To serve as the voice of the pest control industry, protecting the livelihood of pest management professionals while fostering education, promoting professionalism, raising ethical standards, enhancing environmental stewardship, improving public health and quality of life.
Mark L. Hendrickson, Wingra Group
The microblogging network Twitter grew 1,448% year-over-year, from 1.2 million visitors in May 2008 to 18.2 million in May of 2009.
Facebook is growing by more than 500,000 users per day, and has more than 250 million members worldwide.
Business networking site Linkedin has surpassed Facebook in its rate of growth, and now boasts more than 16 million visitors per month.
If you search for “pest control” on YouTube, you’ll have a choice of nearly 10,000 videos ranging from ant elimination, to principles of vertebrate pest control, and jobs in the pest control industry.
With these numbers, it is no wonder that savvy business owners are tapping social media as another way to get the word out about their businesses. That these services are free just adds to their charm. But — and here’s the clincher — is social media right for your pest control business? Could social media be a free substitute for traditional advertising? How much time should you devote to creating and updating all those profiles or creating a YouTube video?
Most observers feel that traditional advertising and marketing is still vital. The best approach is to integrate social media into your more traditional marketing mix. Here are a few words about each.
Blogs
Blogging is a good way to build customer loyalty. Take a look at Tumblr (www.tumblr.com), a free, easy, and customizable site that currently has 1.5 million users. You can use a blog to describe new services, and it’s where your customers can describe their user experiences with your company. With it, you can invite an unlimited number of people to contribute to your blog and submit posts for your approval. But don’t just create a blog and let it alone. Blogs that are refreshed regularly get a boost in search engine rankings.
Twitter
Twitter is a service that gives users 140 characters to share information with their followers, who are other Twitter users who track them. These messages are called tweets, and 140 characters force you to be focused and direct. You might be able to use Twitter to announce a new pest control service with a link back to details on your company web site. You can use Tweets to drive traffic to articles, web sites, videos, and much more. To get started, visit the Twitter web site and sign up for free. Start slow and follow a few people until you become familiar with the flow of the service, then expand at a pace that feels right for you. As you start to use it more, you may find it easier to use a desktop application such as Tweet Deck or any of the other Twitter apps and widgets.
YouTube
Another way to capitalize on free social media is to post videos on YouTube. Let’s say you’ve developed a novel way to get a raccoon out of a chimney. Video tape the procedure with accompanying narration explaining what you are doing. Make certain that the video includes your company name, logo, phone and web address. Producing such a video doesn’t have to cost a lot. Flip video cameras cost $150 – 400 and they make it easy to capture and share low-resolution video via email and the web. Many models also feature one-touch uploading to YouTube and AOL Video.
LinkedIn
This site is used for professional networking. With LinkedIn you create an online profile that represents your professional experiences, education/certifications, and recommendations. If you’ve achieved Master Technician status through WPCA, or QualityPro designation from NPMA, that’s the type of detail to include in your LinkedIn profile. Recommendations are particularly important on LinkedIn. Obtaining a favorable recommendation about your services from a former customer may help influence a potential residential or commercial account.
When you sign up for these accounts, it is a good idea to have a consistent identity and user name. For example, signing up as maximumpestcontrol on one network, and using maxpest35 on another may confuse potential customers. To ease the task of user name registration, I suggest visiting www.knowem.com. A search here will tell you whether your brand/username is available on 120 different social media sites.
Should you be using social media? Absolutely, because your competitors are and your customers have been for a long time.
Mark L. Hendrickson is President of The Wingra Group, a Madison-based marketing and business development company. He can be reached at mark@wingragroup.com.
Tim Dollmeyer, ActionCoach, Business Coach
Have you seen your kids stop watching TV and playing video games, only to find out that they are wiling away their time on Facebook or MySpace? Not to mention Twitter? Do you find yourself amazed that they could spend so much time having “conversations” with their friends and updating everyone on their status? How could they waste their time like that, you wonder?
All I have to say about that is: Get with it!
Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and even Twitter have been taken over by entrepreneurs in the know. These sites are part of marketing strategy known as social networking. Like old-fashioned networking, it’s all about connecting with people who could be potential prospects, strategic alliances, referral sources, or brainstorming partners.
What I find amazing is, how many business owners are not taking advantage of this free business-building tool. You might say that this is just kid stuff. That’s just hiding behind an excuse because you’re afraid to learn a new technology. My 71-year-old mother is on Facebook and connected with her grandchildren. If she can do it, you can, too.
Why go with social networking? For one, it’s free or inexpensive (depending on the social media that you choose to use). Besides that, you gain global exposure to thousands of potential contacts. You also get to glimpse the interests of your prospects to learn what’s important to them.
While some social media, such as Facebook, do not want personal pages to be used for business, many provide a business outlet. Facebook lets you create public pages, once meant for kids to show which celebrities that they are fans of, for the specific purpose of showcasing your business. Of course, one of the main objectives in social networking is to compel your audience to visit your website by clicking on your link. In addition, you can provide valuable information to supply value to your contacts up front.
All social media give you the opportunity to speak to your contacts directly through updates, and let you pick people’s brains with discussions. In many cases you can market events, and invite specific individuals or the general public to attend. Some social media even provide a marketplace for you to sell your wares.
Another nice feature is that you can purchase advertising and select very narrowly targeted audiences to see it. Many provide this service with a pay-per-click option, which is a great way to measure the effectiveness of an ad while saving money.
It’s also fun to find out how many people you really know. I’ve been able to reconnect with classmates that, until now, I had lost any hope of finding.
So get with the times! Get connected with social media, and start networking to build your business like never before!
Tim Dollmeyer is a certified ActionCOACH business coach. He can be reached at timdollmeyer@actioncoach.com.