Last Updated on August 21, 2023 by The ZenMaid Team
The following article is based on a talk given by Sunny McGrath at the 2021 Maid Summit, hosted and organized by ZenMaid.
Sunny is the Creative Director, Graphic Designer, and Head of the Social Media Graphics Department for Rescue My Maid Service. Most people call her ‘The Graphics Guru.’
Please note: The images in this post include graphics from other cleaning businesses. Sunny McGrath was permitted to use them for her presentation.
What to expect
In today’s article, Sunny McGrath shares her knowledge with all things social media graphics! You’ll learn the big do’s and don’t of social media graphics, and whether or not outsourcing your social media is the right move for your maid service. Let’s jump right in.
Social media DON’Ts
There are four big social media don’ts when it comes to your graphics. Your graphics are responsible for grabbing the audience’s attention, drawing them in to learn more — or not.
Text
The text on your social media graphic is very important. If you have too much text, your audience will get overwhelmed. It’ll either be hard to read, too much to read, or just plain unappealing to look at.
When there’s too much text, your audience will probably scroll right past your image. To prevent that from happening, you need to keep that text down to a minimum; less is more. If your post requires a longer explanation, you can use the caption to elaborate.
In addition to keeping text at a minimum, you need to make sure the font is a size that scrollers can easily read. 95% of social media users scroll from their mobile devices, so small text is extremely hard to see from these smaller screens.
To test out your font size, save a copy of the graphic to your phone. Can you read the text easily with a glance at your phone screen? If not, you might need to reduce the amount of text, enlarge the font, or both.
Image
Creating your social media graphics is not the time for scrapbooking. In most cases, you’ll want to limit one image per social post. This helps prevent your graphic from looking overloaded and therefore overwhelming the audience. Again, less is more.
Relevancy
Always make sure your graphic’s image is relevant to the text.
Branding
Your social media graphics should reflect your maid service’s unique branding. Without displaying your maid service’s branding, your graphics will be easy for others to copy and use for their own marketing. It sounds crazy, but it happens. If you put in the work to make great social media graphics, the last thing you want is someone stealing it for their gain.
We’ll go deeper into the topic of branding in just a minute! But first, let’s jump into the social media DOs.
The Social Media Do’s
The graphic above is a great example of what to do with your social media graphics. We’ll refer to this graphic in the examples below.
Text
As you can see, the text is minimal with impact, with a font large enough to read from a small screen. This company hooks the audience with an enticing headline of, “Enjoy Summer! We’ll take care of the cleaning.”
Image
This graphic has a single effective image that makes it easy to read the text on top of it.
Relevancy
While the image doesn’t portray a cleaning service, it is relevant to the text. It gives the audience a picture of how fun their summer can be if they’re not bogged down cleaning. It’s simple and effective!
Branding
The company’s logo and contact information is displayed on the graphic, making it easy to identify who the company is and what direct action to take.
Branding on Social Media
Branded posts on your social media are extremely important for visual appeal and brand consistency. Put simply, branding refers to how your company is presented.
If you’re just starting your maid service, you can build out basic branding elements for free using a tool like Canva. As your business grows, it’s a great idea to hire professional designers and writers to take your branding to the next level.
Key components of branding
To get started, here is a checklist of your basic branding elements
- Design a company logo
- Choose your main fonts
- Choose a color palette
- Write a company mission and vision statement
- Write your company’s origin story
- Decide on core values
- Write a tagline
- Consider what tone of voice you want your marketing to portray
What sets you apart?
Capture your company’s unique selling proposition, or in other words, what sets you apart from the competition. When you can communicate this effectively, you’ll be a memorable business in your community.
Do you offer a niche cleaning service?
Do you have satisfaction or money-back guarantee?
Do you have a mission to help the homeless in your community?
Do you offer free cleaning services to marginalized families?
Do you offer discounts to single moms?
Do you offer speed cleans faster than any other service?
Do you offer on-call cleaning services for special occasions?
There are so many possibilities for what sets your company apart. Choose one that fits your company the best and share it often.
How to color match
Color matching is a quick and easy way to create on-brand social media graphics. Here’s how to do a color match for each kind of device.
On a Mac
- Download the Digital Color Meter app from the Apple store.
- Drag your cursor over the color you want to copy
- Save the color value image
On a PC
- Download Microsoft Paint
- Use the Color Picker tool to copy any image’s color code
Canva
- Download the image or logo you want to color match with into Canva
- Use Canva’s free Document Colors tool to extract any color from the image
- Paste the color code into any section of text you want
Other color matching tools
Should you outsource your social media?
After reading this post, you might be excited to start creating your own social media graphics! It can be a fun, creative outlet outside of the typical duties of your business.
However, if you feel like there’s no time to create good graphics, or you need some major design help, it might be time to outsource your social media. There are many great options out there, from freelancers to agencies who can take it off your plate.
We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
What’s next?
If you enjoyed this post from ZenMaid, you also might enjoy:
- Cleaning Business Automation Just Got a Lot Easier — Your Complete Guide Written By Cleaning Business Owners
- Should You Send a Newsletter for Your Cleaning Business? Yes, and Here’s How.
- The Day I Said Goodbye to 9-to-5: My Journey to Starting ZenMaid
- Cleaning Business Supplies: What You Need for Residential and Commercial Cleaning
- How to Market a Cleaning Business: 10 Strategies that Actually Work
For more resources on how to grow and perfect your cleaning business, check out the replays from the 2021 Maid Summit, hosted by ZenMaid. The summit featured more than 60 presentations from other maid service owners who shared tools and strategies to help you achieve the highest levels of success in your business.
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