do we ask for the review?: At the first opening in May, and put the date in your calendar before you leave the site. A customer in November is describing a construction project they cannot use yet. The same customer standing in front of open water in May is describing the thing they actually bought, and that is the review a stranger reads before calling you.
Can we film from the neighbor's roof deck?: Ask, and expect to be told yes more often than you think, because on these blocks the neighbor has usually been watching the whole build anyway. Say what you want to shoot, when you will be up there and how long it takes. Keep the frame on your own work rather than on the yards either side, and send the neighbor the picture afterward.

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.

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Written by KC Thompson, Morgul Marketing.

Talk to us about social media for pool builders and renovation contractors in Washington

Tell us what you are working with and we will say what we would do first, and what we would leave alone. A real answer, not a pitch deck.