Social media has been playing a huge role in extending the reach of many businesses and the world of manufacturing marketing is no stranger to this.
In this article, we’ll delve deeper into this topic to unlock social media’s full potential to extend your company’s reach.
Why Does Social Media Matter for Marketers?
Before we head over to the main matter, let’s get to know why social media matters for businesses. To begin with, social media is a powerful tool for businesses to be discovered. People can learn about your brand and follow your company’s page for regular updates or to keep track of what’s happening. Therefore, social media can be a viable way to go about industrial product marketing.
You’ll need to learn the inner workings of how a company gets seen on social media so you can apply it to your brand. Once you get the hang of it, your industrial products brand could become popular.
How to Extend Your Reach and Engagement with Social Media?
Aside from knowing the role of social media in the manufacturing industry, you’ll need to know how to use it to its full potential. By doing this, you can make your brand become visible to more people. With this in mind, let’s explore the steps in using social media to extend your brand’s reach.
We’ll cover the steps you’ll need to do one at a time:
1. Create a Social Media Marketing Plan
All successful industrial marketing efforts don’t come overnight. You will need to create the foundation where you’ll form your social media plan. To form your social media marketing strategy, you’ll need to do the following:
- Select a platform: Choose the social media where you’ll advertise your industrial products brand. You must consider the target audience and the platforms that your competitors use. Also, take one social media platform when you’re starting. Only expand once your brand is growing.
- Set up your goals and objectives in the platform: Think of this part as the checklist you’ll need to fulfill to declare your campaign as a success. For example – your goal for this week is to post three relevant social media posts. You’ll need to have access to analytics to check whether your posts are gathering engagement.
- Report, monitor, and tweak: Check your analytics tool from time to time to see if your audience is seeing your posts. Also, check whether your page is obtaining new followers. Adjust your initial strategy from time to time. Analyze your metrics to see if there’s a pattern in your audience’s behavior.
2. Create a Variety of Content
Now that you’re getting the hang of the basics – it’s time for you to branch out with your content. When it comes to advertising your industrial marketing brand, content tends to be the silver bullet to reach your goals.
You will need to post frequently on your brand’s page and provide useful information for your audience. The best content for you to consider posting includes the following:
- Quick tips, DIY’s and How-to’s
- The latest news in Manufacture and Industrial Marketing
- Datasheets and insights about the current state of the industry
- Updates and important announcements from your brand
- Polls, contests, and questionnaires for your audiences
- Videos of content related to your brand
3. Create a Consistent Posting Schedule
Keep in mind that you’ll need to create a consistent posting schedule for your content. Consistency is key to keeping your audience hooked to your industrial product brand. The best approach here is to create an editorial calendar for content that you’ll post for the month.
For example, in a week this August – you will post two social media posts, a video, and two quick tips. Once you outline your target, you can follow this format throughout the month.
With this you’d need to play around with the posting schedules from time to time. In doing so, what you don’t want to come off as is too predictable. Keep the surprise factor up by changing the content you’ll post for your audience.
4. Interact and Participate
No successful manufacturing marketing campaign is done through posting alone. You’ll need to get involved whenever you post new content to your social media account. Pay attention to who’s engaging and interacting with your content. Respond to comments in the most professional manner. Also, don’t be shy to answer any questions that your audiences ask related to your brand.
The more you engage with your audience, the more your brand becomes unforgettable to them. You may also obtain new followers in the process of interacting with your audience on posts or content.
5. Repurpose and Recycle Old Content
You can also repurpose or recycle old content and revamp it into new content for your audiences. Let’s use an example – you can repurpose and recycle an Instagram post and turn it into engaging content on Facebook.
The possibilities for repurposed your content are endless and you may get rewarded by audience engagement.
- One note to be aware of, you’ll need to post repurposed content in moderation. Sometimes, posting excess content in a short period may flag your content as spam. To work around that, you can try to schedule your reposted manufacturing marketing content.
Key Notes to Consider for Social Media Strategies
Now that you’ve learned some of the ways to extend your brand’s reach in social media, let’s explore some key notes to consider. You’ll need to keep these important notes in mind as they’re crucial to social media success.
