Handle The Sh!T

#4 - Dare to Be Annoying on Social Media with Heidi Hooker

• Tanya Wilson & The Crew at HomeField East Valley • Episode 4

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🎙 INTRO TIME!

Welcome back to Handle the Sh!t!—where business gets real, and sh*t gets handled! In this episode, we’re talking all things social media—specifically for septic, wastewater, and service-based businesses. If you’ve ever worried that posting too much might make you “annoying” online, our answer is: GOOD. That means you’re showing up. And no one knows that better than our in-house social media powerhouse...

💥 MEET OUR GUEST

Say hello to Heidi Hooker, the Marketing Manager at HomeField East Valley. Heidi is the genius behind our brand voice, visibility, and viral TikToks (yes, even the gross ones!). She joins Tanya to break down why being “too much” on social media is exactly the right amount—and how to start posting with confidence, clarity, and consistency.

🔥 WHY THIS EPISODE ROCKS.....

🔥 Why “annoying” is actually your goal when building visibility online
 🔥 The 80/20 rule that keeps your content valuable (not salesy)
 🔥 Real tips for posting consistently without losing your mind
 🔥 What actually performs well on social media for septic companies (hint: the gross stuff!)
🔥 How social media attracts new hires and helps build your internal team culture
🔥 Pro-level outreach tactics for networking with local restaurants, agents, and businesses
🔥 The social media tool we use every day and why it’s a game-changer

🔗 Resources & Links:

💬 Epic Affirmation from this Episode:

“Take a risk and try to be annoying. At least once a day.” 💣

🎧 Until next time, keep doing epic shit!

🎧 Thanks for Listening to Handle The Sh!T!

If today’s episode fired you up or hit home, send it to someone in the field who needs to hear it.
We’re building something bigger than a business — we’re raising the bar for this industry.

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🔗 Connect With Us:

🌐 Website: HomeFieldEastValley.com
📸 Instagram: @HomeFieldEastValley
📘 Facebook: @HomeFieldEastValley
🎵 TikTok: @WeDoEpicShit
🎥 YouTube: @homefieldeastvalley
🐦 X (Twitter): @HomeFieldEastValley
💼 LinkedIn: Tanya Merritt Wilson
📧 Email: Tanya@homefieldonsite.com

Handle The Sh!T! is powered by HomeField East Valley — where septic gets done right, and business gets handled.

#HandleTheShitPodcast #HomeFieldEastValley #SepticStrong #WastewaterWarriors #TradesTalk #WeDoEpicShit

Speaker 2 (00:02.21)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I have Heidi Hooker with us today, my brilliant marketing genius here at Home Field East Valley. And today we're gonna dare you to be annoying on social media.

Do it, please try to be annoying.

What does that mean, Heidi? What does it mean to be annoying on social media? What are we trying to-

We're trying to get you to post. Please get involved with social media. Everything is social nowadays. To grow a business, to keep a business, you've got to get out there. So you're not going to be annoying. I can pretty much guarantee you that. But the goal is to try. We just dare you to try.

So if somebody, let's just back up a little bit. I hear often in my women's community, ladies kicking ass, that people don't wanna post more than a couple times a week in their service business. One, because they don't know what to post and two, because they feel like they're being annoying to their followers. How do you address that?

Speaker 1 (01:05.069)
But again, you're not going to be annoying. You got to pick a schedule and you need to stick to it. You just need to start posting. But again, don't just post, know, like we're home field. We want to post customer education. We don't want to just start posting stupid shit that has no correlation to our business, of course. Sure. So you need to go into it. Even if you're not in marketing or never done it before, you need to figure out, okay, where am I going to post? We post to all of our social channels, which we can get into that and what we use later.

but we post to all of our social channels. So we have, you know, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, sorry, X now, my bad, my bad.

formerly known as Twitter. Yes, there we go.

But so you want to pick how many times you want to post. You don't want to just post one day here, not post for a month. OK, I'm to post every day this week. No, pick something. Stick to it. We post every day. Yep. Every day. So we try to do. There are simple things you can do. You can do, you know, Motivational Monday, Testimonial Tuesday, Tech Tuesday, whatever it is. You can find so many things out there just to get inspiration and just post. Consistency is key.

Absolutely, and I'm actually going to attach to this podcast a little PDF of 50 ideas that you can have inside of your septic business that you can post about tomorrow on social media. I want to be able to offer you some coaching and some help to be able to do that because there's so much shit literally going on inside of this business that if you will post consistently, I'm not asking you to post four times a day.

Speaker 2 (02:43.918)
If you'll post consistently, you will start seeing traction. Now here's the thing about social media. consistency. Sorry, I should have added this. That's at least once a day. Right. Okay, there's 31 days in May. How many times did you post in May?

More than 31.

Perfect, at least 31 times a day, or 31 times a day, 31 times a day, 31 times in a month. What's really, really cool about social media too is it's called fucking social for a reason.

