10 min read2. Marketing BasicsBusiness NecessitiesOffline MarketingYour Website

How To Create A Social Media Strategy For Your Cleaning Business (with Free Template)

creating a social media strategy - phone with social media apps

Summary

For many cleaning business owners, time spent on Social Media often feels time-consuming and gets in the way of working on other more profitable tactics when it comes to generating more profit for the business. 
In this lesson, our founder Daisy shows you how to create a social media strategy that is easy to implement, easy to follow and that will save you time. You’ll become active on Facebook without being on it every night.
This lesson is a summary of a live webinar that Daisy held, and that you can watch here. Become a member of our Facebook Group to make sure you catch our latest webinars and videos as they are released.

We’ll be covering the do’s and don’ts of social media, before moving on to automating your posts to save you time. 

What to Share: The Do’s

DO: Show that your Facebook is active

Being active on Facebook is super important – potential customers will check your social media accounts to reassure themselves that you are the right service provider to go with.  An active account (one that has regular posts and comments) proves that you are easy to contact and engaging with your customers on a frequent basis. 
One easy way to generate content is to share customer feedback and reviews. Reviews are one of the biggest influencers on potential customers’ buying decisions, A study, undertaken by BrightLocal, shows that 93% of people read online reviews before choosing where to go. So, 93% of your customers are checking that you have online reviews and making their decision based on that.  That means that sharing reviews will not only keep your profile active but will also help you win more work. 
There is a “reviews” tab on Facebook, which gives your customers the opportunity to you 5-star glowing reviews about your company. Then, you can share these reviews on your Facebook page. For brownie points, and if your customer agrees, you could share a quote from the review alongside and image or them. These pictures will add to the credibility of the review and encourage engagement from those who might know the customer featured, or relate to their image. For example, using a picture of a woman with a dog has the potential to attract pet owners, who may be part of your target market. 
A key tip here is to always add your branding and contact details clearly so that anyone who sees it is able to get in touch quickly and easily.

Social Media Strategy

Do: Get personal.

Share posts about you and your staff to create real relationships with your customers. 
For example, my family business Smile Carpet Cleaning often mentions Colin, a member of their staff, in some of their posts. Because of this,  customers have started to know who Colin is and we’ve even seen some search “Colin Smile Carpet Cleaning” to get to their website. Powerful stuff!

DO: Tag other local businesses.

Tagging people on your post often results in more visibility, as the tagged party are likely to share it to their audience too (it’s easy content for them!) You could write a post and tag your acquaintances such as electricians, painters, decorators,  builders, with a positive message such as “Local Business Friday!”. 
To tag someone, it’s simple, you just need to do a “@” and just tipping whatever it is (example: “@smartcarpetcleaning”).

What to Share: The Don’ts

DON’T: Talk about your competition in a negative way

It’s just never a good idea. It will probably attract a lot of attention but do you really this to be a potential customer’s first impression of you?

DON’T: Share your personal opinion (relevant news, politic opinions…)

Your business page is not the place to share this kind of information. You can share it on your personal page but not on your company page as it risks dividing people, and could ultimately lose you custom.
People who go on your page want to know more about cleaning and your company, they’re not expecting to see news articles or your views.

DON’T: Share pictures of dirty water

A surprising amount of companies will post images which show a dirty bucket of water while they’re cleaning, thinking it’s showcasing how dirty somewhere was before they cleaned it. However, showing these pictures is not selling your business, rather it creates an association between your company and dirt! 
Focus on the brilliant results you get. A “before/after” picture will be much more effective.

social-media-cleaning-business

Creating a Content Calendar

Now you have ideas of content to share on your social media accounts, it’s time to create a Content Calendar. 
A Content Calendar is a way of planning out all your posts a couple of months ahead so that you don’t have to be continuously working on it. At both Digitool and Smile, we take one afternoon every 6 months to sit down, get the content planned and then scheduled for the 6 months ahead.
Of course, we still do adhoc posts here and there, but the pressure is completely off as our socials manage themselves in the background! 

Here’s how to create your own Content Calendar: 

  1. Download our FREE Content Calendar Template Here by clicking “Make a Copy” and opening it with your Google Account. 
  2. Check out the “Example” sheet first. You’ll see that the dates have been filled in on the top row for each week. Then, some example content has been populated on different days. 
  3. There is a blank sheet for 12 months of the year. Reorganise them as appropriate and fill in the correct dates on each sheet. This is quicker than it might seem!
  4. Then, start planning the content out. Try to keep it simple by posting similar content (such as Before/After photos) every Monday, for example. 
  5. Once you’re ready, move on to the next section of this lesson – scheduling the posts in advance.

HOW TO QUICKLY SHARE AND SCHEDULE YOUR POSTS (FREE SOFTWARE)

The most important takeaway from this lesson should be that whatever you share, schedule it ahead and automate the process. 
Here’s some software we use to schedule posts in advance.

Hootsuite

After creating your graphics to accompany your posts, you’ll want to think about scheduling these posts using www.hootsuite.com. You can add 3 social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) and schedule a limited amount of posts FOR FREE. If you want more, you have to pay for their service. It’s pretty reasonable when you consider that it saves you hours each month. 
You can compose a message, add links, mention people, add images, and schedule them to post automatically. For example, on Sunday, you can schedule your social media posts for the next month in one go! 
It also works very well if you want to talk about an event that’s coming up (Christmas, spring cleaning, Easter…), and wish to schedule a campaign in advance.

IFTTT

If This Then That, functions off rules outlining that if one thing happens, another thing should happen as a result of this. It is essentially a rule platform. For example, if I put a post on Facebook, then post this on Instagram. If it is the first of the month, post this on Facebook. If someone follows me on Twitter, send a message thanking them. 
Some of these examples can really help you save time in the long-run.

Next steps…

Once you have a basic social media strategy up and running, you can begin looking at other ways to use social media to your advantage. In the next few lessons, we’ll be showing you how to network online, how to add you logos to pictures and paid advertising.


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Tags: 10 min read, 2. Marketing Basics, Business Necessities, , Offline Marketing, Your Website

3 Comments. Leave new

  • I was about to spend the money to use a marketing person to advertise for me on social media. I came across you video, and I found it very helpful. I m going to give it a try, I hope this brings me some businesses. Thank you very much, you just saved me £500.
    I’m on office cleaning, school cleaning and construction site cleaning.

    Reply

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