Facilities Manager Survey Reveals Biggest Cleaning Complaints

This article was originally published in CleanLink.

In an industry such as building service contracting, the work that is performed speaks for itself. When people walk into a business, the condition of the building often serves as the first impression. 

“I think if we as BSCs work hard to partner with FMs in the day-to-day operations that alone builds value,” Flug says. “Taking the time to be the best in customer service wins in the end.” 

It’s important that BSCs understand the pivotal role they play in building management, Hewett says. 

“The biggest issues FMs are dealing with is customer satisfaction,” he explains. “A couple of the biggest issues are hot or cold buildings, and janitorial issues. Twenty years ago it was, ‘Are the trash cans getting picked up or not?’ Now, [facility managers] want to know they have someone they can trust, someone who is responsible and can understand their needs in the marketplace.”

Read the full article here to learn more about the biggest cleaning complaints.

Marketing Your Cleaning Business on Social Media

For many cleaning business owners, both veterans and newcomers alike, marketing is not likely to be your primary focus or background. And why should it be? Running a cleaning operation at maximum efficiency and productivity is already difficult enough so adding something like marketing on to your list of responsibilities (and costs!) might sound impossible. Fear not. In just an hour or two, you can make a huge difference in your company’s digital presence.

Identify your channels

The first step to setting up your business’ social media presence is to identify what channels your current and potential customers are using the most. One way to achieve this is to simply ask your current customers, but if that’s not possible, perhaps try looking for your competitors online and work from there. Facebook, Google+ and Linkedin are great places to start. Twitter is also a very common outreach tool, but may not be ideal for a company that is easing into digital marketing as it requires more upkeep and attention. You can always register, save the best user name to represent your company, and then come back to it later.

If you’re not familiar with using these social media platforms, consider signing up for your own personal page to try them out and get comfortable with the interface. They’re all free and very powerful for networking purposes, and you’ll need an account for yourself before you can build one for your company or brand anyway.

Set up your pages

Once you have identified the channels you wish to start with, create company pages on each of them. Here are links on how to do so for each platform:  

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/business/overview
• Google+: https://plus.google.com/pages/create
• Linkedin: http://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/company-pages/get-started.html
• Twitter: http://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-start-twitter-account/

There are many other platforms out there that may interest you as well, such as YouTube to show product demos or Pinterest to advertise via product photography. Keep exploring and see what works best for you.

Once you have your first platforms created, you’ll want to upload your logo and any other photography that is relevant to your business in order to populate areas such as your cover photo (the big photo at the top of most social media pages) and the profile photo (the smaller photo that should best represent your company—this is typically your logo). Be sure to also populate important fields such as your address, website and contact information as these are the most likely to improve your sales leads and conversions.

Create & share

Once your page is optimized and you’re comfortable with what your visitors are going to see, start creating and sharing content that is relevant to your business. Whether it’s news about your business, or articles that you think your customers/audience might appreciate—just about anything on the internet is fair game for sharing so long as it represents your brand and has the proper attribution of the original creator.

Build your audience

Once you’ve established what social media channels are “working” for you, advertise them to your customers through traditional means. Add a link to your social pages in your email signature, post the URLs in your storefront, add them to your voicemail system by informing people what social channels you’re on. You may even consider trying to run promotions through your social channels to build your audience (people who are “following” what you share).

Don’t stop!

Once you’ve established good practices for your business’ social media presence (sharing new and interesting content regularly, engaging your customers, providing customer service through social media, etc.) then keep the momentum going! Find out where else your customers are online and build on those channels as well. The best way to get noticed on the web is to create content that people are interested in, but they may need a lot of touch points to find you before they can engage with your brand or company online.

Finally, if all of this sounds like it’s too much work or is too confusing, you can always resort to hiring somebody else to manage your brand’s digital presence. While social media may seem like just another expense that your business can’t afford, the reality is that your business can’t afford not to leverage the power of social media—especially when your competitors already are!