I am sorry that its been a few Fridays since the last post, but things (as always) have been crazy hectic. I am sorry because that is no excuse, but its a real one. A few weeks ago I ran into a friend that just launched a chandler house cleaning business and we got to talking about different things she could do online to drive more traffic to her website and of course viral marketing came up!

I started to talk to her about what are some of the grossest things she has ever had to clean, or has seen inside someones house and her responses were pretty amazing. She listed things like poop on the floor (and they had no pets) - SERIOUSLY? WHO DOES THAT? She also mentioned finding “toys” in bed when she has gone to pull the sheets off to wash. Again - WHO DOES THAT? Who freaking leaves their toys around for just anyone to find? Especially the maid? In one house she went to for the very first time (to give a quote for a cleaning) she walked in and saw piles of trash bags that lined the floor leaving only a small path for walking. You could not even get into the kitchen, and every single pot and pan was dirty in the house. So what she later found out was that she was going to the dollar store and buying disposable plates and dinnerware, and cooking food in her living room on a camping stove because she could not get into the kitchen! I can’t make this stuff up! One last thing before I get on with it - Cat poop was found on a mini-blind towards the top - how does cat poop even get there? I am serious, the way she described it was there was no way the cat could of, and she is still stumped to this day. I would have loved to have seen how the cat managed to pull that off! I guess that would be a pretty cool viral marketing video and idea for a cat website huh?

All the above got me thinking of how a business like this that is promoting house cleaning services could ever do something that could go viral. I started to think about You Tube, and Google Videos, Flickr and some of the many videos and pictures I have seen in the past where houses were trashed, or kids were doing un-speakable things as pranks on other peoples houses, and I just kept thinking to myself - someone is going to have to clean that up. I just never thought it past that point. But someone eventually does have to clean up the messes made.

The story I told you about the trashed house above, she did not take the job and basically told the person to go to hell. I don’t blame her. I would not want to clean the toilet of a clean persons house, but that’s just me. I also think you could get some pretty good footage if you were lucky enough to be called to clean a foreclosed home. I have seen some pretty amazingly trashed ones, where they have been stripped of everything, and I mean everything - including dry way (so they could get the copper wire I guess and sell it)

If you did a post on trashed foreclosed homes, and titled it “You Will Never See Another Home As Trashed As These 5 I Found” or “The Number One Most Trashed House In America” or “You Will Never Believe How Trashed This Foreclosed Home Was”. Some other ideas would be: “Seriously, How Can You Live In That House?” [PICS] or “The 10 Dirtiest Houses In America” or “10 Houses You’re Glad You Don’t Live In” I think that gives you enough ideas, but you see how you can take this idea and run with it so many different ways. I think the best shot you have of making it go popular somewhere would be to share stories that are your own, and images and experiences that are your own. If you can even come up with something close to the examples I have given you above, then I think it will do ok!

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