I would like to wish everyone a teriffic St. Pattys Day. Have a green beer for me.

This will be a multi-post all about Social Media and how it can help you improve your business. I would also like to hear your responses to this post. Have you used social media to your advantage? Has it worked? Has it failed? Enjoy!

So you decided to take the technological leap into social media, but are you doing it effectively? This article will be a great primer for anyone that has not taken their company to the next level online, as well as people who do leave an online footprint but just want a bigger one… Size matter for this one folks.

I know some of you reading this are skeptical on how social media can help your green industry business. Hopefully after you read this you’ll have a good idea on how to use it to your full advantage.

So let’s start with the basics.

What is Social Media?

Simply stated social media is any kind of online platform that interacts with its audience with the benefit of sharing information.

A two way street if you will. Magazines are a great way to get information but you cannot interact with it. Well, I guess you could but then you’ll be a crazy as my uncle Bob. Don’t worry I won’t tell anyone.

Now there are many different types of social media;

Social Networking – facebook.com, myspace.com, hi5.com, twitter.com

Social Bookmarking – delicious.com, propeller.com, stumbleupon.com, digg.com

Blogging and forums – thelawnblog.com, thelawnblog.com/forum

So now you should have a good example of what social media is. Let’s move on.

I am going to touch on the most popular programs and sites as you should already know what they are.

Facebook.com

Facebook is a massive social networking website. I am sure most of you have an account already and waste the majority of your time on there playing those highly addictive games… Guilty! But there are more than games and keeping in touch with grandma facebook has to offer. You can (and I recommend) you create a facebook page for your business. I have made one for our landscape maintenance company. You can visit it here,

Murphy Property Maintenance Fan Page

If you like you can become a fan. Your support is appreciated.

A quick rundown shows that you can share photos, updates, hours of operation, articles and discussions. Fans can even chime in and comment on your work. If you already have a website you can add your link back to your website. Doing this adds to your online footprint making you a stronger competitor.

For more detailed instructions on how to create a facebook page visit their FAQ page here.

Twitter.com

to be continued…

Beneficial insects kill the damage-causing pests in your garden and provide pollinating power for more flowers and higher yields.  Here’s how to attract them.

Beneficial insects are invaluable in the home garden.  They kill the bad bugs by eating them or parasitizing them, and increase flower production and crop yields by providing the valuable service of pollination.  Luckily, attracting beneficial insects is easy.  Provide a habitat they’ll like, avoid using chemical pesticides and attract and keep them around with all-natural, easy-to-use products.

Good Bugs Abound

Take a close look in your garden, and you may find that you already have a few species of beneficial insects calling your garden home.  These may include lady beetles, green lacewings, hover flies, parasitic wasps and predatory mites.  The predators, such as lady beetles, lacewing larvae and mites, prey on aphids, caterpillars, mealybugs, leafhoppers, whiteflies and insect eggs.  The parasites, such as wasps, defend your garden against tomato hornworm, cabbageworm and tent caterpillars by laying their eggs on or into them.

Providing a proper habitat for beneficial insects is the first step in attracting and retaining them.  Many predators and parasites feed on pollen and nectar, so growing a variety of flowers that bloom at different times will help sustain them throughout the season.  Try planting cosmos, buckwheat, hairy vetch, calendula, marigolds and dill, which are known to attract beneficial insects.

Beneficial insects also need a source of water and protection from heat, rain and predators.  Watering your garden with overhead sprinklers will create puddles and wet leaves for them to drink from.  Growing leafy plants offers protection from the sun, pounding rain and birds and predatory insects.

Avoiding chemical pesticides is also key to providing a healthy habitat for beneficials.  The same chemicals that kill the damage-causing insects in your garden will also kill the good guys, so you’ll want to steer clear of them.

What’s on the Menu?

The menu for beneficial insects changes constantly as the pest population in your garden dwindles and grows again.  To attract and keep beneficial insects in your garden, we recommend these all-natural, easy-to-use products.

When beneficial insects are done feasting on the pests in your garden, they’re likely to leave in search of a new source of food, allowing the pest population to return.  Use Benefeed from Gardens Alive!® to keep beneficial insects in your garden beds so they continue to feed on pests as they hatch, keeping pest numbers from spiraling out of control.

Benefeed is a powder concentrate that provides a complete nutritional diet for beneficial insects when their normal food source has dwindled.  Simply mix Benefeed with water and spray it in your garden beds to encourage beneficial insects to stay.  It’s especially helpful if you plan on releasing beneficial insects in your garden, such as Garden’s Alive!’s Sta-Home™ Lady Beetles—spray Benefeed before releasing them.

Attract pollinating honey and wild bees to your garden beds and fruit trees with Bee-Feed, exclusively available from Gardens Alive!®.  It attracts and keeps bees in your garden areas by providing the essential food elements for bees: lactose, fats, protein and sucrose.  Bee-Feed has been shown to increase bee population in the treated area by 50 to 100 percent.  Mix Bee-Feed with water and spray gardens and fruit trees to start attracting bees within 4 to 6 hours from the time of application.

Benallure™ attracts beneficial insects to lawns and gardens with a special controlled-release lure.  Hang one in every 30 feet of garden space or landscaped area.  For large trees, place one lure per tree; for drawf or smaller trees, hang Benallure in every other tree.

