April 15, 2025 • 29 mins
Social media can transform lead generation for home service businesses when approached with strategy and consistency. This episode explores how to build a strong presence, leverage tools for efficiency, and create content that converts followers into customers. Learn the importance of telling stories, incorporating team and owner visuals, and balancing organic reach with paid ads. Insights include using editorial calendars, batching content, and focusing on audience-specific messaging to maximize engagement and drive growth. Join host Adam Sylvester and Kasy Allen of Wheatley Creek Services.
New to Jobber? Masters of Home Service listeners can claim an exclusive discount for Jobber at https://bit.ly/4d0KAEh
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
What's important about how oftento post is really consistency,
so start with consistency. If you canonly manage one post a week, that's fine,
just make sure you show upfor that one post a week.
If you can do three tofour, that's a good start.
Welcome to jobbers,masters of Home Service,
a podcast for home service pros byhome service pros. We are in Las Vegas,
(00:20):
and today we're talking about turningyour social media content into a lead
generating machine. I'myour host, Adam Sylvester.
Today's guest is Cassie Allen.
She's the COO of WheatleyCreek Services in Colorado,
and she's a digital marketing expert.Cassie, welcome to the studio.
Thanks for having me,Adam. Nice to meet you.
Yeah, it's a pleasure. So tell ouraudience who you are, what you do exactly,
(00:43):
just your background.
Absolutely. So about a year ago,
I quit my corporate jobwhere before I quit my job,
I worked in digitalmarketing for 20 years.
Everything from social mediato SEO to content marketing,
and I left to help myhusband grow his company.
It got to a point that he was workingwell over 80 hour weeks and he needed
help.
I took a huge leap and quit my corporatejob and started with growing Wheatley
(01:08):
Creek Services with that,
bringing a lot of systems and ofcourse digital marketing to the door.
Yeah, well, welcome to the darkside. We're glad you joined.
I'm sure your husband's glad too, so well,
let's get into it becausea lot of our listeners,
they know social media is a gold mine.
They just don't reallyknow how to mine the gold.
And so what are some beginningthings that you would suggest for,
(01:28):
you said a system, a process,what are some things that you do?
I think it's important to knowto learn where your audience is,
and so I come from a very small townand the majority of our community
communicates on Facebook,
and that's where we primarilyfind the majority of our leads.
But I know in cities a lot of companiesor a lot of people use Nextdoor and
(01:48):
it is kind of similar to Facebook, butif I was to talk to a real estate agent,
they would say they gettheir leads on Instagram.
And.
Then a younger population may saythey get their leads on TikTok.
So it's really kind of playing indifferent areas and finding where you're
getting the majority of your leads.
Interesting. Okay, sothese are paid ads that.
You're talking about mostly.
Or not necessarily.
So you may start with paid ads and I comefrom History and SEO where you want to
(02:12):
put SEO in place so that you're notpaying as much for ads. Same theory,
you don't want to keep paying for allthe ads if you can figure out how to do
this organically.
So we try to find ways to get leadsorganically so we're not always paying for
ads,
but let's say that there's snow seasonis coming up in Colorado and we need to
put out ads to startfeaturing our snow services.
(02:33):
So I'd pay for ads at that point,
but I'd also be in different groupson Facebook and trying to get leads
organically from people thatare asking for that service.
Okay, and let's talk about thatfor a second. Facebook groups,
some of our listeners,me included, are like,
that takes a lot of timebecause you're always,
Facebook kind of sucks you in alwayswatching for the next person who randomly
(02:55):
posts asking for snowplowing.
So.
How do you balance that with, do youhave someone else it or do how do that?
I think there's a couple of thingsyou can do. So we have a va,
which is a virtual assistant,
And she can go in and that's part ofher job where she can go in and she can
listen to the noise, allthe different groups,
but that is kind of an old school wayof doing it and it takes a lot of time.
(03:17):
There's tools now. I usethe one called de.ai,
I believe it's DEV i.ai.
It's a great tool and it actuallylistens to those different groups.
So I can go in and say, okay,
here's the Facebook groups that I'm partof and here's my keywords that I want
you to listen to.
And then it pulls those comments intothe system and then I can reply directly
(03:37):
and put my company name,Wheatley Creek Services,
tag it back to my page and theycan go learn more about me.
What's even more magical about thatis when you're networking within your
community and you meet more of yourcommunity members and your friends are on
there and your families on there,they're also tagging you as well.
So we use this tool to help us hearall the noise that's happening,
and then we also havefriends that help us out too.
(03:59):
Cassie, you just blew the mindsof every listener of this podcast.
That is a tremendous tool.I didn't know it existed,
and now my whole life has changed.
Because.
I love that it's amazing.
And it doesn't just connect to Facebook,Twitter, nextdoor, all of YouTube,
all of 'em.
Nextdoor is huge for me. Nothing'sworth than Nextdoor might be.
So if I can avoid going to nextdooras much as I can but still get leads,
(04:21):
so that's a good segue. Sowe don't want just followers.
Followers won't make usany money. We want leads.
Yes and no, right? Go ahead.Because a follower is your fan,
and so I would do a contest or a giveawayand that my fans are the ones that are
following that, that are going and tryingto get that whatever I'm giving away.
(04:41):
Being top of mind is importantbecause even though they're your fans,
they used you before and thenthey liked you being top of mind.
When something does happen,
they're going to reach out to youif that's the services they need.
So my fans and the people are followingme are just as important to reach out to
and to engage with as those people thatare in the groups that may not know
about me yet. So we'rereaching out to both.
(05:02):
What kind of content captivatesboth of those people,
both fans and people that arereally creating leap into leads?
What's a good content for them?
That's a great question.
I've learned a lot over the last yearof doing this specifically for our
industry, which is home serviceand residential cleaning.
When I built our editorial calendarat the beginning of last, well,
(05:24):
it was June of last year when I started,when I built our editorial calendar,
at that point I would've thought thateducational and value-driven type of
content would've performed the best,
and I started that all of 2023.It was basically that content.
We got engagement, it worked,
but it didn't necessarily work as wellas this year I went to a networking
(05:46):
event and it was like a chamber event.A lot of different businesses there,
and I had two people come up to meand say, your marketing is amazing.
You're everywhere on socialmedia. You're doing a stellar job,
but why aren't in any of this? Icome from a very small community,
so I'll put that out there at first.That being from a small community,
I know a lot of the business owners,I know a lot of the community.
(06:07):
They all know you.
They know me, so themasking to see me in it,
it's very genuine and it's very partof your heart. But I took it as a goal.
At the beginning of 2024,
we started putting more ofus in our social media post.
We started talking about ourstory, how we got started,
our roots in the community, why arewe doing this in the first place?
(06:27):
And what I realized is that ourstory resonates with our customers
and that part of themconnecting with us at that level
kept us top of mind and it got themto reach out to us for services,
and now we're learningthat it's not just us.
So it's not just becauseI'm in a small community.
