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:
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!
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