Social media for contractors, drafted by AI and approved by you

You fix fences. Your agent posts about it. Bolta's AI agents turn the photos already on your phone into finished Facebook and Instagram posts, and every one waits in an approval queue until you tap yes.

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Nothing publishes until you say so

Every draft lands in an approval queue. You see the post, the platform, the photo and the scheduled time. You approve it, edit it and approve, or reject it. Do nothing and nothing goes out.

That is the whole control model and it is deliberately dull. The agents do the writing and the timing; a person does the judgement. Approving is a phone job — it fits in the cab between a job and an estimate. Your edits and rejections feed the voice profile, so next week's queue needs less work than this week's.

An illustration of Bolta’s approval step: the draft an agent wrote, the agent that wrote it, the time it would go out, and the Approve, Edit and Reject controls a person uses before anything publishes. Nothing here is interactive.

Ask a contractor why the Facebook page has not been touched in five weeks and the answer is never that they do not see the point. They see it exactly. The last three jobs came from a neighbour who saw a fence, a homeowner who found the page and scrolled to the before-and-afters, and a community group post somebody else made. The page works. It just does not get fed.

The reason is the shape of the day. You are on a site from seven until four, then it is estimates, invoices, a supplier call and a homeowner who wants to move Thursday. The photos are on your phone — hundreds of them, dated, framed badly, genuinely good. Writing something to go with them is a fifteen-minute job that lands at eight in the evening, which is the hour it will always lose.

Bolta is an AI social media manager built for that gap. The agents hold what your company does and where, draft posts in your voice from what you tell them and the photos you upload, format them for Facebook and Instagram, and queue them at the hours homeowners are actually on their phones. Nothing publishes on its own. Every draft goes to an approval queue, you read it in the truck between calls, and it goes out when you say so. When you change a line, the agents keep that change and write closer to it next time.

This page covers what breaks in contractor social media, what the agents actually do, how approval works, and what it costs. Plans start at $19 a month, and there is a free tier so you can look at the drafts before paying anything.

Why contractor social media goes quiet

The failure modes are the same whether you run a two-truck fencing outfit or a fifteen-crew roofing company. None of them get fixed by another calendar app. They get fixed by removing the writing and leaving you with one decision: post it, change this, or no.

The photos exist. The captions do not.

Every contractor's phone is a content library nobody has opened. Before shots, progress shots, the good one at golden hour on the last day. What is missing is the sentence next to it, and that sentence has to be written at the end of a physical day. Most contractors are not short of material; they are short of the twenty minutes after everything else is done.

Your customers are on Facebook, and the advice is about TikTok

Most social media advice is written for brands selling to people under thirty. A homeowner deciding who reroofs their house is fifty-two, is in three local Facebook groups, and asks there first. Facebook and Instagram are where the leads are for residential trades. A strategy that starts with a seven-platform grid is a strategy you will abandon in a month.

Every post says the same thing

Quality work. Family owned. Free estimates. Call today. These are true and they are wallpaper, because every competitor within thirty miles says them too. The version that gets a call names the actual thing: the grade of post you set, the reason the old fence failed, what the neighbour on the corner had done last spring. Same word count. Different result.

Work is seasonal and posting is not

In the busy months you have no time and endless material. In the slow months you have time and nothing new to show. Most contractor accounts run backwards to what the business needs — silent in June when you are visible on ten streets, and silent again in January when you actually need the phone to ring. A queue built ahead in the busy season is what fixes that, and it only works if someone is drafting while you work.

Handing it to a family member is not a system

The usual fix is a spouse, a kid, or the office manager. It works until they are busy, and then the account stops with no decision ever being made. It also puts the person with the least job-site knowledge in charge of describing the work. What most owners want is the writing gone and the final word kept. That is a workflow, not a hiring problem.

What Bolta's agents do for a contracting business

Contractor marketing on social breaks into four jobs — noticing what is worth showing, writing it, formatting it for the platform, and putting it out at the right hour — and Bolta's agents take all four. You describe the company once: the trades you do, the area you cover, residential or commercial, how you talk, and what you never want said. They work from that continuously. The output is always a draft in your queue.