Right. You're trying to, you know, get out there, the word about your business. Yes. You know, it's one of those that there is so much that you want to get out there about your business, but I found this thing and it really helped me is the 80-20 rule. You post 80 % value education behind the scenes about us, whatever it is. And then 20%, you can set aside to do kind of your sales and your sales pitch, whatever you want to call it. you know.

80 % behind the scenes about your business, provide that value. Because no one wants to be sold to right off the bat. Here's my page by myself. Whoa, who are you? Yeah. Who are your people? Who is your team? You you got to set the tone. You got to set the voice for that.

Speaker 2 (03:58.574)
that's so, so, so important. Actually, I would love to throw in there too, an experience that I've had as a business owner in the septic industry is when I'm hiring new people to come on board, I will send them our social media and say, get to know us. And even like people will come in and like we have very informal interviews, like we want to get to know who you are. We already know you can do the job, that's why you're here.

Yeah. Right. That's the point of the resume or the application. What I want to know is what are your values? What are your goals? What's your mindset? What's your vibe when you walk into my office? Like, how do you talk? How do you speak? You know, do you show up clean and presentable at an interview? Those are people skills versus the technical skills. Because even if you've been in septic, I'm going to teach you new shit anyway. So I'm going to teach you our way. So the important thing

with social media too is that people will come in and be like, wow, like they're kind of thrown off a little bit, think at first, cause they're used to like, what's the challenges? What are your weaknesses? We don't do that. But people will say, you know, I really did check out your social media and you guys are exactly how you put yourselves out there on social media, which is really a testament of the authenticity that home field East Valley has really embraced here as a team.

are so different.

Speaker 2 (05:21.922)
Like we post it all. know, sometimes we've had people in the past that are like, no, don't post those gross posts. No one wants to see the inside of a septic tank. My daughter will show me shit she sees on TikTok and she's like, did you see this one satisfying? And you're like, ew, gross. But those are the ones like seriously on TikTok, the one that went viral that we had on there was literally like to get the wipes out of the inlet back.

So.

Speaker 1 (05:45.87)
I think.

Speaker 1 (05:49.614)
And it's funny that you talk about that. Trishel and I were just talking the other day about what has the most views, what do people like? And you can kind of see among different channels how things rank and what people are viewing and stuff. And that video where I think it was Isaac, he was breaking up that baffle and just started to sum it up. That thing ranked so high, I don't even know the number of views that it got right now. But then we were also looking at the video that I made. It was a quick eight second clip, which

All it took was eight seconds. got over a thousand views and I just posted it two days ago on YouTube where we started with the priority trucks and then how we transitioned and we got up there. So it was incredible to see like, okay, people like this authentic stuff and then they like the shit.

Yep, they do. And they like the people and the shit. When you get people and the shit in there, you get so many people that will respond. But another key part about being social is you have to be social with your followers. And if you're looking to gain followers, like what I mean by social with your followers is like if they leave you a comment, respond. So important to respond. And not just a heart, an actual response.

Okay, it really does help you be able to look and feel relevant to the the Instagram algorithm everybody bitches about all the time Also, if you're looking to grow your followers, you need to go find people that you want to be your customers. Yeah How do you do that?

I think like when you just touched on it is, you know, leave more than the heart or, you know, a thumbs up, whatever, like actually engage with them. And that's another big thing with your posts that I think you need to do is there needs to be some sort of call to action, whether it's like this post or drop the, you know, craziest thing you've seen in a subject tank, just try to interact. And like we've done that before to where I'm like, this person, like I'll check out people's profiles or they like this. So I'm going to follow them back.

Speaker 1 (07:47.16)
find other septic companies, like just go out there and put yourself out there. mean, what's the worst they're going to do? Deny your friend requests. think we're all about that now. know, it's personal. It's supporting each other. Like, you you said with Kim, with Turner Septic for perfect example, you know, getting her in on our stuff, we tag her, she posts our stuff. So just things like that. then it's like, you almost see new followers or people actually, you know, engaging with that. So it's a perfect way to just go through and find.

people. Yeah, it makes a ton of sense to do that. When you have people that you are supporting, Megan is another one that she shares a ton of our stuff. She owns a septic company in West Virginia. It's just so cool to be able to even network with other septic people through our social media. A lot of people that follow us are other septic companies.

yeah, and I even go through and that's another one too is I will find restaurants in our area or this new restaurant open. I'm going to follow them. provide them some value. Send them you know like a grease guide or whatever it is. Give them a little bit of value and say hey you know I'm here if you have any questions I can congrats on your new restaurant opening. Yeah this is what we offer. I'm up the street. Let me know if you need help with anything. Yeah.

Seriously, you could like start at one end of your street. So we live on Higley Road here. You could start at one end of Higley and go all the way to the end. It would take you all summer to go on all the restaurants and all the places that have wastewater that needs to be pumped out and literally like, send them a message. Like, send them a message, comment on a few things that they have. Yes, community stuff.

