A Facebook business page allows a company to showcase their work, receive reviews, communicate with existing customers, and most importantly – attract new customers. While all this can be done with little effort, for those not familiar with the business end of Facebook, this can be very intimidating. It doesn’t have to be.
Sure, there is posting, advertising, creating an audience, and a million other things to do with your business page. The starting point and the bare minimum that any landscape company can and should do (because it really does take minutes) is completing the various sections on your Facebook page. So before you worry yourself out with focusing on posting and boosting, take a step back and complete those sections. And if you need more tips to quickly boost your Facebook presence, then get some free Facebook tips here.
About. The About section is an excellent place for enabling current and potential customers to learn general information about your landscape company. The kind of information you can post here includes contact details (address and telephone number). With this comes the handy feature of a map, pinpointing your company’s location to allow customers to find your premises (or service area) quickly and easily. You should also use this section to link to your website which helps in increasing traffic to your website and allowing customers to further explore what your company has to offer. Here you also have a chance to share a company overview with your customers, letting them know the kinds of values your business holds and what mission you might have.
Most importantly, and often overlooked, is the opportunity for Facebook search engine optimization. Yes, just like Google, Facebook has a search engine. When people search on Facebook (or even on Google), business Facebook pages come up based on how well those search terms match the business profile. So when you’re filling out the About section, use human-friendly sentences that have the necessary keywords for your business page to rank (e.g. talk about what landscaping services you offer).
Services. This is a new addition to the Facebook business pages and is immensely helpful in allowing companies to specify exactly what kind of jobs they take on. This in turn helps connect customers with companies who cater to their exact needs.
The section allows for the entry of multiple services, each requiring a name and description. For example, a landscape design/build company may wish to add “Patio Installation” as the name of the service and the description of something along the lines of: “We do patios of all shapes and sizes and work with a wide range of natural stone and concrete products.”
Facebook then allows you to upload a photo that is displayed beside the service to help clients visualize exactly what is offered. An option to list the price of a service is also available here, but not required. It’s likely your company will be unable to publish a specific, set price, so don’t worry if you skip this part.
Reviews. This is not so much something that you need to complete, but rather something that should be monitored and promoted regularly.
According to a survey conducted by BrightLocal, 88% of people trust online reviews as much as they do a recommendation from a friend or acquaintance. Plus, many people read reviews in order to determine whether or not they trust a particular local business.
Negative reviews can also work in your favor and are essential for improving your service, picking up on issues of staff performance, and responding to customer’s concerns and grievances publicly as a gesture of good faith (read: in other words, nicely respond to negative reviews – but never go back and forth). Keep an eye on your reviews and keep up to date in responding to complaints in order to settle misunderstandings quickly, before they have a chance to damage your reputation.
Don’t have any reviews? That’s even more of a reason for you to get out there and ask customers to give you some. The reality is that you will eventually get a bad review – but don’t let it be your first review. Be proactive and ask your best customers for their positive feedback. Incorporate this into your regular routine. If you’re a design/build contractor, ask for a review/testimonial upon closing out the project during the final walk-through. Otherwise, make it a point to ask for a review after the first lawn mowing or the first lawn care service – creating a specific point in your process in which you ask for a review. Then stick to it.
Photos. Uploading photos to Facebook is a great way to showcase a portfolio of your company’s projects. And since approximately 80% of your target customers are on Facebook, photo content uploaded to Facebook is accessible to a huge audience that otherwise might not have gone to the trouble of viewing your portfolio on your website. Posting photos is also an excellent way of increasing your reach, with an 87% interaction rate for photos compared to a 2% interaction rate of a status update, according to recent studies. By the way, interaction means click, share or comment.
Every photo you upload is stored in this section. If you have the opportunity to organize your photos into albums (perhaps some of the photos), it could help to separate photos by types.
Videos. The more media the merrier, and video is on the rise when it comes to social media marketing. In fact, Cisco predicts that by 2019, 80% of all global internet traffic will consist of video. Already 4x as many customers prefer to watch a video about a product than read about it, according to a survey conducted by Animoto. Keep in mind who your target audience is and what they’d like to see. As with all content, videos that are helpful before they’re salesy is a sure shot.
Thanks to Anna Halstead of Halstead Media Group for this insightful article. For more ideas on improving your landscaping company’s image on Facebook, get five free easy tips delivered to your inbox by going here: https://www.halsteadmedia.com/5-tips-facebook-series.
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