BEE-Allure™ attracts honeybees to your vegetable garden and fruit trees with a pad enclosed in a controlled-release dispenser.  Hang one lure per fruit tree or for each 200 square feet of garden space at bloom time to attract honeybees for two weeks in any kind of weather.

For more information on Benefeed, Sta-Home Lady Beetles, Bee-Feed, Benallure and BEE-Allure, visit http://www.gardensalive.com/GoodBugs or contact us at publicity@gardensalive.com.

# # #

Gardens Alive! Press Contact:

Dane Coleman, 937-667-2491 Ext. 3509, Dcoleman@GardensAlive.com

Gardens Alive, Inc., 5100 Schenley Place, Lawrenceburg, Indiana 47025

In the beginning of my green industry career a wise man told me that “Landscape Maintenance is all about minutes”. I had a hard time fully understanding what that meant as I was young and still green (sorry for the pun) in the industry and life. He went on to explain that every minute matters in this business… if you don’t jump on opportunities, somebody else will… if you don’t track your time, you will be lost… if you cannot be efficient, you’ll never survive. As he explained I started to understand but it would take me years and the startup of my own company to fully get the picture.

Opportunity knocks more than once… But only a few times.

Take the opportunities that come your way. Quote everything (within your scope) that passes over your desk. Follow all leads and return all calls quickly. There is something to say about that old adage “The early bird gets the worm”. Generally speaking, if you are the first contractor to provide a call back and quote, your chances of getting that job increase dramatically. And if you start turning down quotes, you may not get another chance.

Potential clients don’t like shopping around for shotty expertise so make sure to give them what they want from the start.

Do your timesheets!

Make sure to do a timesheet everyday to track your work. This is a very big part of tracking your business. Here are a couple of good examples of timesheets you can use.

Blank Timesheet (MS Excel file)

Blank Timesheet – Snow Removal (MS Excel File)

Remember to keep them simple yet detailed… Simply Detailed if you will (I believe we have an oxymoron in our midst). As you can see in the example sheet the columns you need are;

- Client/Property
- Description of Work Done
- Time IN / Time OUT
- Staff and Times
- Total times

***TIP:  To make entries quicker you can abbreviate, such as ‘Cut, Trim and Blow’ to CTB.

By doing daily timesheets it helps you with;

- Invoicing
- Tracking employee hours
- Apply hours to job costing

By knowing these numbers you can really see where your business is losing and gaining.

Know your route.

Use your timesheets and a detailed map to tighten up your route. Minutes are lost during drive time and is one of the biggest profit losses in the business.  You would be surprised on how much time is lost while your butt is in the seat.  Take this into consideration:

Service 30 Clients each day with 5 minutes of drive time between each one = 2.33hrs of driving per day or just under 12 hours per week.  That’s a whole days work for one person lost in the truck.  This equation doesn’t even include time it takes to get to your first client or the drive back to the shop… what about paid breaks?  You could be creeping up to 18 hours lost by the end of the week.  Now lets say that your hourly rate is $45.00 per hour, at the end of the mowing season (which is 26 weeks here in Ontario Canada) you could be sitting on a $21,060.000 loss of revenue.  How does your butt feel now?

Now there will always be drive time, but what can you do to tighten it up and lower your loss?  Here are some examples that I have found worked for me.

Bridge the gaps.

Knowing your point A to point B try to get clients in between by marketing.  This will cut down on drive time between each client and increase ‘Productivity’ narrowing the gap of the dreaded ‘Loss’.

Stay in one place.

Find communities where you can drive to and stay awhile.  Condos, gated communities large commercial properties are all great examples of zero drive time.  By doing this your productivity will go thru the roof.  I have one such gated community where I have 14 properties.  We park and are there for 3.25hrs or 6.5 man hrs.  Without the drive time we can Mow Trim and Blow 14 properties in just over 3hrs… solid productivity.

Reverse your route.

This may sound like a odd thing to do.  However try reversing your route and see how the times differ.  You may be surprised on what you find.  By reversing your route you may find a lot of different outcomes, such as;

-  You are at properties at different times of day.  This allows you to make yourself visible to potential clients that have never saw you before.

-  Avoiding traffic when the volume may be higher. There is nothing worse than sitting in traffic as break-lights turn into dwindling profits.

-  Finding shortcuts to tighten you route. Going the opposite way leads to new discoveries.

Paper Bag it and Pack your lunch

This one may sound a bit grade school, but not only does it save you time it also saves you money from your wallet.

I use to be a huge Convenience Store junkie. But by buying my lunches and water when we do our weekly groceries saved me about $75.00 per week and a lot of unnecessary stops for snacks, food and drinks.

Now of course there are many other ways to save minutes like ‘How to mow efficiently’ but I’ll be doing an article on that soon.  The point of this article was to get across the understanding that ‘Time’ really does equal ‘Profit’ in this industry.  So how are you tracking it?  What are you doing to become more efficient?  I would love to hear your tips and tricks.  Please comment below and if you like this article use the tweet button at the top and spread the word.

Cheers,

Richard Murphy
The Lawn Blog