This morning I was over on PlumberSEO.net and I happened to notice they published an article on plumbers and Twitter in Plumbing and Mechanical Magazine. Like most small business owners many plumbers don’t spend a lot of time on Twitter because they can’t quite figure out what to post on it without turning it into a massive waste of time. Fortunately the article offered some fantastic solutions.
Tweet Daily Maintenance Tips
While the article didn’t specify maintenance tips as a daily activity I’m going to jump right in and tell you they would be great daily content. Tweets like, “Don’t ever put pasta in your garbage disposal” are pretty much golden for daily content. They’re nearly universally useful and they’re extremely actionable.
If you want, you could include a link to a blog post on your website that explains why pasta is so deadly to garbage disposals. You can probably think of hundreds of silly things that people do to their plumbing every single day: share them with the world. You can probably also think of a few simple things that people could do to avoid costly plumbing problems. Tweet about those too.
Tweet Product Recommendations
Though it wasn’t covered in the article, I could add product recommendations to this too. If there’s a particular tankless water heater, for example, that you find yourself recommending to your customers again and again this is great information to share on Twitter.
Tweet Advice for a Specific Situation
Someone tweets: “Help! My kid flushed a hairbrush down the toilet!” Jump in like Superman and save the day with a specific tip. Don’t forget to include the @sign to reply: @Susy Detach the toilet from the floor to get it out (or however you’d answer that question). Again, if the answer is longer than that you can Tweet, then write up a quick blog post and direct them to your blog for the answer.
This of course means that you’re going to need to keep an eye on what people are saying about their plumbing situations. That means running some pretty simple searches on Twitter. The article suggests searching for “#plumber.” To this I would add: “#toilet,” “#garbage disposal,” “#drain,” “#sink,” “#bathtub,” “#shower,” and “#hot water heater.” If people are going to gripe about their plumbing problems they will do it by griping about the specific equipment first.
When you run these searches you’ll also find other great content written by other people. There is absolutely no harm in simply “Retweeting” this content. Simply hover your mouse over their tweet until you see the “Retweet” option appear (it looks a little like a recycling logo). Press the button and you’ve accomplished several things.
First, you’ve essentially added content to your Twitter feed that you didn’t have to work too terribly hard for: always a plus. Second, you’ve shown that you’re part of the community by promoting someone else, again, always a plus. It keeps you from hijacking the conversation with your attempts to promote. This strategy was stressed in the article.
Tweet Photos & Events
The article shared a few more great tips too, such as taking photos of your plumbing business at work or posting useful videos (perhaps you could do a “how to” video on extracting hairbrushes from toilets!), since people enjoy both of these things. According to the article you could even create webinars on common plumbing problems and then generate buzz with, “Three days until the Toilet Trouble Webinar comes out!” followed, the next day, by “Two days until the Toilet Trouble Webinar arrives!”
Your Twitter To-Do
I know the last thing you want to do is spend a ton of time on Twitter, so here’s my suggestion for today. Jot down 30 things that you’d like your customers to know—30 recommendations you find yourself giving them day after day, like “don’t put pasta down the garbage disposal,” or “close the top of your toilet so stuff stops flying in there,” or whatever you tell them. Then simply Tweet one of those tips every day, crossing them off of your list. In 30 days you’ll have a following and a rhythm and can productively move on to some of the rest of these tips.