(06:48):
If you look at big majorbrands, they're doing this,
it was on Southwest Airline and they hadthe cocktail napkin that they put under
the drink that they bring you,
and on it is a picture of atriangle and it's connecting.
I believe it was Dallas, Austin andHouston, which is the story of Southwest.
How it started was on a napkin in the bar,
that story they put on a napkin andnow they're marketing it to me today,
(07:10):
and we all know how big Southwest is now,
but that story is resonating with peopleand it's driving more growth for them.
It's.
An important thing at whenhotel, when you turn on the tv,
the first channel that comeson is the when channel and it
tells the story about how the hotel works,
but they don't talkabout the entire hotel.
They break it up into different areas.
(07:32):
So one of the examples is they showedthe bakery and the bakery makes millions
of loafs of bread every year, butthat bread is never a day old.
They make it so it's eatenthat day. So it's always fresh.
That story alone makes youwant to go taste that bread.
And so stories resonate with people.
So I really feel like you have to putstory behind the things that you're
(07:53):
putting out there, andthat's how you convert leads.
About 10 years ago, there was a big,we'll call it a fad. There was a fad of
faceless companies were the best becauseas soon as you become the Dave Ramsey
of finance and your face is everywhere,and so there was this big push about 10,
15 years ago wherebeing in the background,
(08:14):
the more absent the owner was, thebetter the business was and all that.
It's changing now. It's changing,
especially from marketing standpointbecause as soon as the company that has a
face that people say, Hey, that's theguy, that's the guy I deal with, if X, Y,
and Z happens, that's the guy.
That's the guy that creates a wholedifferent dynamic with the community,
which is what you're tapping into.
Absolutely. We went to a client's housethat we were doing an onsite assessment,
(08:38):
so actually they weren't our clientseeing if they want to hire us to clean
their house and to do some gutter work.
So we went and met and the woman of thehouse met us at the door and she goes,
oh, I know you are the owners. Iwent on your website and I saw your.
Face.
That is creating a connection.She went to our website.
I also updated our websitewith all of our pictures,
and then you go to our about us pageand then you can learn about us.
(08:59):
So she went to our about Us page andeven learned that we were the owners.
So she's like The owners came to my door.I know that this is a real business.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the about page isthe second most visited pages on most
websites.
Yeah.
I'm a believer now. Four years agowhen I started my gutter company,
I did not want to be anywhere. I didn'twant people to know what existed.
I wanted to be all about the technicians,technicians, technicians, technicians.
(09:21):
And I've changed my mind over the last12 months for a lot of reasons you're
saying is because when people goto our about page now, I'm there.
And.
I belong there because my company.And so instead of trying to hide,
I decided to step out inthe light and embrace it.
And I think it makes a big difference.
It does. And when you put your whythere or your story there as well,
(09:43):
it helps just build it up.You're not just hiring a plumber,
you're not just hiring a landscaper.You're hiring somebody that cares.
They're part of the community. Theylive here, they have neighbors.
When you learn about that,
you care more about the peoplethat you're bringing in.
And so you're putting a value in frontof them that is more important than a
price. So when I hit you with a price,you're not just thinking of that,
(10:06):
you're like, but you get all of theseamazing things that go along with it.
So the owner should become morefront and center of their company.
Absolutely.
What's other content thatreally resonates with.
I think if you think in terms ofservices and putting your face in there,
I think so what I used to do isgo to Canva and create stock,
and that's where everybody kind ofgets their start. As you go to Canva,
(10:28):
and Canva has so many great tools,
the issue is you start to see thateverybody starts to look the same.
Especially.
If you live in a very competitive area.
So true.
Everybody's using the same thing.So take out the part that stock,
use the things that are branded, yourcolors, your fonts, use those things,
but put your employees images there. Soif you're doing it behind the scenes,
(10:49):
so the girls werecleaning a home recently,
and I went there and Iwas taking a picture.
I have a picture of one girl on thecountertop cleaning the top of the
refrigerator and one on the groundcleaning what's inside the refrigerator.
Great shot.
We.
Took that and then we put a blue overlayover it, kind of similar to this.
So it's branded, and then wehave the words at the bottom,
and then you have a call to action thatseems to resonate better than that stock
(11:12):
Canva. So we've been playing with thatbefore. And afters work really well too.
We take a lot of before and aftersand get a lot of leads showing those,
especially remodels ifyou can show a disaster.
And.
Then a beautiful tiled andthen the decorations are there,
those sell really well.
Yeah, I feel like a couple years ago,all the rage, especially on Instagram,
(11:34):
was short form videos, quickcuts, videos and stuff,
but you don't really do that on Nextdoor.
And so what's a good example of apost on Nextdoor before and afters?
Anything else?
Before and afters and the serviceones, you could post the service ones,
and I just think that you have to havea story to along with it so that you're
(11:54):
not always trying to push a sell.
Right?
You're not always asking for the sell,asking for the sell, asking for the sell,
and that's all you show up for. BeforeI got here literally a few days ago,
I'm part of this local Facebook group,
and the admin posted a postin Bright Pink that if you are
here to spam, you're going to get kickedout. And you're like, oh my goodness.
So you start scrolling and you cansee the last 20 posts are nothing but
(12:18):
companies. Some of 'em werelocal, some of 'em weren't.
There was five posts from one HVACcompany that had posted and they were just
asking for the sale. And you'relike, you have to step back.
Ease up a little bit. You.
Can't do that. So I think it's again,
learning your audience and seeing whatis it that people are resonating with in
Nextdoor,
and then how can you take that and thenmake it your own and bring it to the
(12:41):
table.
So are you opposed now tohow to kind of videos that
informational videos or.
You.
Still way less of it?
No, but I think that you have toapproach it by you being in it.
So I think what we've seen in thepast, and I am to blame for this too,
we set a goal for 2024 to doublethe number of videos that we put
(13:01):
out. I think we did 10 lastyear. So this year we wanted 20,
which we met that goal inJune. Yeah, no problem.
But we did it with the help of ai andI love ai. I'm a huge supporter of it,
and we used AI to helpcreate a lot of our videos.
The issue with that isit's using stock photos.
So it's stock photos and it'sa voiceover and it's a robot,
(13:22):
and it's not playing off of that story.
It's not playing off of the comfortpulling at your heartstrings.
So I think what we need to do is switchthat and make sure that we're the ones
that are in that video and that it's usthat's either talking or in the video.
I was talking with my VA before wecame. We're trying to come out November,
we'll meet and we'll talk. We'll plan outJanuary or we'll plan out all of 2025.
(13:44):
So we're trying to find new ideas of whatother people are doing and how we can
take advantage of 'em or whatdid we try and it didn't work,
but maybe we could try differently.
And I really think that if we cantake these videos and ask a tech and
so get questions,
encourage questions from social media andget people to DM us and then we answer
(14:05):
those questions.
And it could be as easy as my husbandwho's the CEO of the company sitting on a
stool and he's talkingthrough the answer to that.
