Hoody
Supportive Member
I've been looking at a lot of people's social media pages and seeing how they use them. For a lot of people the term "Social Media Marketing" is a scary topic, especially to those who are not computer and internet savvy. I've talked to quite a few people who went to MikeFest and all had nothing but great things to say about Tom, Jeff, and Rob on what they learned about social media. In fact most of the people are who I do web work for and now they are fired up and have an understanding of some of things I talk about with them.
I've been back in college for a while now, and I wrote a paper on social media marketing vs. direct mail marketing for the cleaning and restoration industry by comparing the two, along with real examples of costs for both forms of marketing. What I found is social media marketing CAN be much more cost effective than direct mail.
For those at the fest some of this may or may not be new but I wanted to shed a little light on the subject.
IMO - Facebook and Google+ are the most versatile forms of social media. You can post links, videos and photos from other social media sites, where you do not always have that ability with those other social media sites, such as Twitter, Blogger, Youtube(you can but it is not as engaging).
Facebook and Google+ are both about building a community. The idea behind the two are to be engaging but use them to where your audience will promote your brand, company, and services FOR YOU. I've found that a lot of people fail at doing this, so I've come up with some example on how you can easily help your social media presence.
1) You could offer a dollar amount or percentage off on your page, but for the offer to be valid they have to like and share your page. Now lets break that down - Let's say that 15 people like and share your page, and those 15 people have an average of 400 friends on their friend's list. That means that your company name just went out to potentially 6000 people(we won't take into account that Facebook's algorithm doesn't make that statement 100% true, and it will just piss Marty off, he's already pissy enough). To do a direct mail campaign to 6000 people would cost more with design, card stock, printing and postage costs.
2) Sponsor a family during the holidays, whether it is free cleaning, or you purchase gifts for the family. You could make a video of a post cleaning testimonial(with the customer's permission of course), or video you and your staff(or family) going to the store and purchase these gifts and delivering. Or even do a surprise Santa thing. Upload the video to youtube, and post it on your social media accounts that allow videos to be posted. EDIT: Ask your audience to nominate someone, you could also do a food drive to provide a meal for a family in need. Some people I know already do something similar during the holidays.
3) Sponsor a humane society or animal shelter. Provide bags with spotter goodies, literature on how to clean up the spots themselves, and when to call a professional. Ask someone from the organization to post a status, update or tweet about your company sponsoring the shelter, and have them tag your company page in the status. Animals lovers will check out your page and see all of the other things you are doing.
4) When you're at the customers home, simply ask them to write a status when you're there, or a review on a site. You can even offer a discount or gift card for them to leave a review on facebook, google+ or a review site if you absolutely need to. Share your reviews sites on other social media sites that you have accounts on.
5) Post helpful tips on your blog and then share that blog post with the community you've created.
Obviously some of these options will take some time to do, and some costs for some of the things you give away, but you'll save a ton of money in exposure costs, which usually can be the most expensive part of the marketing. I know and have seen some other cleaning companies come up with other great ideas, who are really making social media work for them. Again the idea is to give your audience a reason to promote you FOR YOU so that you don't have to. People already use these sites A LOT, even Facebook as a customer service website. People will post the good and bad about a company, service or product and it gives us the opportunity to boast on the good, and defend the bad. Don't just flood the people you have gotten to 'like' your page with before and after photos, I see that way too much and it's rather boring. Show them that you're human, but you can still sell on a different emotion that make people feel good about your company before they have even called you.
Anyone else have any social media ideas that are working?
I've been back in college for a while now, and I wrote a paper on social media marketing vs. direct mail marketing for the cleaning and restoration industry by comparing the two, along with real examples of costs for both forms of marketing. What I found is social media marketing CAN be much more cost effective than direct mail.
For those at the fest some of this may or may not be new but I wanted to shed a little light on the subject.
IMO - Facebook and Google+ are the most versatile forms of social media. You can post links, videos and photos from other social media sites, where you do not always have that ability with those other social media sites, such as Twitter, Blogger, Youtube(you can but it is not as engaging).
Facebook and Google+ are both about building a community. The idea behind the two are to be engaging but use them to where your audience will promote your brand, company, and services FOR YOU. I've found that a lot of people fail at doing this, so I've come up with some example on how you can easily help your social media presence.
1) You could offer a dollar amount or percentage off on your page, but for the offer to be valid they have to like and share your page. Now lets break that down - Let's say that 15 people like and share your page, and those 15 people have an average of 400 friends on their friend's list. That means that your company name just went out to potentially 6000 people(we won't take into account that Facebook's algorithm doesn't make that statement 100% true, and it will just piss Marty off, he's already pissy enough). To do a direct mail campaign to 6000 people would cost more with design, card stock, printing and postage costs.
2) Sponsor a family during the holidays, whether it is free cleaning, or you purchase gifts for the family. You could make a video of a post cleaning testimonial(with the customer's permission of course), or video you and your staff(or family) going to the store and purchase these gifts and delivering. Or even do a surprise Santa thing. Upload the video to youtube, and post it on your social media accounts that allow videos to be posted. EDIT: Ask your audience to nominate someone, you could also do a food drive to provide a meal for a family in need. Some people I know already do something similar during the holidays.
3) Sponsor a humane society or animal shelter. Provide bags with spotter goodies, literature on how to clean up the spots themselves, and when to call a professional. Ask someone from the organization to post a status, update or tweet about your company sponsoring the shelter, and have them tag your company page in the status. Animals lovers will check out your page and see all of the other things you are doing.
4) When you're at the customers home, simply ask them to write a status when you're there, or a review on a site. You can even offer a discount or gift card for them to leave a review on facebook, google+ or a review site if you absolutely need to. Share your reviews sites on other social media sites that you have accounts on.
5) Post helpful tips on your blog and then share that blog post with the community you've created.
Obviously some of these options will take some time to do, and some costs for some of the things you give away, but you'll save a ton of money in exposure costs, which usually can be the most expensive part of the marketing. I know and have seen some other cleaning companies come up with other great ideas, who are really making social media work for them. Again the idea is to give your audience a reason to promote you FOR YOU so that you don't have to. People already use these sites A LOT, even Facebook as a customer service website. People will post the good and bad about a company, service or product and it gives us the opportunity to boast on the good, and defend the bad. Don't just flood the people you have gotten to 'like' your page with before and after photos, I see that way too much and it's rather boring. Show them that you're human, but you can still sell on a different emotion that make people feel good about your company before they have even called you.
Anyone else have any social media ideas that are working?
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