We live in a world that is driven by social media. In 2017, a case study by Global Web Index revealed the the average American was spending more than two hours each day using social media.
As a business owner in the water damage restoration industry, you probably already know that, because of heavy social media use, your business has to have a presence online. You may even know exactly what you should be doing to build your social media platform each and every day. But do you understand what NOT to do on social media? Do the employees or freelance contractors hired to run your social media pages know the rules for posting on behalf on your company online?
#1. Keep Personal Information Private
Oversharing on social media has become a social norm. When you follow someone on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, you get to hear about what they think, what they eat, and who they voted for in the last election.
For a company, sharing personal information should never be the norm. This doesn’t mean you can’t have fun or have a personality, but it does mean you need to double check each of your social media posts before they go live. This means keeping your frustrations with employees or clients to yourself and avoiding engaging in controversial conversations.
#2. Respect Your Client’s Privacy
It isn’t just your personal information or opinions that need to be kept off the page, it’s also important that you respect each homeowner’s right to privacy. You deal with water damage each and every day, and you might not see the harm in posting a picture of a flooded home online. For a homeowner, however, a flood or leak is stressful and seeing their disaster online might be the last thing they want.
In some cases, homeowners might be willing to share pictures as a testimonial, especially if you have a killer “after” photo to share. If this is the case, make sure you get written consent first.
#3. Oversell Your Company and Your Services
At face value, social media marketing is all about selling you business online. However, it is actually possible to oversell you services on social media. What we know about social media use in 2018 is that users don’t want to be sold to, they want to read interesting and engaging content online.
Instead of droning on about your business and the services you sell, make sure you are providing real values to your readers on social media pages. This can be done by creating evergreen content, or content that stays useful. Sharing maintenance tips to homeowners, blogging about common home repair woes, and sharing about other business owners in your area are a few of the ways you can accomplish this.
#4. Make it All About You
Being able to write and schedule your social media posts in advance is a beautiful thing, but it can also create a dangerous trap for business owners. They schedule their posts on a Sunday and then never check their social media throughout the week. From the outside, it looks like all this business cares about is sharing what they have to say. It looks like they’re not interested in listening or learning about their audience.
This is a huge problem because social media marketing isn’t all about you or just getting your message out there. You have to engage with others if you want to build a reputation online. This means responding to comments on your page in a timely fashion as well as following and engaging with other users that are relevant to your brand.
#5. Neglect the Schedule
Let’s be honest, as the owner of a small business, you probably have too much on your plate. This often means that seemingly less urgent tasks probably get pushed to the bottom of your task list each day.
Neglecting your social media schedule is a mistake you really can’t afford to make. Inconsistent posts, failing to respond to comments, and general dropping the ball online is a good way to lose the attention of your social media following.
Avoiding this mistake is as simple as creating a plan and setting up a system to make sure that you follow through each and every day. At More Floods, we have created marketing resources that help water damage restoration business owners automate their social media campaigns. To learn more, click here or call 1-866-667-3356.