Do you see Facebook as something you are “supposed to” have for your business? Something that is good for building your brand but kind of useless for generating real leads? Do you spend most of your time on Facebook talking to other business owners that aren’t likely to buy your service? This post is for you.
If you commit to this plan, you will see remarkable results. Real cleaning leads from real local people. Facebook will go from being a time vacuum or a chore to being a valuable source of leads for your business.
I have set this up as a 7-day plan but you can go at your own pace. Ready to get social? Let’s do this!
Day 1: Not-So-Extreme Facebook Fanpage Makeover
It’s time for a checklist, does your Facebook page:
- Have all of your important business information filled out in the “About” section?
- Have a unique BRANDED Facebook cover that represents your business and includes your contact information: phone number and website? If you aren’t interested in doing it yourself we recommend Fivver, you can get a custom Facebook cover made for just five bucks!
- Have a profile image that is appropriate, probably your logo.
- Have a nice description that uses your keywords and mentions your city?
Your job for today is to make sure you’ve taken care of every item on that short list, if you need help just add us on Facebook as friends and send us a message!
Day 2: Facebook Group Hugs
To be able to join Facebook groups (today’s task!) you’ll need to be logged into Facebook with a personal account, preferably the one that is connected to your page. Once you are in I want you to do some searching with the Facebook search box at the top of your page. We are going to be looking for several types of Facebook groups:
- Local “Yardsale” Types of Groups, this is where you can post coupons and promotions
- Local Groups where the people are likely to be interested in your service
- Industry-specific groups
- Groups where you might get referrals from other local businesses
We have a quick video here for how to find the right groups in all of those categories:
Can’t get easier than that!
Now once you are in the groups I want you to be charming and helpful. Comment on other people’s posts in the group, join the discussion and make friends.
Day 3: Find Friends in Bulk
We need to get you some more friends, ones that you can invite to like your page. Get out your contact lists and lead logs and watch this video:
That is your job for today, load that bulk inviter up and get those requests sent!
Day 4 – Hashtag for Profit
Time to find the hashtags that are going to extend your reach and bring you more leads. Watch our cool tutorial for more tips:
Day 5 – Smarter Posting
Can you commit to posting three times a day, Monday through Friday? I’ll show you how to schedule your posts in advance later but if you can post three times a day you will see a much better return on your Facebook efforts in the form of traffic and leads!
Here are the laws for smarter posting on Facebook:
- Do stay on topic, remember you are building a brand.
- Don’t get into controversial topics on your business account.
- Don’t post just to post, have a strategy for each post.
- Don’t cuss or make lewd references on your business Facebook account. (Nuff said!)
- Don’t try the hard sell on Facebook.
How to Sell on Facebook
A good rule of thumb is to limit your soft sell posts to one out of every three posts on Facebook. So one out of every three posts can be “Hey we have a promotion/special/discount/referral program” or an image that is self promotional but not obnoxious. The rest of your posts should be on topic but more about building your presence and building your brand through relationships with your fans. Post something that they are going to find interesting!
There are several types of posts that you should be taking advantage of: images, text only, video and link shares. Let’s run through them quickly:
Why You Should Learn How to Make Custom Images for Facebook
Research from some very smart marketers has show again and again that image posts outperform text posts on Facebook for interaction, engagement, sharing and click through rates. What does that mean to you? If you can create good looking, BRANDED images you can potentially generate more traffic and leads from Facebook.
Not only do photo posts get more engagement than links, videos or text-based updates, they actually account for 93% of the most engaging posts on Facebook. According to Kissmetrics, photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more click-throughs on links than text-based posts. And as we’ve mentioned before, self-explanatory photos seem to perform best.
-Belle Beth Cooper on Buffer
Here is what we DON’T want to do as small businesses:
- Spend a lot of money/time on graphic design for Facebook.
- Take other people’s images and put our names on them.
- Miss out on all that traffic just because we are intimidated.
Check out our video on creating wall posts for Facebook with no photoshop or design experience required. (It’s free and takes just a few minutes to create!)
You can definitely share other people’s images on Facebook as long as you don’t alter them so feel free to fill out your post calender with images that you find online and that your followers will enjoy!
