by Jim Hinshaw
Had a great morning at Rotary last week, to be candid, every meeting is great, some are just amazing. Rotary is an organization that was started over 100 years ago by Paul Harris in his home in Chicago, one of the first initiatives was to eradicate polio in the world. The Rotary foundation is massive, giving out millions each year to non-profits to help improve our planet.
This last week we had the pleasure of hearing from Kyle Draper, a best-selling author, former youth pastor, speaker and coach on social media. His latest book, Rethink Everything You Know About Social Media is already an Amazon Best Seller. It was actually written with help from another author: Justine Karl Zarate.
What was interesting was that they collaborated on the book over 6 months ago. Had many zoom meetings, calls, etc., actually got the book into print 4 months ago. And met for the first time in person 1 month ago. His message was clear, use the power of social media to get customers, and improve your culture.
Kyle told the story of shopping for a vacuum cleaner; how did he do that? He went to Amazon, looked at reviews. Before they went to the store, they went to the internet. People are buying houses they have never walked in, cars they have not driven, buying all sorts of clothes, jewelry, watches, even wedding rings without seeing them in person. Using the power of the internet.
He used our Rotary club as an example, asked the question, do you need new members? We are actually one of the largest clubs around, over 135 members. Our answer was still the same, YES! Kyle told us to commit to a 30-day program, where we posted a video each day on social media. Not meant to be a commercial, those will get turned off fast. Rather a sharing of ideas, maybe the message the speaker brought that day, or what you are doing in the community, all sorts of things. You will be building a brand and gaining trust at the same time.
At Service Nation, we are doing just that, posting videos daily on FB, social media of all kinds. Our President Tom Peregrino has been doing that for months, he has recorded and posted over 60 at this time. The average is 1 minute in duration, he gives a solid tip on how to improve business, something he knows a little bit about. He owned Daffan Mechanical in Granbury Tx, grew it to over $ million/year in revenue, sold to his partner. He did several things that had never been done before at Daffan, one of the best ideas was to hire Tracie Harper as his sales manager.
Tracie had a career selling high end entertainment systems, had never sold anything in our industry. So, he knew her from church, she had a great attitude, not afraid to get into a new industry, and he offered her the sales manager position. She did not ask enough questions, found out later she may have to follow a technician into an attic, or other places where the equipment is located. Tracie persevered, has done an amazing job working with both comfort advisors and techs, improving the bottom line at Daffan. So much so she is now one of our Premier Coaches, helping other members improve the business.
But this is not all about Tracie or Tom, it is about you. Think of the messages that you could share with social media. If you have an employee who has achieved a milestone: graduated, gotten married, had baby, got engaged, gotten a promotion, list goes on. Or maybe went the extra mile for a customer. I remember Chris Hunter shared a video of a couple of his employees who helped push a stranded car out of an intersection, video was shot by a bystander. That is the sort of thing that resonates with the community.
You could do a video on the importance of checking your filter, heck, do a maintenance video, showing what you do on a seasonal tune-up. Get a couple of testimonies from customers, sharing how great your work is and how they trust you completely for their mechanical needs. Share a video of your employees helping out at the no-kill shelter, or a local food bank, or being a bell ringer for the Salvation Army, whatever your team does to give back.
My wife picked out a mover from Facebook when we came to Dallas. The company was woman owned, and she helped us out greatly right as Covid shut things down. When May called her and asked what the cost would be, the woman said she would give us an estimate. May asked who would come to do that, the owner replied, no one. She asked if May had an iPhone (she does), turn on face time, go around the house showing each room. She gave us an estimate based on what she saw on the face time, it was amazingly close, only off by a couple of hundred pounds. The team who packed us up even had new ball point pens still wrapped in plastic to be sure they had not been contaminated. So that was a great experience, all from a Facebook post.
You see where I am going, the subject is not critical, but getting consistent is. As Kyle said, consumers are looking and making selections based on social media posts, you must be there.
Thanks for listening, we’ll talk later.