Just show the community some support.

Speaker 2 (09:29.192)
Real estate agents, if you work with a lot of septic inspections, you definitely want to be able to network with them. Put together a quick, simple little guide on like septic inspections in your neighborhood. Like put together a little something like what every real estate agent should know about septic and make it a one or two page guide that you can send to them. Like just little things like that is a value add that you're doing through social media.

that literally cost you nothing.

And it kind of just sets you apart from, I mean, we don't call them our competition, but it just sets you apart from everyone else. And it sets that bar so much higher that you have that sense of pride in that too.

Absolutely. How many people first of all are doing any fucking outreach whatsoever with their septic or grease rep pumping company? Nobody does it. And I'm gonna give you another tip. Just get on Facebook. I'm gonna say Facebook because that's typically where septic companies still live is Facebook. Even if you did Instagram, pretty much the same thing. If you got on there and looked, most of the people that are in your industry or your competitors are not on social media.

No. They don't use it. If they did, they had a post in 2014 and it was National Pancake Day. We laugh all the time. This is something social media also needs to be done internally with your team. Yeah. You hire a team to do that or you'll get National Pancake Day or it's National Take Your Kid to Work Day or it's national something that is completely irrelevant to your business.

Speaker 1 (10:54.37)
You can't

Speaker 1 (11:06.124)
You need someone that knows the in and outs of your industry. And when I started, I didn't know anything about stuff like, and now look, I'm teaching Trichelle stuff. Yeah, it's, it's not hard, but you want that voice that's, know, within your business to really break things down to actually connect with the customers and the businesses to know, know, you know what you're talking about.

It is your social proof that you know what the hell you're doing and that you're a trustworthy, clean, awesome, great rapport team. We actually just got a compliment on that at the last job we were out at today for the photo thing. He's like, you guys really do have good rapport with each other. You seem to have a great team spirit. And I was like, as the owner of a business, that is like the best compliment in the world.

We like each other.

Speaker 1 (11:54.508)
And I mean, at first it almost seemed like he was a little unsure. There's like a dozen people in my backyard. at the end, like, I mean, we were engaging him with what we were doing, the conversation and just connecting with him, you know, on a personal level too. So it was great. And he left a review.

I know.

Speaker 2 (12:10.508)
Yay, good. So there was two gentlemen, Vincent was the guy that owned the house and Vinny was his friend that was there. Instantly talking to the guy, you could tell he was from New York area. So of course, Tim being from New York is like, where are from? They're both from Long Island and then they're talking about their little neighborhoods that they live in and just like building the rapport with stuff. So Vinny was great on site and that was his friend. And then Vincent

left a thing that he had sent in through Housecall Pro. You guys are rock stars. Thank you so much. So you, he wasn't even there. So you know, it was what Vinnie had been telling him. shout out to Vinnie and Vincent. We were telling you all about our podcast. You probably won't listen to it, but if you do, you guys are awesome.

Well, this has been so great. So if somebody wants to really try hard to be annoying on social media, how many times would you really have to post do you think that would make you annoying?

say more than five times a day because the chances of someone actually seeing all five posts every single day kind of rare.

Slim to none, about 2 % of your following audience on Instagram sees a post, about 1 % sees your reels or stories. Stories are actually viewed more, but leave less of an impact because they're so quick. People that are watching stories are like, next thing, next thing, next thing. They're not absorbing anything. It's almost like mindlessness. 1 % and 2%, take a risk and try to be annoying. At least once a day.

Speaker 1 (13:47.594)
And today at least.

and you can get the PDF with 50 ideas to post about in the show notes down below. We'll also leave a link to for a program that we use, it's called Social Curator, which actually allows you. pilot. social pilot. pilot. my gosh, okay. Give it a second, I'll edit this part out. Social curator, I've been looking at that too much.

So we're actually gonna leave a link in the show notes for a program that we use that's called Social Pilot. This is an excellent, very inexpensive, I think I pay 35 bucks a month for it and I use it for both home-filled and ladies kicking ass. And you can post to multiple different social media networks. So what my big advice would be for you is if that's overwhelming, which it is for a lot of people, pick one, get really freaking good at something.

I would highly recommend as a service business that you do it on Facebook. Get your Facebook page set up and just start posting to Facebook. If you set up Instagram as well, you can literally post to both of them at the same time by switching over a toggle and it will do it for you all the time. So that is something that I would highly encourage you to do because then you can become parts of neighborhood groups.

where people can actually shout you out or recommend you online. And that looks really great and professional. So start with Facebook and Instagram, work your way up from there. We'll do many, many, many more of these marketing social media podcast episodes because there's just way too much to get into in one. Yeah. So much, so much more. Well, thank you so much, Heidi, for being on here. And definitely our challenge for you this week is to go out on social media and be

Speaker 1 (15:23.246)
I have so much more to say.

Speaker 2 (15:34.699)
Super, super annoying. And until next time, keep handling the shit.