We've had this conversation on here before, I still subscribe to the same opinion I had about then. People do not go on Facebook to look for a window-cleaner.
Your friend on FB might be the friend of a window-cleaner who is also on FB, but the chances are that he is either in a different country, as thats the nature of the internet, or simply far too many miles away for it to be considered. If I wanted a chippy or a sparky I'd look in our local village mag or use an online directory or ask someone I knew who had used one,which is what I did about a month ago when we needed the use of a plasterer. I did not look on FB and the thought of it didn't occur to me, for one second.
I know you said about a year or more ago Ian that FB was the next big marketing 'thing'. Sorry chap, but it isn't.
Saying that I do have an FB page for my business, I doubt Ive had ANY work from it. In fact Id bet my house on it that I havent; takes too much effort anyway. There was someone on here a few months back used to post on his websites blog about his day at work. That lasted about 2 weeks. Haven't got the time, too busy working.
I used to think that about Facebook. About 2 years ago, a custy opened a page for us and explained the benefits. I was sceptic, but did a few things she advised. I posted on local selling sites and clubs or interest pages and it went balistic. The most successful page we had was for carpet & upholstery cleaning. We would get about 1000 quids worth of work from that page per month! The window cleaning face book page was set up to PM custies about access or payment etc etc. We hardly use them now as the window cleaning page is mostly PM's to get payment and access but I no longer use it to advertise as we aren't really looking for more customers at the moment.
The carpet & upholstery cleaning page is also very slow now as we've branched off into the local German market as this is more lucrative than the M.O.D. customers we have over here.
We also opened a German Facebook page to help get a better Google ranking, it was up to about 1400 likes within the first year. We get work from that too.
Have a look if you want, no need to like them, as this will bring nothing for either party.
Window page
http://www.facebook.com/BFG.Window.Cleaner?v=wallcarpet page for M.O.D. custies (Brits)
http://www.facebook.com/groups/BFG.Carpet.Cleaner/Lastly, our Gurmun page that we only PM customers on.
http://www.facebook.com/Powell.Herford?ref=hlI've no interest in twitter and I found the Facebook system was a great idea for us at that time, but now we no longer need it. Worth a try though if you want. We'd always post on club / interest and selling sites telling people who we are and what we do, and how to contact us.
Hope this helped.
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