Let's talk about winterization for,I'm from Colorado, winter's coming,
and it's a great time to start talkingabout winter winterization and teaching
people how to winterize their home.
Totally.
I feel like that'll hit home better thanthese AI videos that are being created.
(14:27):
Totally. Cassie, this is great.
I'm going to pause for a minute so wecan talk about jobber and why we love
Jobber so much. Tell our listeners,
how does Jobber help youmarket your business better,
and have you used the marketingtools and that kind of.
Stuff? Absolutely.
So I love the new marketing suite andI'm super excited about what's rolling
out. More recently, the email marketing,
I'm able to use that by jobber,
(14:48):
helps me find clients that Ihaven't talked to in a while.
So if I haven't heard froma client in six months,
I can auto set up the email campaign sothat it reaches out to them and reminds
them that I'm here.
That's great for companies that dosubscription services of course,
but also for, let's say that somebody,we cleaned their house six months ago,
we haven't heard from 'em.
We can reach out and see if we cangather more revenue through that email
(15:12):
marketing campaign.
Yeah, I totally agree.
I love the reporting with the campaignsnow you can see how much was booked
within a certain amount oftime after the email was sent,
so you can look and see,well, I've sent this email,
got nine grand within three.
Days. Absolutely. The numbers and theanalytic data is amazing. We love it.
And that number is so easy to read. Evenmy husband can log in and he's like,
(15:33):
oh my gosh, this is amazing.So it's definitely worth it.
As I always say, if you're not emailingyour clients on a regular basis,
you're losing money. Absolutely. Yeah.
You need to be emailing yourclients regularly too with jobber,
so new users can go get an exclusivediscount at jobber.com/podcast deal.
Go now, get jobber and startemailing your clients today.
(15:55):
How often do you post? You post? Yousaid 20 videos. 20 videos by June,
so a couple times a week once.
What's important about how oftento post is really consistency.
So start with consistency. If you canonly manage one post a week, that's fine.
Just make sure you show upfor that one post a week.
If you can do three tofour, that's a good start.
(16:16):
We started with three to four when westarted editorial calendar last year,
and we consistently postour three to four each week.
Then we decided to throw in this videogoal, which threw in another post.
So now we're posting five to six timesa week. It's filling the week, right?
It sounds overwhelming, but I havea great tip on how to manage it.
Let's hear it.
All right, let's.
Hear it.
So start with an editorial calendar.The editorial calendar can be on paper.
(16:40):
I love spreadsheets, so Iprobably go to a spreadsheet,
but it can be on paper and break up theyear into 12 months when you're looking
at, and then you could break it up intoquarters, January, February, March,
April, may, June, July, August, September.
Now take your services you provide andput it on that calendar on when they're
high in demand and low in demand,
and look at it in a way thatwhen it's high-end demand,
(17:00):
you probably don't need to haveads going during that time, right?
You might want your ads going duringyour lower times or ramping up,
and then schedule differentthings throughout.
What do you want to talk about throughoutthe year and try to do a monthly theme
around each of those month that you'regoing to talk about. So for example,
go back to Winterization in themonth of October or November.
(17:20):
We can talk the entire month aboutwinterization. We can have blog posts,
we can have social media posts.
We could have podcasts abouthow to winterize a home,
and we can teach our differentaudiences about how to winterize their
home. Once I have my editorial calendarbuilt, we put it into monday.com.
We schedule out the entire year, andwe'll have that done by December.
(17:41):
So before, we'll actuallyhave it done by November.
So by the second week of December,
we're going to be writing January'scontent and we'll write the entire month.
That sounds overwhelming, but now let'stake those ideas that we're taking.
So if we say we're goingto do three posts per week,
then that means we needto create 12 posts.
So.
Take that over to Canva, createyour 12 posts, have that approved.
(18:03):
I have a va and our VA does it,and then I would approve it.
And then once those are approved,
she'll take those and then she'll goover to Buffer. Hootsuite is another one,
but we use Buffer and thenschedule the entire month.
So an entire month is done. That processsounds long, but really it's a day.
So.
When entire month'scontent is done in a day,
and you only have to dothat once every 30 days.
And the Hootsuite or Buffer sends it to
(18:27):
Nextdoor is included in that or no?
I don't know if Nextdoor is includedin that. That's a great question.
We have connected to Facebook, we haveit connected to Instagram, Facebook,
Instagram, YouTube. You can do all ofyour videos too, right? And Google.
You can do Google because you can useyour Google My Business profile as a
social media. Really? Yes, andyou totally should. That's.
New. Okay.
Yes, you can update it every time youupdate all of your other social media,
(18:50):
and you can use analytics from Buffer tosee what days to post and what hours to
post.
What other hacks do you have forus, Cassie? What are some other,
so if someone's listening to thisand they're just super fired.
Up.
And they want to go out in 2025 andreally blitz it with social media,
what's going to trip them up?
A mistake they're going to makethat they can try to avoid?
(19:12):
I guess not understanding theiraudience or not knowing their audience.
Another trick, I guess another tip I canthink of is to do a persona exercise.
Some people in the industrylike to call 'em avatars.
But.
Really what it is is defining youraudience by three to four characters.
For us, we live in a ski community,so we have a lot of second homeowners.
So our main audience, ourpersonas is the locals.
(19:36):
Our second is a second homeowner,
but it's a second homeowner thatdoesn't rent their house out.
They come and visit it.
Our third one is a second homeowner thatrents their house out. We call 'em st,
which is short-term rentals. So theAirbnb stage, and our fourth is DIY.
We love our DIY because they work on theirhouse and they've been working on it,
and then they get overwhelmed andrealize they shouldn't have worked on it,
(19:56):
and then they call us. Sothose are our four audiences,
and then we give each of thema name. Off the top of my head,
I can't think of their name. Ido know DIY is like handy Hank,
but you come up with a name that you'resupposed to be able to remember like
that, and then you create a profilefor that person, handy Hank.
You're going to have a small little about,
and you read through itand you learn about Hank,
and he may have an age and he mayhave a gender assigned to him,
(20:18):
and then you're going to have whathis problems are, what are his issues?
He bit off more than he can chew,and he needs somebody to come in.
And the next part is how do yourservices align to that person?
How are you going to help them?Now that I have these personas,
I can now start creating contentbased on those people's needs.
I can create content tobring in my DIY audience.
(20:39):
I can create content that helps solvethe problems that my STR people have.
I can help solve the problems with mysecond homeowners and I can help the
problems of the locals, and I can dothis with content and my social media.
That sounds overwhelming.So take a step back.
There are marketing agenciesthat are hired to do this,
and they'll spend a week pulling togetherthese amazing persona campaigns for
you. And you pay a lot of money for it.
(21:00):
I know because I used to workfor an agency and we did this,
but you can literally go to Google,do a Google search for personas,
and you can find free templates. In fact,
HubSpot has a free tool that walksyou through to create your personas.
So you can do this in an hour andyou can create your four templates.