Text-Only Posts
These posts are just text, easy peasy! You are going to want to mix these in with other kinds of Facebook posts but not every post has to be an image right? Keeping your posts below 250 characters can get you 60% more engagement than you might otherwise see. You can even get up to 66% more engagement if you cut it down to less than 80 characters.
Here are some text-only post examples:
- Post a quote. Make it a good one, something that really elicits an emotional response out off people. Make it funny, profound or wise but don’t be boring. Search for quotes about your keywords/industry on BrainyQuote.
- Post a CLEAN joke. Yes, it’s a play on our cleaning industry niche but also dead serious. No cussing or naughty references on your business Facebook account. (Yes, I see this sometimes, keep it clean guys!)
- Fill in the blank. Even though this is a simple concept you will want to put some thought into it. Think: On Sunday afternoon you’ll probably find me ______.
- Greetings and niceties. It’s hard not to like a nice greeting on Facebook, just don’t be too generic. Good examples: “Brrr it’s getting chilly! Hope you all are staying warm this morning! #hotcoffee” or “Happy Monday Facebook! Did everyone have fun this weekend? We hope so!”
- Holiday Wishes. These don’t have to be huge national holidays. How about something like this: Taking a minute to say thank you to all our local teachers for their dedication and hard work! Happy Teachers Day!
- Share Company News.
- Celebrate a Milestone. Did you just hit the 500 friend mark? Did your business page get its 1000th like? Post about it and thank your fans. Get creative and celebrate offline milestones too: you just cleaned your 100th house this year! Make sure to give thanks and credit where it is due.
Get your friends and followers to interact with you with some of these strategies:
- Polls! Studies have shown that poll questions in text form get more engagement than if you use the “poll” option to post the question. Keep it short with two or three choices tops for best results.
- Trivia questions. People love to show off their smarts!
- Thought-provoking questions, make them think! Yes or no questions aren’t going to get you the engagement you want.
- Ask your fans/friends for advice. (“Do you like the green logo or the grey one?”)
- One little-known way to ______. Giving a tip like this is brilliant because people that didn’t know about it will thank you and people that did know about it will say “Oh, I’ve been doing that for years.” Great way to get comments.
Video Posts
Share funny ones, instructional ones, interesting ones; just of course keep it clean! If you have your own videos on Youtube make sure you share those as well!
Link Shares
Share your blog posts and other things that you have going on on your website. Share articles that will interest your followers, try to stay on topic and don’t share anything too controversial that is likely to spark a big nasty discussion in the comments!
Now that you have an arsenal of post types to draw from start planning your posts out in advance for the next week.
Day 6: Schedule in Advance for the Win!
Scheduling posts in advance will free you up to run your business by allowing you to manage the time you spend on Facebook. You can set aside an hour or two a week to plan out and schedule the next week’s posts.
I always recommend that you aim for 3 posts a day, it’s not that tough!!
First Post: Between 7:00 am and 9:00 am
Second Post: Between 11:00 am and 1:00 pm
Third Post: Between 4:00 pm and 6:00 pm
Here is a video that shows how easy it is to schedule your posts:
Day 7: In for the Long Haul Baby!
Even if you are scheduling your posts in advance, I would still recommend that you login to Facebook at least once a day for 5 or 10 minutes and you can use that time to:
- Respond to any direct comments or private messages
- Like, comment on and/or share other people’s statuses and pages
- Accept any incoming friend requests
- Interact on your groups a bit
So, summing it up: one hour a week plus 10 minutes a day (Monday through Friday) means less than two hours a week for a smoking hot Facebook presence that is going to drive traffic and leads to your business.
Last step: tracking your progress. We have one more video for your challenge and it’s going to teach you how to check the performance of your posts an the progress of your page:
Did you make it?? Congratulations, you just built an asset that will generate leads for your company for years to come! Please don’t forget to like/share this post if it was useful to you so that other small business owners can benefit from the traffic and leads that Facebook can provide!
Note: This content was originally created for SEO Maids, a company I had planned to start but decided not to do. It is being posted here because I hope other maid services may benefit from it.