They turn a photo and one line into a finished post

Upload the before and after, type "cedar privacy fence, 140 feet, the old one rotted at the posts" and you get back a Facebook post and an Instagram caption written the way you talk. The specifics you give are the specifics that appear — the agents do not invent a material, a measurement or a timeline you did not state.

They lead with Facebook and Instagram, because that is where your work lands

Bolta supports Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, Threads, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, Bluesky and Reddit. For residential trades the first two carry almost everything. You connect the accounts you actually want fed, and each draft is written for that platform rather than copy-pasted across ten.

They keep a running picture of the business

The trades you take and the ones you turn down, your service radius, whether you are hiring, what your busy season looks like, the fact that you do not do commercial. The agents hold that context so drafts arrive already correct instead of asking you to re-explain the company every time.

They post on a homeowner's clock

Homeowners scroll early morning, at lunch, and after dinner. The agents propose times against that rhythm rather than against an office schedule, so a post about a finished deck is not landing at two in the afternoon when the people who would share it are at work.

They learn from every edit you make

Cut a sentence, swap a word, kill a draft — each of those is a signal Bolta keeps and writes against next time. Owners generally find the editing drops off over the first few weeks, because the system stops repeating the thing you already fixed.

Three drafts Bolta would put in front of you

Written by an agent, held for review. You approve, edit or reject each one before it publishes.

FacebookBefore and after — the reason it failed

Took out a fence on Willow Creek this week that was eleven years old and looked about thirty. The panels were fine. The posts were the problem — they were set in dirt with a little concrete collar, so water sat right at the ground line and rotted every one of them at the same height. You can see it in the second photo. The new run is cedar on steel posts, set thirty inches with concrete all the way down. It should outlast the panels this time. If your fence wobbles when you push it, that is the posts, not the boards.

Why it works: It teaches the homeowner something about their own fence, which is what makes them trust the estimate before they ever call.

InstagramProgress — one day of a bigger job

Day two of a full tear-off in Cedar Park. Decking is all sound underneath, which does not always happen on a house this age. Ice and water shield is down on the valleys and the eaves, felt is on, and shingles start in the morning. Weather looks clear through Thursday, so this one should close out on schedule.

Why it works: Progress posts show a job being run properly, which is the actual thing a homeowner is nervous about when they pick a roofer.

FacebookSeasonal — the post that books the slow month

Every year we get the same call in the third week of January, and every year it is the same problem: gutters full of leaves from October, then a freeze, then water backing up under the shingle line. It is a two-hour job in November and a much more expensive one in February. We are booking gutter cleans through the end of the month while the ladders are not competing with roof work. Message the page or call the office.

Why it works: It sells the slow-season service by explaining the failure it prevents, which works better than a discount and does not train customers to wait for one.

Accuracy, customer privacy and the claims you cannot make

Contractors do not carry the regulatory load a law firm does, but the posting risk is real and it is concentrated in three places: what you say about a job, whose property you are showing, and what you promise. A calm approval step handles all three.

The customer's property is the customer's business

A house is identifiable. Before you post one, get the homeowner's agreement, and keep the street number, the full address and any distinguishing detail out of the frame and the caption unless they have specifically said it is fine. Many contractors make this part of the closeout conversation: the job is done, here is the invoice, do you mind if we post the photos.

Do not quote a price you cannot hold

A number in a caption is read as an offer. Materials move, access varies, and the house next door is not the same job. If you post pricing at all, post a range with the conditions attached, and treat it at approval as something you would be willing to honour if someone called quoting it back.

Licensing, insurance and warranty language must be exactly true

Saying you are licensed, bonded, insured, certified by a manufacturer or offering a warranty are all factual claims, and they are the ones a competitor or a regulator will check. State only what is current, do not imply coverage you do not carry, and re-verify these lines whenever they appear in a draft rather than assuming last year's wording still holds.

Never post about a dispute

A bad review, a non-paying customer, an inspector you disagree with. Every instinct to answer publicly is wrong, and it is permanent. Decide in advance that disputes are handled by phone, and that the account replies only with a neutral line offering to talk offline.

Storm work needs a heavier hand on tone

After hail or wind, the whole trade is posting, and the line between being genuinely useful and looking like a chaser is thin. Lead with what a homeowner should check and who to call first — usually their insurer — before you lead with your availability. It reads better and it ages better.