By the end of the day, you'll have themby lunchtime, you'll have them done,
(21:23):
and you'll know exactly who youraudience is. And more importantly,
if anybody's helping you, you're ava, they know who your audience is.
I love that. Okay, so all these ideas,
I want to drill down to a pointthat I don't have clarity on.
So what is considered a lead when theymessage you that they're interested,
that they submit a form that you put ina link to the form that you put in the
(21:45):
post? What exactly do you consider a lead?
I feel like a lead could be a mix of it,
and I feel like it can be word of mouth.
If I am at a local networkingevent and I hear somebody's like,
you are blowing it up, you are everywhere.
And then if my question is whereare you seeing us? And they're like,
your vehicles just social media,your videos, you guys are everywhere.
(22:06):
That to me, I will go back to my VA andwe'll have our one-on-one, and I'm like,
people are talking aboutus. We're getting ramped up.
I'm as excited about those as an actualphone call of somebody calling and I
say, how did you hear aboutme? And they say, social media.
So both of them are important tome, word of mouth is important,
and getting your brand outthere and building your brand is just as important as
(22:28):
that phone call becausewhen you're branding,
that person may not be calling you,but if their uncle needs somebody,
you are going to be the firstperson that they mentioned to that.
So follow up question, what's thecall to action usually? Is it call?
Is it email? Is it message? Is it it?
Keep it as flexible as you can.
If you are going to the groups and you'reposting your name because somebody's
(22:48):
asking for a plumber, just link itback to your profile page, right?
Because there is youremail, your phone number,
and messenger and they canreach out, whatever feels best.
It's just like when you'reasking for a review,
you don't just send 'em to one place.
You would send 'em to whereverthey feel comfortable.
Same thing with how to contact you.If you want to say call now, you can.
(23:09):
I would play with it, especially inads. Ads help let you play with it.
Is messenger better or is phone callsbetter and everybody has their preferred
style of how they like to communicate?
I've worked with a car dealer beforeand his favorite for his clients was
Messenger. He would get dailymessages from people. And for us,
I don't hardly ever getmessages. We get phone calls,
(23:31):
so I usually would lean more towardsphone calls if I was to narrow it down to
one lead or one means ofcommunication for our ads.
Cassie,
would you say that it'smore of a long-term strategy that you're trying to build
more of a branding effort online?
Or would you say that you're reallytrying to drive specific leads? Click now.
Get it now. Because alot of our listeners,
(23:52):
they might have a much longer salescycle than others. And so I'm curious,
what's your approach to that?
Good question. I thinkyou could go both ways.
I feel like this is very much long-term,
and it's like just like SEO is you doit today and you may not see results for
three months, but then it goes foreverUntil you shut your website down.
I feel like this, it keeps going.It's very much about branding,
(24:15):
but you can also use it fornow in short term leads.
And I'll give you anexample. Last October,
we went to a convention and we learnedabout holiday lighting and how home
service businesses, the trades in general,
how they pick up holiday lighting in,what is it, October, November, December,
because it gets slow.
And so when we heard it and it wentin there one ear and out the other,
(24:37):
because I don't want topick up another service.
I don't want to pick up a whole notherthing after market already busy. Yeah,
this is too much. But October hit andit started to get slow and you're like,
well, we could try holiday lighting.So we tried it. This was last October,
October, November, December.
We pushed it really hard in our socialmedia and we did some ads and we did some
blog posts. We put it onour homepage of our website.
(25:00):
It ended up being the number five revenuedriver for us for the entire year.
Wow.
So it worked. So I think it's both.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's close out,
but I want you to speakto the listeners here.
Absolutely.
Because you're a heavy hitterwhen it comes to social media
and a lot of people justaren't starting there.
(25:20):
And so to avoid them getting overwhelmed.
And.
I've got to be a leader, I've gotto be the sales, I got to teach,
I got to hire all thesedifferent hats that we wear,
just this is just another hat I haveto wear. What would you say to them?
How can you wear this hat? Well, withoutgetting burned out and overwhelmed.
Totally understand that because my husbandwas that person before I stepped in a
(25:41):
year ago.
And in working 80 hour weeks and thenputting social media on top of that,
it's very hard. I mean, it'shard to answer the phone,
let alone let's worry about social media.
And what I would do is just start small.
Let's start with an editorial calendarthat you're going to post once a week and
try that over the next quarter,over the next three months.
See if you can post once aweek and use those tools.
(26:02):
You can do the editorial calendaror you can just set it up in Canva.
All you're doing is screening for postfor one month ahead of time one day,
and do it ahead of time.
Go ahead and schedule it and see how itgoes and see how overwhelming that was.
I really feel like ifyou dedicate one day,
that that's a heck of a lot easierthan worrying about it all month long.
(26:22):
That's the key, right? Doing itconstantly is not the solution. Doing it,
batching it all at one time isthe way to really go about it.
I like what you said earlierwhen you said your goal was 10,
then you did 20 by halfway throughthe year, and so you started small,
you put the goal pretty low, andthen you gained some momentum,
you got some practice, some traction withit, and then started going from there.
(26:43):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.Bite it off small first.
Cassie, this is great. Iappreciate all your insights.
I'm going to try to boil itdown to the actual items here.
Number one is use appsto leverage your Time.
Buffer is a great app for scheduling allyour posts out to go out at all these
different sites. And so you don't haveto be in all these sites all at once.
And then also david.ai,
which helps you monitor groupsand posts in your social media,
(27:06):
so you don't have to be online24 7. Number two is batch.
All of your creation.
Death will come upon you ifyou just do day after day post.
That's just how you get burned out. Andso batch all your content into one day,
maybe two days in the beginning,
and then schedule out for the wholemonth thereafter and schedule it.
And that's how you're going to reallybe able to do it. And then number three,
(27:28):
you have to be in the content yourself,your team, yourself, the owner.
You need to be in it. No morestock images, no more stock videos,
no more AI videos. Be in it. Tell a story,
grab your listener's attention andbring them into a story instead of just
blasting. We sell this, we sellwindow cleaning, we sell that.
Make it more than that.
And I'll add in that I recentlyread Donald Miller's book,
(27:51):
how to Grow Your Small Business,amazing book, highly recommended.
And there's one story in there wherehe talks about making the customer the
hero of the story. They have a problem,and you are the guide to help solve it.
Your services are what youare offering as the solution.
So when you're creating content,
think about how you are helping tosolve that problem and make the client,
(28:14):
the customer, the hero of the story.
Yeah, well said. Thank.
You, Cassie.
How do people find out more about you?
You can reach me at Wheatley Creek.
That's W-H-E-A-T-L-E-Y-C-R-E-E-K.
And we're on Instagram and Facebook.And if you want to reach me personally,
you can reach me at CassieAllen. That's K-A-S-Y-A-L-L-E-N,
and that's also in Facebook and Instagram.
(28:35):
Well, Kathy, thanks for being here.
Thank you.
Really enjoyed that. You are havinga big impact. You're in a small town,
but you're making a big change,and so keep it up. Well.
I appreciate.
