5 Tips on Social Media Engagement for Manufacturing Companies
Creating content to emphasize your brand, team, and core values is a strong factor behind your company’s social media presence. In the manufacturing industry, a social media presence is important if your company wants to stay current with the business world. This push for engagement can be useful for helping companies wanting to showcase how their services can benefit future clients and their project needs.
If you are a manufacturing company struggling to create a social media presence online, here are five tips on how to get the best engagement:
- Optimize Social Media Pages
Whether a company runs one social account or many, set goals and tactics are crucial in any social media plan. Create a method that works to boost your engagement and maintain organization for your brand by including these tactics:
- Setting up content calendars to keep a consistent posting schedule
- Keeping your pages updated
- Following pages (on platforms that allow you to follow other pages)
- Interacting with and reaching out to your followers
Content calendars allow you to stay organized and post on a consistent basis, boosting your page as you show up more often in your audience’s feed. Not only that, they also let you schedule posts ahead of time, giving you more time to review and avoid room for error. Fewer errors mean fewer headaches, better engagement, and the chance for your network’s awareness to grow. Calendars also give you the opportunity to think of outside-the-box content that showcases your company and products.
Make sure you’re keeping your pages up-to-date. Look at your profile picture, About Us section, bio, and even your company hours to ensure everything is accurate. Keeping information recent allows users to perceive your company as professional and efficient, helping you gain more trust with followers while giving them a positive experience when they visit your page. Also, try to maintain the same social media handles, profile photos, and information across all platforms to create a sense of professionalism, cohesion, and easier cross-promotion.
Take the time to engage with other users and create conversations. Conversing allows your brand to find its voice and build its persona while creating a sense of trust with its followers. Engaging with users helps boost your profile to show up more in followers’ feeds and create better brand recognition. Encouraging users to follow pages if they’re on LinkedIn or Facebook will help show off your industry knowledge and be directly aligned with your target audience.
Make sure your posts or whatever media you have has a solid Call to Action (CTA). CTAs prompts your viewers to engage with what you’re asking of them and provide benefits in the process. Pay attention to taglines and graphics you have in your posts. Use a CTA to promote free downloads of a whitepaper, product report, or discount code when you use a service.
Also be sure to use hashtags. You can create a personal hashtag for your brand that can prompt others to engage with it and learn more about your company! They can make social posts easier to access by search, and it targets niche groups to attract future followers.
- Set Manageable Goals for your Social Media Campaigns
Every social media campaign starts on the drawing board until they turn into measurable and manageable goals. Creating a campaign should begin with writing out a set of actions that you will follow through with later on in the campaign. In the business world, these are known as SMART goals.
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Sensitive. According to a Harvard study, 3% of MBA students who wrote down goals were 10x more successful than 97% of their peers ten years after graduation. Using this SMART guideline will help your social media campaigns become far more realistic and keeps your brand accountable for what you’re planning down the line. This tactic is a great way to add structure to all your social channels and help achieve results.
- Analyze your Social Media Metrics
Pay close attention to metrics and analytics. This data is crucial to creating a content schedule that keeps followers engaged and provides a manageable plan for your team. Not only do metrics help with planning, but they also give insight into what is and isn’t working for social media posts. They allow you to see the actual data behind how users engage with your social media pages and tell if you should continue with a campaign.
Each social platform allows you to look at your metrics in the account settings, or you can use helpful marketing tools like Sprout Social and Hootsuite. These insights offer a broader view of your campaigns as well as short-term and long-term trends. You can focus on different categories within your metrics including reach, engagement, followers, and conversions. Finding which platform best suits your company’s goals will help your social media campaigns and overall brand growth.
- Personalize and Build your Brand Awareness
Stay consistent with posting and make content pop with new or repurposed content. As mentioned before, having content calendars allows you to post consistently. Keeping up with posts boosts your page and helps it show up in followers’ feeds more. Although showing up in others’ feeds is a great goal to achieve, you want to make sure the content you post is memorable and on brand.
Use imagery and colorful graphics to show statistics or a poll, integrate colors that stand out in an infographic, or even making a theme that can resonate with your brand!
- Highlight Thought Leadership
Manufacturing companies have to find creative ways to communicate why people should give them their business. Companies can highlight their experience and proven success by creating meaningful content to post on social media. This can include blogs, whitepapers, case studies, newsletters, videos, and photos.
Posting blogs can help drive traffic to your website and position you as a subject matter expert, creating trust in your brand. Staying consistent with writing blogs creates a solid platform to share pertinent industry information and drive growth over time.
Newsletters also offer an outlet to build an audience, raise brand awareness, and cross-promote to social media platforms and third-party websites. Displaying graphics and promotions in your newsletters help grow interest in your company brand.
Whitepapers, and case studies educate your audience through practical, technical, and measurable information. Furthermore, case studies paint a picture of a challenging project application that require unique solutions and result in favorable and profitable outcomes. Whitepapers also provide an outlet to leverage an expert to build an audience by displaying their knowledge on a particular subject. An example of a whitepaper done by Synergy Solutions explains how manufacturing boosts growth. The research behind their information highlighted their knowledge and skillsets to their client base.
Videos help promote who you are to the world in a more active and visual format. They are able to tell stories about who you are as a company, showcase behind-the-scenes footage, illustrate customer satisfaction, and demonstrate how you work with others. A testimonial or case study can also be an engaging way to show a lot of important information in an eye-catching matter. How-to and demo videos are helpful and illustrative ways to show viewers your products and services.
Want to learn more about social media best practices and generate greater engagement and connections for your manufacturing company? Contact us today!