The contractor social media playbook: 30, 60 and 90 days

Read the rest of the Contractors guide

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The contractor social media playbook: 30, 60 and 90 days

A 30/60/90 operating plan for contractor social media: what to set up, who owns capture and approval, the weekly rhythm, and the two numbers worth watching.

Contractor social media examples, rewritten before and after

Nine real contractor posts rewritten: what was weak, what changed, and why the new version works. Draft yours with AI and approve every post before it publishes.

The agents contractors put to work first

AI Caption Writer

Writes the caption for every before-and-after on your phone, so the bottleneck stops being the twenty minutes after dinner.

AI Instagram Content Creator

Turns a job-site photo and one line about what you did into an Instagram post formatted for the platform, ready to approve.

AI Community Manager

Drafts replies to the estimate questions and comments that land on your page while you are on a roof, so nobody waits three days.

See what Bolta would write for your company

Describe your company in one line. Bolta writes two drafts, the way it would inside the product. You read them before anything else happens.

Frequently asked questions

Does Bolta post to my company's accounts automatically?

No. The agents research, draft and schedule, but every post sits in an approval queue until a person approves it. You can clear the queue from your phone on a job site. If you never approve a draft, it never publishes. The edits you make are kept and used to improve later drafts, so the queue gets faster to clear.

How much does social media for contractors cost with Bolta?

There is a free Starter tier so you can see what the agents write before paying. Paid plans start at $19 a month for Explorer, $49 for Premium, and $119 for Team or Agency plans. A part-time marketing hire or a local agency retainer costs several times that, and still needs someone from the crew to explain what happened this week.

Which platform should a contractor actually post on?

Facebook first, Instagram second, for almost every residential trade. That is where homeowners are, where local community groups live, and where a before-and-after gets shared to a neighbour. Bolta supports ten platforms, but connecting two and feeding them properly beats spreading the same effort across all of them.

What should a contractor post on Facebook?

Finished work with the reason the old one failed, jobs in progress that show the process being run correctly, the crew, and answers to the questions homeowners ask you on every estimate. Before-and-after photos with one specific detail in the caption outperform anything promotional, because they let a homeowner judge the work themselves.

How often should a contractor post?

Twice a week is a realistic floor and it beats seven posts in one week followed by a month of silence. A workable rhythm is one finished job and one process, crew or homeowner-question post. Build the queue during the busy season, when you are on visible job sites daily, so the slow months still have something going out.

Will the posts sound like a marketing company wrote them?

Only if that is how you talk. Bolta builds a voice profile from how you describe the business and from every edit you make. If you strike out exclamation marks, industry jargon and phrases like "quality craftsmanship", it stops using them. The first week needs the most editing; after that drafts land close to your own phrasing.

Do I need professional photos?

No. A phone photo taken on site in daylight is the right asset, because it looks like the job a homeowner will actually get. Shoot the before from the same spot as the after, hold the phone level, and take three frames instead of one. Bolta handles the writing, the platform formatting and the timing around whatever you upload.

We run several crews and two trades. Can that stay separate?

Yes. Separate lines of business can run as separate workspaces with their own connected accounts, voice and approval queue, so the roofing side does not sound like the landscaping side. The Team plan at $119 a month includes five collaborative workspaces and ten members.

What it costs

The comparison that matters is not other software. It is the two things contractors do instead: hire someone part-time to run the page, or pay a local marketing company a monthly retainer. Both cost several times any Bolta plan, and both still need someone from the crew to explain what happened on the job this week.

Start on the free Starter tier and read the drafts. Explorer is $19 a month and covers a single company keeping Facebook and Instagram genuinely alive. Premium is $49 for a heavier cadence across more accounts. Team and Agency are $119, aimed at multi-trade operations, franchise locations and the agencies that run contractor accounts, where separate approval queues per business or per location matter.

The honest test is the first month. Connect the Facebook page, upload a week of job photos, and count how many drafts you approve without changing a word.

Start freeSee full pricing

There is a free Starter tier. Paid plans start at $19/month (Explorer), Premium is $49/month, and Team is $119/month.

Last updated: 2026-07-28

Social Media for Contractors — AI You Approve | Bolta