It. Thank you for having me here. Yeah,absolutely. And thank you for listening.
I hope you heard something today willmake your social media content more
engaging and more effective ingenerating more leads. I'm your host,
Adam Sylvester. You can findme@adamsylvester.com. Remember,
(28:57):
your team and your clients deserveyour very best. So go give it to 'em.
What's important about how oftento post is really consistency,
so start with consistency. If you canonly manage one post a week, that's fine,
just make sure you show upfor that one post a week.
If you can do three tofour, that's a good start.
Welcome to jobbers,masters of Home Service,
a podcast for home service pros byhome service pros. We are in Las Vegas,
(00:20):
and today we're talking about turningyour social media content into a lead
generating machine. I'myour host, Adam Sylvester.
Today's guest is Cassie Allen.
She's the COO of WheatleyCreek Services in Colorado,
and she's a digital marketing expert.Cassie, welcome to the studio.
Thanks for having me,Adam. Nice to meet you.
Yeah, it's a pleasure. So tell ouraudience who you are, what you do exactly,
(00:43):
just your background.
Absolutely. So about a year ago,
I quit my corporate jobwhere before I quit my job,
I worked in digitalmarketing for 20 years.
Everything from social mediato SEO to content marketing,
and I left to help myhusband grow his company.
It got to a point that he was workingwell over 80 hour weeks and he needed
help.
I took a huge leap and quit my corporatejob and started with growing Wheatley
(01:08):
Creek Services with that,
bringing a lot of systems and ofcourse digital marketing to the door.
Yeah, well, welcome to the darkside. We're glad you joined.
I'm sure your husband's glad too, so well,
let's get into it becausea lot of our listeners,
they know social media is a gold mine.
They just don't reallyknow how to mine the gold.
And so what are some beginningthings that you would suggest for,
(01:28):
you said a system, a process,what are some things that you do?
I think it's important to knowto learn where your audience is,
and so I come from a very small townand the majority of our community
communicates on Facebook,
and that's where we primarilyfind the majority of our leads.
But I know in cities a lot of companiesor a lot of people use Nextdoor and
(01:48):
it is kind of similar to Facebook, butif I was to talk to a real estate agent,
they would say they gettheir leads on Instagram.
And.
Then a younger population may saythey get their leads on TikTok.
So it's really kind of playing indifferent areas and finding where you're
getting the majority of your leads.
Interesting. Okay, sothese are paid ads that.
You're talking about mostly.
Or not necessarily.
So you may start with paid ads and I comefrom History and SEO where you want to
(02:12):
put SEO in place so that you're notpaying as much for ads. Same theory,
you don't want to keep paying for allthe ads if you can figure out how to do
this organically.
So we try to find ways to get leadsorganically so we're not always paying for
ads,
but let's say that there's snow seasonis coming up in Colorado and we need to
put out ads to startfeaturing our snow services.
(02:33):
So I'd pay for ads at that point,
but I'd also be in different groupson Facebook and trying to get leads
organically from people thatare asking for that service.
Okay, and let's talk about thatfor a second. Facebook groups,
some of our listeners,me included, are like,
that takes a lot of timebecause you're always,
Facebook kind of sucks you in alwayswatching for the next person who randomly
(02:55):
posts asking for snowplowing.
So.
How do you balance that with, do youhave someone else it or do how do that?
I think there's a couple of thingsyou can do. So we have a va,
which is a virtual assistant,
And she can go in and that's part ofher job where she can go in and she can
listen to the noise, allthe different groups,
but that is kind of an old school wayof doing it and it takes a lot of time.
(03:17):
There's tools now. I usethe one called de.ai,
I believe it's DEV i.ai.
It's a great tool and it actuallylistens to those different groups.
So I can go in and say, okay,
here's the Facebook groups that I'm partof and here's my keywords that I want
you to listen to.
And then it pulls those comments intothe system and then I can reply directly
(03:37):
and put my company name,Wheatley Creek Services,
tag it back to my page and theycan go learn more about me.
What's even more magical about thatis when you're networking within your
community and you meet more of yourcommunity members and your friends are on
there and your families on there,they're also tagging you as well.
So we use this tool to help us hearall the noise that's happening,
and then we also havefriends that help us out too.
(03:59):
Cassie, you just blew the mindsof every listener of this podcast.
That is a tremendous tool.I didn't know it existed,
and now my whole life has changed.
Because.
I love that it's amazing.
And it doesn't just connect to Facebook,Twitter, nextdoor, all of YouTube,
all of 'em.
Nextdoor is huge for me. Nothing'sworth than Nextdoor might be.
So if I can avoid going to nextdooras much as I can but still get leads,
(04:21):
so that's a good segue. Sowe don't want just followers.
Followers won't make usany money. We want leads.
Yes and no, right? Go ahead.Because a follower is your fan,
and so I would do a contest or a giveawayand that my fans are the ones that are
following that, that are going and tryingto get that whatever I'm giving away.
(04:41):
Being top of mind is importantbecause even though they're your fans,
they used you before and thenthey liked you being top of mind.
When something does happen,
they're going to reach out to youif that's the services they need.
So my fans and the people are followingme are just as important to reach out to
and to engage with as those people thatare in the groups that may not know
about me yet. So we'rereaching out to both.
(05:02):
What kind of content captivatesboth of those people,
both fans and people that arereally creating leap into leads?
What's a good content for them?
That's a great question.
I've learned a lot over the last yearof doing this specifically for our
industry, which is home serviceand residential cleaning.
When I built our editorial calendarat the beginning of last, well,
(05:24):
it was June of last year when I started,when I built our editorial calendar,
at that point I would've thought thateducational and value-driven type of
content would've performed the best,
and I started that all of 2023.It was basically that content.
We got engagement, it worked,
but it didn't necessarily work as wellas this year I went to a networking
(05:46):
event and it was like a chamber event.A lot of different businesses there,
and I had two people come up to meand say, your marketing is amazing.
You're everywhere on socialmedia. You're doing a stellar job,
but why aren't in any of this? Icome from a very small community,
so I'll put that out there at first.That being from a small community,
I know a lot of the business owners,I know a lot of the community.
(06:07):
They all know you.
They know me, so themasking to see me in it,
it's very genuine and it's very partof your heart. But I took it as a goal.
At the beginning of 2024,
we started putting more ofus in our social media post.
We started talking about ourstory, how we got started,
our roots in the community, why arewe doing this in the first place?
(06:27):
And what I realized is that ourstory resonates with our customers
and that part of themconnecting with us at that level
kept us top of mind and it got themto reach out to us for services,
and now we're learningthat it's not just us.
So it's not just becauseI'm in a small community.
(06:48):
If you look at big majorbrands, they're doing this,
it was on Southwest Airline and they hadthe cocktail napkin that they put under
the drink that they bring you,
and on it is a picture of atriangle and it's connecting.
I believe it was Dallas, Austin andHouston, which is the story of Southwest.
