If you Google “tiling forum” and register to all the free ones that pop up, and then if you use Facebook then join all the Facebook Groups, and perhaps LinkedIn too if you’re looking for your local tile adhesive representatives even. LinkedIn is business-to-business so you wouldn’t find domestic customers there as a tiler or tile store. But as a tiler or tile shop, the best advice would be to register to them all, and visit them all from time to time and see which ones help you get your business where you want it to be. Perhaps you take a bit from each, but you can certainly then get links from the forums (not the groups) to your own website which will give it a massive push in search engines. And the more you post to a forum, providing you have added appropriate signature links in your account settings, the more links you have linking back to your own website, and the higher that website will rank compared to competitors who aren’t using all of the available resources online.
As a tile fixer or tile supplier, we would suggest you register to all that are free of charge
1. Tilers Forums | TilersForums.com
The first tile forum online was JohnBridge.com. A Canadian tile fixer that has written a book about tiling, and runs a bit of an online store, and has forum sponsors. The second was TileForums.com, setup by untold.media ® in about 2002.
TileForums.com was used as a post-tiling course shared knowledgebase for training delegates of Professional Independent Training Techniques. A tiling courses company based in Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, UK.
The third forum online was Tilers Forums
After Johnbridge.com and TileForums.com, came Tilers Forums. Setup by untold.media® again but this time rather than supporting just one training centre, it supported the whole industry and helped steer those who wanted to get into the tiles industry to find a quicker way in than either; get an NVQ in Wall and Floor Tiling (Level 2) at a college over anything from 3 to 5 years doing a day a week, or learning from an existing tradesperson, and perhaps doing an apprenticeship scheme through the CITB if you were lucky enough to find a tiler that was busy and profitable enough.
- Tiling Courses anywhere in the UK:
Ignoring engine warning lights or unusual symptoms can lead to more severe engine damage. Early diagnosis can prevent major repairs and keep your engine running efficiently. - Shared Tiling Business Experiences and Advice:
- Computerized diagnostics to retrieve engine error codes
- Thorough inspection of engine components
- Explanation of diagnostic results and recommended repairs
Learn how to market your tiling business online
Whether your engine needs a minor repair, like a gasket replacement, or a full rebuild, we can handle it. Our experienced technicians are equipped to perform repairs on all types of engines, restoring power and efficiency to your vehicle.
2. Tilers BB | Tilers Talk | TilersTalk.co.uk/bb
Tilers Forums is part of a network, there’s also Electricians Forums and Plumbers Forums, and they are funded three ways. First through sponsorship. So companies from within the industries pay to have their logos on the forums, and share content out via the forum, and are included in mass emails and thing. There are also Google Advertisements that take up about 60% of the available space that is dedicated to off-site linking in each of the pages and sections. So quite a bit of space.
And the final more newer way they’re funded is through the members themselves subscribing to remove ads for their account. The forums look so lovely without ads everywhere. it’s a real shame they need them to survive!
Tilers BB (or Tilers Talk BB) had to be free for all users and work differently to the existing sponsorship business model.
With those forums being so established, after all they were launched in April 2006 which is coming up to 20 years soon, there was no way to suddenly change the model for one of them to somehow include companies that were not sponsors in the forum activity, when for years untold.media had been asking people to contribute to running costs or risk having their account removed or banned even.
- This required a new format:
Tilers BB (part of 14 new websites i.e. builderstalk.co.uk, electricianstalk.co.uk, plumberstalk.co.uk, tilerstalk.co.uk etc) or Tilers Talk (but there is already a Tilers Talk established by Dave Coulson, a friend of Tilers Forums) was created. - Free for all tiles industry companies and tile fixers alike:
- All content can be posted for free, any content posted is re-posted on Tilers Forums for free
- Through social media the “Bulletin Board” is building up news threads automatically when admins share content directly to the social media pages of the same name
- Those pages on Tilers BB then mean content posted to Facebook that would otherwise be forgotten/lost forever within 24 hours, can be harvested and indexed in search engines, which in turn creates more traffic through Tilers BB and onto the original company who posted their post to their FB profile or page.
3. Facebook or Other Social Media Platforms
Any tiling business whether busy and established, or brand new and growing, should always cover all bases by having a web presence and some local offline “IRL” presence which should include in some way the aim of interconnecting their tiling business with their local two or three main or closest tile suppliers, and the adhesive brand used, by continually updating their skills via further training days as and when newer products come into the market. i.e. using backerboards 100% of the time now and not one single sheet of marine ply, as it’s not up to the same quality as it used to be.
Join all groups and follow all pages
Join Tilers Community, Tilers Talk BB, UK Tiling Forum, and Dave Coulson’s Tilers Talk UK, amongst all others with 2,000+ users in it (to avoid the scam groups of which there are many!)
- Tilers Community:
Around the time of Fall Tilers Community runs a raffle that is backed by a lot of good brand names who pay £200 a year for the coverage. The charity money goes to the charity chosen by the owner of the group, not the members. You buy a ticket and the group chooses the winners (not very open about how that choice is made it must be said). - UK Tiling Forum.com Group:
UK Tiling Forum.com was setup by AndysTileTiling, a former member of Tilers Forums who sent abusive members to a female member of staff, and got banned. Their forum is very quiet but their group isn’t too bad. Good tilers in the group. So worth joining. - Tilers Talk BB:
This one is well worth joining, and follow the Tilers Talk BB Page too. The content that is posted to this group is manually found and reshared out. If a person follows BAL Tiling and they share a post, then Tilers Talk BB shares the same post, somebody who follows BAL Tiling and is a member of Tilers Talk BB will have the content highlighted in their news feed, without the need for the company to pay Facebook. Which is actually what Zuckerburg wants companies to do. As posting to your own page doesn’t mean all your followers will see the content. To guarantee that you would have to pay a lot of money every day!
Have your own business page, and post every single job you do to it
If you have your own Facebook page for your tiling business, then you can build up content over time. Whether the content is:-
- 10 pictures of every tiling job you do:
Using really helpful descriptions including the area the job was done such as “Bathroom Tiling Job in Staffordshire” or “Kitchen Floor Tiling with 20mm Porcelain Tiles, in Cheshire” – these then become searchable in FB and when locals search for a tiler, you would hope you came up at least some of the time. - Use the review system to increase your popularity:
The more reviews you get on Facebook (and Google) the more ‘respect’ the network things your business has, the more it will show your page in Facebooks own search engine, but also in Google. Ever seen the 4 out of 5 stars next to business social media pages in Google results? That’s them. Get every one of your customers to leave a review on both your facebook page, and Google business page (if you’re lucky enough to have one before they stopped accepting submissions – more on that later). - Use whichever social media you use, to find your suppliers and adhesive brands:
- Find and follow your tile suppliers, you often find exclusive discounts posted
- Find and follow all your local fellow tilers, you never know when a big job requires a little help, no need to be enemies just because your potential customers are shared
- Find the manufacturers, they always have information about trade days and when one is local to you, they’re really worth planning in for half a day! It’ll pay back quickly, often with freebies and demonstrations.
Checkatrade.com, MyBuilder.com, RatedPeople.com etc
- Pay per lead: something
- Pay per job, sometimes a percentage of the job:something else
- Build feedback: coming back to this part
- Keep bidding on work and compete with others local tilers that are on the same website: will come back to this.
What can our network of websites do for you?
We can help get you more business in, all day long, every day.
Free Tiling Advice – and much much more
Need more business in? – Join ALL forums and groups and see which ones get YOU business in