With that said, here are the notes you’ll need to remember when conducting industrial marketing campaigns on social media.
1. Study Your Audience
The best way to get authentic followers for your social media page is to know whom you’re targeting. Know details about your potential audience’s demographics such as age, interests, and the like. If you manage to create content that caters to your audience demographic, you’re likely to get those followers soon.
Keep in mind that the results aren’t instant. Be patient with gathering a following for your brand when you are starting.
2. Conduct Competitor Research
Analyzing your brand’s competitors should give you an idea of what’s doing well and what’s not. You’ll also gain a good sense of what you need to expect from your industry. Therefore, you can spot potential opportunities to take advantage of. Let’s use an example for this case – your competitor has a huge Facebook presence but little elsewhere.
You would want to take advantage of other social media platforms instead of Facebook to gain an upper hand.
3. Polish and Improve Your Social Media Page
From time to time, you would want to apply tweaks to your fan page to bolster industrial marketing efforts. Fill out all the necessary profile fields and include keywords to make it easier for people to find your brand.
You’ll also need to use a variety of images such as logos and your products to become recognizable. However, you’ll need to use high-quality images that follow the social media’s recommended dimensions.
4. Search for Inspiration
Marketing your industrial products through social media is like an art. What you’ll need to do is to look for inspiration. Browse through the internet and look for fun ideas that you can implement in your marketing efforts. Study your competitors and see what distinct charm they have that draws in their audience.
That said, while it’s fine to take inspiration from others, you’ll need to translate in an authentic form. When you’re advertising your industrial products, you need to do it in a way that makes your brand unique. Stand out so you can have better odds at attracting potential clients.
5. Use the 80-20 Rule
To draw in more people to your content and enhance your reach, use the 80-20 rule. The rule goes like this – 80% must educate your audience and 20% is advertising your brand. People these days prefer content with value over getting advertisements. Focus on providing engaging content that people will learn from, but with your brand advertisement placed subtly.
A good example is to create an informative social post, that also contains the logo of your brand on one corner of the content. Your audience may focus their attention on the quick tips it discloses before noticing your brand’s logo.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why is Consistency Important in Social Media Marketing?
When you’re advertising your Industrial Products, your audience expects a constant stream of content. They’ll likely look forward to the new things that you’ll disclose to them. Try to create lots of content in advance and plan when you’ll post it. Take too long and your audience might jump ship to your competitors.
2. Why use Subtle Advertising in Social Media Content?
People don’t want to be bombarded with advertisements daily. To them, getting spammed with tons of advertisements feels intrusive to their space. As said, you can place a watermark or a logo in the corner of your content – whether it is a social media post or a video.
3. Is there an Added Perk when Interacting with People on Your Posts?
Yes, there is. Whenever you interact with commenters on your brand’s social media posts – you enforce the idea that you’re an authority in this niche. The more people find that you are an authority, the more people will actively seek your brand.
4. Why is it Important to Have a Distinct Charm in Social Media Posts?
People may sometimes spot brands that are just a copycat. With that said, it’s fine to take inspiration from your competitors or related brands. However, you must not completely mimic them. Your audience wants to see unique content that’s made by your brand and conveys its distinct “voice”.
5. Why is it Important to Repurpose Old Content?
There are a number of reasons why it’s handy to repurpose old content. For one, it’s to use it as a template for newer content or to “transform” it into an updated version. Another is to use the content and repurpose it for other social media platforms – if you plan to expand somewhere else that is.
Social Media: The Key to Extended Reach in Manufacturing Marketing
Advertising your industrial products on social media can be difficult at first. Provide value to your potential audience and engage with them to show that you’re an authority in the field. Sometimes you’ll need to change up your content to keep your audiences thrilled at what you’ll present to them. Always have your audiences in mind first and your brand second to ensure that they’ll stick around.
Don’t forget to check your brand’s metrics to see if your page is keeping up and see what your competitors are doing too. Pull these off correctly and your industrial marketing efforts will bear great results for your business.
Equipped with a Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) degree, Lucas Noah stands out in the digital content creation landscape. His current roles at Creative Outrank LLC and Oceana Express LLC showcase his ability to turn complex technology topics into engagin... Read more