How it started was on a napkin in the bar,
that story they put on a napkin andnow they're marketing it to me today,
(07:10):
and we all know how big Southwest is now,
but that story is resonating with peopleand it's driving more growth for them.
It's.
An important thing at whenhotel, when you turn on the tv,
the first channel that comeson is the when channel and it
tells the story about how the hotel works,
but they don't talkabout the entire hotel.
They break it up into different areas.
(07:32):
So one of the examples is they showedthe bakery and the bakery makes millions
of loafs of bread every year, butthat bread is never a day old.
They make it so it's eatenthat day. So it's always fresh.
That story alone makes youwant to go taste that bread.
And so stories resonate with people.
So I really feel like you have to putstory behind the things that you're
(07:53):
putting out there, andthat's how you convert leads.
About 10 years ago, there was a big,we'll call it a fad. There was a fad of
faceless companies were the best becauseas soon as you become the Dave Ramsey
of finance and your face is everywhere,and so there was this big push about 10,
15 years ago wherebeing in the background,
(08:14):
the more absent the owner was, thebetter the business was and all that.
It's changing now. It's changing,
especially from marketing standpointbecause as soon as the company that has a
face that people say, Hey, that's theguy, that's the guy I deal with, if X, Y,
and Z happens, that's the guy.
That's the guy that creates a wholedifferent dynamic with the community,
which is what you're tapping into.
Absolutely. We went to a client's housethat we were doing an onsite assessment,
(08:38):
so actually they weren't our clientseeing if they want to hire us to clean
their house and to do some gutter work.
So we went and met and the woman of thehouse met us at the door and she goes,
oh, I know you are the owners. Iwent on your website and I saw your.
Face.
That is creating a connection.She went to our website.
I also updated our websitewith all of our pictures,
and then you go to our about us pageand then you can learn about us.
(08:59):
So she went to our about Us page andeven learned that we were the owners.
So she's like The owners came to my door.I know that this is a real business.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the about page isthe second most visited pages on most
websites.
Yeah.
I'm a believer now. Four years agowhen I started my gutter company,
I did not want to be anywhere. I didn'twant people to know what existed.
I wanted to be all about the technicians,technicians, technicians, technicians.
(09:21):
And I've changed my mind over the last12 months for a lot of reasons you're
saying is because when people goto our about page now, I'm there.
And.
I belong there because my company.And so instead of trying to hide,
I decided to step out inthe light and embrace it.
And I think it makes a big difference.
It does. And when you put your whythere or your story there as well,
(09:43):
it helps just build it up.You're not just hiring a plumber,
you're not just hiring a landscaper.You're hiring somebody that cares.
They're part of the community. Theylive here, they have neighbors.
When you learn about that,
you care more about the peoplethat you're bringing in.
And so you're putting a value in frontof them that is more important than a
price. So when I hit you with a price,you're not just thinking of that,
(10:06):
you're like, but you get all of theseamazing things that go along with it.
So the owner should become morefront and center of their company.
Absolutely.
What's other content thatreally resonates with.
I think if you think in terms ofservices and putting your face in there,
I think so what I used to do isgo to Canva and create stock,
and that's where everybody kind ofgets their start. As you go to Canva,
(10:28):
and Canva has so many great tools,
the issue is you start to see thateverybody starts to look the same.
Especially.
If you live in a very competitive area.
So true.
Everybody's using the same thing.So take out the part that stock,
use the things that are branded, yourcolors, your fonts, use those things,
but put your employees images there. Soif you're doing it behind the scenes,
(10:49):
so the girls werecleaning a home recently,
and I went there and Iwas taking a picture.
I have a picture of one girl on thecountertop cleaning the top of the
refrigerator and one on the groundcleaning what's inside the refrigerator.
Great shot.
We.
Took that and then we put a blue overlayover it, kind of similar to this.
So it's branded, and then wehave the words at the bottom,
and then you have a call to action thatseems to resonate better than that stock
(11:12):
Canva. So we've been playing with thatbefore. And afters work really well too.
We take a lot of before and aftersand get a lot of leads showing those,
especially remodels ifyou can show a disaster.
And.
Then a beautiful tiled andthen the decorations are there,
those sell really well.
Yeah, I feel like a couple years ago,all the rage, especially on Instagram,
(11:34):
was short form videos, quickcuts, videos and stuff,
but you don't really do that on Nextdoor.
And so what's a good example of apost on Nextdoor before and afters?
Anything else?
Before and afters and the serviceones, you could post the service ones,
and I just think that you have to havea story to along with it so that you're
(11:54):
not always trying to push a sell.
Right?
You're not always asking for the sell,asking for the sell, asking for the sell,
and that's all you show up for. BeforeI got here literally a few days ago,
I'm part of this local Facebook group,
and the admin posted a postin Bright Pink that if you are
here to spam, you're going to get kickedout. And you're like, oh my goodness.
So you start scrolling and you cansee the last 20 posts are nothing but
(12:18):
companies. Some of 'em werelocal, some of 'em weren't.
There was five posts from one HVACcompany that had posted and they were just
asking for the sale. And you'relike, you have to step back.
Ease up a little bit. You.
Can't do that. So I think it's again,
learning your audience and seeing whatis it that people are resonating with in
Nextdoor,
and then how can you take that and thenmake it your own and bring it to the
(12:41):
table.
So are you opposed now tohow to kind of videos that
informational videos or.
You.
Still way less of it?
No, but I think that you have toapproach it by you being in it.
So I think what we've seen in thepast, and I am to blame for this too,
we set a goal for 2024 to doublethe number of videos that we put
(13:01):
out. I think we did 10 lastyear. So this year we wanted 20,
which we met that goal inJune. Yeah, no problem.
But we did it with the help of ai andI love ai. I'm a huge supporter of it,
and we used AI to helpcreate a lot of our videos.
The issue with that isit's using stock photos.
So it's stock photos and it'sa voiceover and it's a robot,
(13:22):
and it's not playing off of that story.
It's not playing off of the comfortpulling at your heartstrings.
So I think what we need to do is switchthat and make sure that we're the ones
that are in that video and that it's usthat's either talking or in the video.
I was talking with my VA before wecame. We're trying to come out November,
we'll meet and we'll talk. We'll plan outJanuary or we'll plan out all of 2025.
(13:44):
So we're trying to find new ideas of whatother people are doing and how we can
take advantage of 'em or whatdid we try and it didn't work,
but maybe we could try differently.
And I really think that if we cantake these videos and ask a tech and
so get questions,
encourage questions from social media andget people to DM us and then we answer
(14:05):
those questions.
And it could be as easy as my husbandwho's the CEO of the company sitting on a
stool and he's talkingthrough the answer to that.
Let's talk about winterization for,I'm from Colorado, winter's coming,
and it's a great time to start talkingabout winter winterization and teaching
people how to winterize their home.
Totally.
I feel like that'll hit home better thanthese AI videos that are being created.
(14:27):
Totally. Cassie, this is great.
