Are you on Instagram? This photo-sharing social media platform, with its streamlined UX and super mobile-optimised design has been gradually creeping up on Facebook and Twitter as the dominant platform. With its one billion active monthly users – compared with 2.5 billion for Facebook – it’s not yet truly dominant, yet some are suggesting that 2020 could be the year that Instagram overtakes Facebook.

Kara Green, a business writer at Last Minute Writing and Writinity says that “Instagram is the most mobile-friendly social media platform around. Having social media oriented around photo-sharing makes it an incredibly powerful marketing tool as it’s super easy to engage potential customers!”

However, for service businesses looking to market themselves, Instagram can be tricky to navigate. After all, it’s not like you can just post a picture of avocado on toast every day, like the cafe down the road. Fortunately, Instagram is still a functional tool for marketing your business and a cleaning business like yours can have great reach on Instagram. 

Finding A Following

The first step to engaging successfully on Instagram is amassing a following. When you launch your Instagram account, make it land with a splash by sharing it widely through your network of family and friends and encourage current customers to follow you. Then start seeking out relevant people to follow yourself – when you follow someone on Instagram they’ll get a notification and in many instances they’ll follow you back. Scanning through rival’s follower lists can be a good way of finding potential followers and ultimately potential customers.

Content Type

As a platform, Instagram thrives on visual content so you’ll need to start snapping to generate content for your Instagram. As a general rule, don’t overwhelm your followers with sales content – about 20% of what you post should be promotional material. Followers will get bored and look away if they sense you’re always trying to sell to them. The other 80% can be composed of posts that connect with your client or provide them with information, making sure your Instagram is relevant and the client stays engaged.

There’s so much relevant content out there so don’t be afraid to get creative. Before-and-after pics are a great way to showcase the good work your cleaning business does and inspire clients. Showcasing your staff can be a great way of connecting with clients – introduce your cleaners with a bit of backstory and a solid portrait, giving your cleaning business a personal touch. And remember to have fun with it – your followers want to be amused and engaged, post a cleaning meme or an image with a funny caption from time to time!

Understanding Hashtags

Now you have the perfect content to populate your Instagram and market your cleaning business, it’s time to understand how to optimise your posting. Hashtags are an integral part of the functioning of Instagram and any cleaning business needs to use them well. A hashtag is a searchable tag you can add to your post, this means your post will be included when that hashtag is searched, and it’ll help Instagram share your post with the relevant people. It’s often cited that seven to nine hashtags is optimal for any post – #cleaningservice  #housecleaning #cleaningcompany #deepcleaning #cleaningtips will get you started! You may find localised hashtags too – #cleaningservicesacramento, for example, can help you hone your content in on the relevant folks.

Lena Wolff, a marketing blogger at Draftbeyond and Researchpapersuk, suggests that “posting a few times a week is ideal to keep followers engaged but not overwhelmed – lots of apps allow you to schedule your posts so that they appear in the feed at the optimal times for engagement, which means you can curate a coherent social media marketing strategy in advance!”

What Are You Waiting For?

Instagram is growing rapidly as a social media platform, so there’s no time to lose in getting established. It may seem like a cleaning business can’t generate enough visual content to compete on a photo-oriented platform, but in reality there are so many ways to engage potential clients with informative or straight up fun posts that will market your cleaning business. Go ahead and sign up and get those followers!

Victoria Munson is a business reporter at Finance Assignments and Gumessays.com. She loves following the dynamic world of social media marketing and has consulted with small businesses on marketing strategy. When she’s not scrolling through Instagram, she likes to spend time hiking in nature.

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