Social media has become one of the most effective ways for tool brands to reach skilled tradespeople where they already are. But getting it right is the hard part—content has to be funny enough to stop the scroll, and authentic enough to earn trust.
At NECA 2025 in Chicago, Trade Hounds VP of Marketing Jeanette Abrahamsen sat down with Kandace Roberts, Marketing Manager at Jonard Tools, to talk about how the brand has built a social media presence that resonates with tradespeople, what it takes to stay ahead of trends, and what drives her approach to content creation.
I started as a social media manager. From there, I was also running our website, our advertisements—maintaining our Google Ads and Facebook Ads performance —working with blogs, and overseeing our team with the trade shows. It became pretty consuming, and that's why we hired a new social media manager.
Now my role is solely looking over the social media team, overseeing the ads, and running the website. I do a lot with optimizing the website for digital and mobile. I also oversee our blogs and all of our PR. I still oversee the trade shows, and I also work with our graphics team so that we can create sales materials for our sales teams.
Our VP of Marketing and Sales, his name is Randy. When I first came in, he was like, "I want to be Wendy's. I want to go in there. That matches the industry.”
These job sites—it's not like prim and proper. They're roasting each other. It's more like a brotherhood. He said, "Go on and be Wendy's and have that fun humor with them."
I've always been a little sassy in my life, so I thought it was the perfect fit for me. And when I was going into social media when I first came in, I saw no one had the magic sauce. No one knew what content was working. So I thought, let me just make some spaghetti, throw it at a wall, and see what sticks.
We push the envelope a little. Sometimes it's a little more raunchy, sometimes it's a little more professional. We just do A/B testing with our content.
Before I even started at Jonard, I actually ran a meme account. I would be searching for memes and trends and all of that. You fall down a rabbit hole, and I found that a lot of trends, oddly enough, were starting on Facebook first, and then you would see them on Instagram.
I became like a huge boomer in that instance where I was just floating on Facebook all the time. Then when I had a meme account, I would relay it back on Instagram, and then everyone thought I was this trendsetter. Sometimes I would also create my own.
But for now, it’s more like I have a whole group chat with friends who are also very passionate about memes. And then we just go back and forth, and we're just like, "Oh, we can twist it to match us in this regard." And then the content just comes naturally.
For me, it wasn’t too hard because I had a brother who was doing all of this. I would listen to him playing video games with his friends, and some of the things that he said just stuck with me. So I treat the content as if I’m pitching it to him.
I do like when the guys come up being like, "Who’s the dude that’s running your account?" And I’m like, "I’m the dude." And it kind of shocks them. It’s a lot of fun.
I just think women, we don’t think our humor will match, or we think we’ll overstep. And a lot of that is based on psychology as well. There’s something called negativity bias in psychology—we all harp on what’s negative and never what’s positive.
So what I do with my content is I’m like, "What’s the worst that can happen? Someone unfollows me. Oh no. I’m also going to get like 10 other followers from it who are going to relate to my humor."
Life is too short to care about what other people do. No matter what you do in your life, you're going to have someone that hates it. At the end of the day, do you like the content that you put out? That’s all that matters.
A lot of my confidence stems from understanding how our brain functions. I always go back and say, "Well, I’m not going to place a limit on myself because I know my brain is trained to act in this way, and I’m going to go against it."
For all the haters I have, I have 10 lovers too. If someone doesn’t like it, then it wasn’t meant to happen. But I also know that another guy is cheering me on, too. I’m going to focus on that guy and continue to build that connection.
Kandace’s perspective is a reminder that great content in the trades doesn’t come from playing it safe—it comes from understanding the audience, trusting your instincts, and being willing to test what works.
Watch the full conversation from NECA Chicago to hear more about how she’s built Jonard Tools’ social presence, how she thinks about creativity and humor in a technical industry, and why staying authentic matters.
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