I'm going to pause for a minute so wecan talk about jobber and why we love
Jobber so much. Tell our listeners,
how does Jobber help youmarket your business better,
and have you used the marketingtools and that kind of.
Stuff? Absolutely.
So I love the new marketing suite andI'm super excited about what's rolling
out. More recently, the email marketing,
I'm able to use that by jobber,
(14:48):
helps me find clients that Ihaven't talked to in a while.
So if I haven't heard froma client in six months,
I can auto set up the email campaign sothat it reaches out to them and reminds
them that I'm here.
That's great for companies that dosubscription services of course,
but also for, let's say that somebody,we cleaned their house six months ago,
we haven't heard from 'em.
We can reach out and see if we cangather more revenue through that email
(15:12):
marketing campaign.
Yeah, I totally agree.
I love the reporting with the campaignsnow you can see how much was booked
within a certain amount oftime after the email was sent,
so you can look and see,well, I've sent this email,
got nine grand within three.
Days. Absolutely. The numbers and theanalytic data is amazing. We love it.
And that number is so easy to read. Evenmy husband can log in and he's like,
(15:33):
oh my gosh, this is amazing.So it's definitely worth it.
As I always say, if you're not emailingyour clients on a regular basis,
you're losing money. Absolutely. Yeah.
You need to be emailing yourclients regularly too with jobber,
so new users can go get an exclusivediscount at jobber.com/podcast deal.
Go now, get jobber and startemailing your clients today.
(15:55):
How often do you post? You post? Yousaid 20 videos. 20 videos by June,
so a couple times a week once.
What's important about how oftento post is really consistency.
So start with consistency. If you canonly manage one post a week, that's fine.
Just make sure you show upfor that one post a week.
If you can do three tofour, that's a good start.
(16:16):
We started with three to four when westarted editorial calendar last year,
and we consistently postour three to four each week.
Then we decided to throw in this videogoal, which threw in another post.
So now we're posting five to six timesa week. It's filling the week, right?
It sounds overwhelming, but I havea great tip on how to manage it.
Let's hear it.
All right, let's.
Hear it.
So start with an editorial calendar.The editorial calendar can be on paper.
(16:40):
I love spreadsheets, so Iprobably go to a spreadsheet,
but it can be on paper and break up theyear into 12 months when you're looking
at, and then you could break it up intoquarters, January, February, March,
April, may, June, July, August, September.
Now take your services you provide andput it on that calendar on when they're
high in demand and low in demand,
and look at it in a way thatwhen it's high-end demand,
(17:00):
you probably don't need to haveads going during that time, right?
You might want your ads going duringyour lower times or ramping up,
and then schedule differentthings throughout.
What do you want to talk about throughoutthe year and try to do a monthly theme
around each of those month that you'regoing to talk about. So for example,
go back to Winterization in themonth of October or November.
(17:20):
We can talk the entire month aboutwinterization. We can have blog posts,
we can have social media posts.
We could have podcasts abouthow to winterize a home,
and we can teach our differentaudiences about how to winterize their
home. Once I have my editorial calendarbuilt, we put it into monday.com.
We schedule out the entire year, andwe'll have that done by December.
(17:41):
So before, we'll actuallyhave it done by November.
So by the second week of December,
we're going to be writing January'scontent and we'll write the entire month.
That sounds overwhelming, but now let'stake those ideas that we're taking.
So if we say we're goingto do three posts per week,
then that means we needto create 12 posts.
So.
Take that over to Canva, createyour 12 posts, have that approved.
(18:03):
I have a va and our VA does it,and then I would approve it.
And then once those are approved,
she'll take those and then she'll goover to Buffer. Hootsuite is another one,
but we use Buffer and thenschedule the entire month.
So an entire month is done. That processsounds long, but really it's a day.
So.
When entire month'scontent is done in a day,
and you only have to dothat once every 30 days.
And the Hootsuite or Buffer sends it to
(18:27):
Nextdoor is included in that or no?
I don't know if Nextdoor is includedin that. That's a great question.
We have connected to Facebook, we haveit connected to Instagram, Facebook,
Instagram, YouTube. You can do all ofyour videos too, right? And Google.
You can do Google because you can useyour Google My Business profile as a
social media. Really? Yes, andyou totally should. That's.
New. Okay.
Yes, you can update it every time youupdate all of your other social media,
(18:50):
and you can use analytics from Buffer tosee what days to post and what hours to
post.
What other hacks do you have forus, Cassie? What are some other,
so if someone's listening to thisand they're just super fired.
Up.
And they want to go out in 2025 andreally blitz it with social media,
what's going to trip them up?
A mistake they're going to makethat they can try to avoid?
(19:12):
I guess not understanding theiraudience or not knowing their audience.
Another trick, I guess another tip I canthink of is to do a persona exercise.
Some people in the industrylike to call 'em avatars.
But.
Really what it is is defining youraudience by three to four characters.
For us, we live in a ski community,so we have a lot of second homeowners.
So our main audience, ourpersonas is the locals.
(19:36):
Our second is a second homeowner,
but it's a second homeowner thatdoesn't rent their house out.
They come and visit it.
Our third one is a second homeowner thatrents their house out. We call 'em st,
which is short-term rentals. So theAirbnb stage, and our fourth is DIY.
We love our DIY because they work on theirhouse and they've been working on it,
and then they get overwhelmed andrealize they shouldn't have worked on it,
(19:56):
and then they call us. Sothose are our four audiences,
and then we give each of thema name. Off the top of my head,
I can't think of their name. Ido know DIY is like handy Hank,
but you come up with a name that you'resupposed to be able to remember like
that, and then you create a profilefor that person, handy Hank.
You're going to have a small little about,
and you read through itand you learn about Hank,
and he may have an age and he mayhave a gender assigned to him,
(20:18):
and then you're going to have whathis problems are, what are his issues?
He bit off more than he can chew,and he needs somebody to come in.
And the next part is how do yourservices align to that person?
How are you going to help them?Now that I have these personas,
I can now start creating contentbased on those people's needs.
I can create content tobring in my DIY audience.
(20:39):
I can create content that helps solvethe problems that my STR people have.
I can help solve the problems with mysecond homeowners and I can help the
problems of the locals, and I can dothis with content and my social media.
That sounds overwhelming.So take a step back.
There are marketing agenciesthat are hired to do this,
and they'll spend a week pulling togetherthese amazing persona campaigns for
you. And you pay a lot of money for it.
(21:00):
I know because I used to workfor an agency and we did this,
but you can literally go to Google,do a Google search for personas,
and you can find free templates. In fact,
HubSpot has a free tool that walksyou through to create your personas.
So you can do this in an hour andyou can create your four templates.
By the end of the day, you'll have themby lunchtime, you'll have them done,
(21:23):
and you'll know exactly who youraudience is. And more importantly,
if anybody's helping you, you're ava, they know who your audience is.
I love that. Okay, so all these ideas,
I want to drill down to a pointthat I don't have clarity on.
So what is considered a lead when theymessage you that they're interested,
that they submit a form that you put ina link to the form that you put in the
(21:45):
post? What exactly do you consider a lead?
