The Social Media Gap: Are Tradesmen Missing on Instagram?

LeadFly Websites  ·  Original Research  ·  Updated June 2026

A finished kitchen, a re-roofed house, a transformed garden: this is content people genuinely enjoy watching, and the platforms reward it. So we checked how many trade businesses have a findable social presence. Most do not, though the data comes with an honest caveat worth reading.

Here is what we found, why it matters, and the important limit on how far these particular numbers can be pushed.

The key findings

• We could find a public Instagram for only 28% of the 4,895 trade businesses we looked at.
• We could find a Facebook for 35%. Facebook is more common, but still a minority.
• That leaves the clear majority with no social presence we could find, on platforms tailor-made for visual trade work.
• Caveat: these are findable figures, not proof of absence. Some trades have accounts we could not link automatically, so real presence is likely higher. Treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

The platforms are built for exactly this work

Few businesses are as naturally suited to social media as the trades. Before-and-after transformations, satisfying process clips, the reveal at the end of a job: this is the content people stop scrolling for, and Instagram, Facebook and TikTok actively push it to local audiences.

Yet our look at nearly 5,000 trade businesses suggests most are not in the game. We could find an Instagram for around a quarter and a Facebook for about a third. The natural advantage is sitting largely unused.

Why a findable social presence matters

Social media does two jobs for a tradesman. It is a living portfolio that proves, with dated, real photos, that you do good work and you do it now. And it is a discovery channel, where a neighbour tags you, a local group recommends you, and work arrives without a lead fee attached.

It also feeds everything else. An active social profile reinforces your Google presence, gives a website real content to show, and provides the steady proof of life that both customers and search engines look for.

The honest limit of these numbers

We want to be straight about the data, because that is the whole point of research worth citing. These figures measure what we could find: a public account clearly linked to the business. Some tradesmen will have accounts under a personal name, or ones our scan could not connect automatically.

So the true figure for trades with any social presence is almost certainly higher than 28% or 35%. What the numbers do show reliably is that a findable, linked, active presence, the kind a customer or search engine actually benefits from, is still the exception rather than the rule.

The opportunity in the gap

Whichever way you read the caveat, the conclusion holds. Most tradesmen are not making real use of the channels best suited to their work. For a firm that posts even occasionally, with real photos of real jobs, that is an open lane.

It does not take a content strategy or daily posting. A handful of genuine before-and-after posts a month, linked from your website and Google profile, already puts you ahead of most of the trade.

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