I feel like a lead could be a mix of it,
and I feel like it can be word of mouth.
If I am at a local networkingevent and I hear somebody's like,
you are blowing it up, you are everywhere.
And then if my question is whereare you seeing us? And they're like,
your vehicles just social media,your videos, you guys are everywhere.
(22:06):
That to me, I will go back to my VA andwe'll have our one-on-one, and I'm like,
people are talking aboutus. We're getting ramped up.
I'm as excited about those as an actualphone call of somebody calling and I
say, how did you hear aboutme? And they say, social media.
So both of them are important tome, word of mouth is important,
and getting your brand outthere and building your brand is just as important as
(22:28):
that phone call becausewhen you're branding,
that person may not be calling you,but if their uncle needs somebody,
you are going to be the firstperson that they mentioned to that.
So follow up question, what's thecall to action usually? Is it call?
Is it email? Is it message? Is it it?
Keep it as flexible as you can.
If you are going to the groups and you'reposting your name because somebody's
(22:48):
asking for a plumber, just link itback to your profile page, right?
Because there is youremail, your phone number,
and messenger and they canreach out, whatever feels best.
It's just like when you'reasking for a review,
you don't just send 'em to one place.
You would send 'em to whereverthey feel comfortable.
Same thing with how to contact you.If you want to say call now, you can.
(23:09):
I would play with it, especially inads. Ads help let you play with it.
Is messenger better or is phone callsbetter and everybody has their preferred
style of how they like to communicate?
I've worked with a car dealer beforeand his favorite for his clients was
Messenger. He would get dailymessages from people. And for us,
I don't hardly ever getmessages. We get phone calls,
(23:31):
so I usually would lean more towardsphone calls if I was to narrow it down to
one lead or one means ofcommunication for our ads.
Cassie,
would you say that it'smore of a long-term strategy that you're trying to build
more of a branding effort online?
Or would you say that you're reallytrying to drive specific leads? Click now.
Get it now. Because alot of our listeners,
(23:52):
they might have a much longer salescycle than others. And so I'm curious,
what's your approach to that?
Good question. I thinkyou could go both ways.
I feel like this is very much long-term,
and it's like just like SEO is you doit today and you may not see results for
three months, but then it goes foreverUntil you shut your website down.
I feel like this, it keeps going.It's very much about branding,
(24:15):
but you can also use it fornow in short term leads.
And I'll give you anexample. Last October,
we went to a convention and we learnedabout holiday lighting and how home
service businesses, the trades in general,
how they pick up holiday lighting in,what is it, October, November, December,
because it gets slow.
And so when we heard it and it wentin there one ear and out the other,
(24:37):
because I don't want topick up another service.
I don't want to pick up a whole notherthing after market already busy. Yeah,
this is too much. But October hit andit started to get slow and you're like,
well, we could try holiday lighting.So we tried it. This was last October,
October, November, December.
We pushed it really hard in our socialmedia and we did some ads and we did some
blog posts. We put it onour homepage of our website.
(25:00):
It ended up being the number five revenuedriver for us for the entire year.
Wow.
So it worked. So I think it's both.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's close out,
but I want you to speakto the listeners here.
Absolutely.
Because you're a heavy hitterwhen it comes to social media
and a lot of people justaren't starting there.
(25:20):
And so to avoid them getting overwhelmed.
And.
I've got to be a leader, I've gotto be the sales, I got to teach,
I got to hire all thesedifferent hats that we wear,
just this is just another hat I haveto wear. What would you say to them?
How can you wear this hat? Well, withoutgetting burned out and overwhelmed.
Totally understand that because my husbandwas that person before I stepped in a
(25:41):
year ago.
And in working 80 hour weeks and thenputting social media on top of that,
it's very hard. I mean, it'shard to answer the phone,
let alone let's worry about social media.
And what I would do is just start small.
Let's start with an editorial calendarthat you're going to post once a week and
try that over the next quarter,over the next three months.
See if you can post once aweek and use those tools.
(26:02):
You can do the editorial calendaror you can just set it up in Canva.
All you're doing is screening for postfor one month ahead of time one day,
and do it ahead of time.
Go ahead and schedule it and see how itgoes and see how overwhelming that was.
I really feel like ifyou dedicate one day,
that that's a heck of a lot easierthan worrying about it all month long.
(26:22):
That's the key, right? Doing itconstantly is not the solution. Doing it,
batching it all at one time isthe way to really go about it.
I like what you said earlierwhen you said your goal was 10,
then you did 20 by halfway throughthe year, and so you started small,
you put the goal pretty low, andthen you gained some momentum,
you got some practice, some traction withit, and then started going from there.
(26:43):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.Bite it off small first.
Cassie, this is great. Iappreciate all your insights.
I'm going to try to boil itdown to the actual items here.
Number one is use appsto leverage your Time.
Buffer is a great app for scheduling allyour posts out to go out at all these
different sites. And so you don't haveto be in all these sites all at once.
And then also david.ai,
which helps you monitor groupsand posts in your social media,
(27:06):
so you don't have to be online24 7. Number two is batch.
All of your creation.
Death will come upon you ifyou just do day after day post.
That's just how you get burned out. Andso batch all your content into one day,
maybe two days in the beginning,
and then schedule out for the wholemonth thereafter and schedule it.
And that's how you're going to reallybe able to do it. And then number three,
(27:28):
you have to be in the content yourself,your team, yourself, the owner.
You need to be in it. No morestock images, no more stock videos,
no more AI videos. Be in it. Tell a story,
grab your listener's attention andbring them into a story instead of just
blasting. We sell this, we sellwindow cleaning, we sell that.
Make it more than that.
And I'll add in that I recentlyread Donald Miller's book,
(27:51):
how to Grow Your Small Business,amazing book, highly recommended.
And there's one story in there wherehe talks about making the customer the
hero of the story. They have a problem,and you are the guide to help solve it.
Your services are what youare offering as the solution.
So when you're creating content,
think about how you are helping tosolve that problem and make the client,
(28:14):
the customer, the hero of the story.
Yeah, well said. Thank.
You, Cassie.
How do people find out more about you?
You can reach me at Wheatley Creek.
That's W-H-E-A-T-L-E-Y-C-R-E-E-K.
And we're on Instagram and Facebook.And if you want to reach me personally,
you can reach me at CassieAllen. That's K-A-S-Y-A-L-L-E-N,
and that's also in Facebook and Instagram.
(28:35):
Well, Kathy, thanks for being here.
Thank you.
Really enjoyed that. You are havinga big impact. You're in a small town,
but you're making a big change,and so keep it up. Well.
I appreciate.
It. Thank you for having me here. Yeah,absolutely. And thank you for listening.
I hope you heard something today willmake your social media content more
engaging and more effective ingenerating more leads. I'm your host,
Adam Sylvester. You can findme@adamsylvester.com. Remember,
(28:57):
your team and your clients deserveyour very best. So go give it to 'em.
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