Content marketing for manufacturing companies is essential for the success of any industrial business. A powerful way to deliver meaningful content is social media for manufacturers.
Social media is more than a way for friends and family to connect online. It’s an effective way for businesses to deliver highly targeted messages to specific audiences for maximum impact. Since more than half the world’s population has a social media account, it’s a great way to reach a wide range of people and encourage engagement that boosts visibility and conversions.
If you’re interested in driving website traffic for manufacturing companies, keep reading to learn how to capitalize on social media for manufacturers.
Key Takeaways
- Social media offers several benefits, from increasing brand awareness to helping you earn higher SERPs for greater visibility.
- It’s important to understand who uses which social media platform to ensure you’re reaching the right people with the right message.
- Create an effective five-step social media marketing strategy that delivers impactful results.
Benefits of Social Media for Manufacturing
Social media marketing for manufacturers is the process of creating branded posts that help promote your products and services, drive traffic to your website, and build deep relationships with your audience. It’s a powerful marketing tool because it:
- Increases brand awareness: You can include direct links to your site in your social media profile, bio page, and everyday posts. These help drive traffic to your business and generate brand awareness. Also, any time one of your followers engages with your posts, their contacts see your company’s name, expanding your reach and creating even more awareness about your business.
- Generates quality leads: You reach people who have elected to follow your business on social media because they’re already interested in what you offer. By reaching them with promotional material, you attract quality leads who are more likely to convert.
- Builds meaningful relationships: Social media allows you to interact with your audience on deeper levels. You can engage them with questions, contests, and educational content. You can monitor chat threads and forums to see what people are saying about your brand and what frustrations they may be experiencing. All of this helps build lasting relationships with your audience, which is valuable because 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers.
- Boosts SEO: Social media is one of the SEO basics for manufacturing and industrial companies. Search engines can crawl content you post on social platforms to find relevant keywords and useful information for audiences. They can help earn you high SEO rankings, granting you more visibility for greater success.
Social media for manufacturing is a valuable tool for connecting with your followers, building awareness, and promoting your products to a wide (yet very specific) audience. Not sure what content to post? The following video provides ideas for possible social media content that will connect with and engage your audience:
Know Which Social Media Platform to Use
Social media is an effective way to achieve brand marketing for manufacturing companies. Every social media platform has its own unique identity that attracts a specific audience demographic. It’s important to understand who is on which channel to deliver the right content to the right people. Here’s what you need to know about each social media platform.
1. Facebook
Facebook is the most popular social media platform, with nearly 2 billion global users every day. Its main audience is Generation X and Millennials, and it’s most effective for building brand awareness. The channel allows manufacturers to advertise to a highly targeted audience, using demographics like age, gender, and location radius. It’s a great tool for sharing photos, videos, and text.
2. Instagram
Instagram is a mobile app trendy with Millennials to share photos and videos. Companies with a public account can edit and publish content for followers and non-followers, expanding their reach and raising brand awareness. The platform offers advanced e-commerce tools so businesses can promote their brand and sell their products on the same app.
3. LinkedIn
Primarily used by Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials, LinkedIn is social media for professionals. Its audience is highly defined as working people looking to network and make professional connections. If you’re looking to connect with decision-makers and build an industry-specific network, LinkedIn is a great tool for your digital marketing strategy.
4. YouTube
YouTube reaches an audience diverse in gender and age. The second-most visited website in the world, YouTube helps businesses deliver long-form entertainment through video sharing. Brands can educate audiences and become a valuable resource through this social media platform, from product demonstrations to how-to tutorials.
5. TikTok
One of the newer social platforms, TikTok, is a way for businesses to share short-form, creative video content. Mainly used by Generation Z and Millennials, TikTok generates brand awareness and visibility through 15-second videos. They’re easily shareable and create engagement opportunities that help build a loyal following.
How to Create an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy
Take full advantage of the marketing opportunities that social media provides. Create an effective social media marketing strategy in just five steps.
Step 1: Set Goals
Before you can reach out to your audience, you need to know what you hope to get out of your social media campaign. Whether you’re trying to grow awareness, boost engagement, or drive traffic to your website, define your goals so you can create the right message, post to the right channel, and track the right results.
Step 2: Know Your Audience
Successful content marketing relies on delivering meaningful information that resonates. The only way to do that is to know who your audience truly is. Conduct some research to learn where they spend their time on social media. Find out what matters most to them, their pain points, and what they’re looking for in a solution to their problems. All of this can help you craft useful content delivered through the right channels.
Step 3: Determine Metrics
Decide which data you’re going to use to track your campaign’s success. Think about reach, clicks, engagement, and hashtag performance. These can reveal important details about your campaign, what’s working, and what needs improvement.
Step 4: Create Engaging Content
Use all of the information you’ve gathered to create content that resonates with and engages your audience. Social media posts are a great opportunity for your audience to get to know your brand on a more personal level. Content should reveal your identity to build trust and loyalty. Posts should be timely and relevant. To see how your posts stack up against your competition, you can conduct a competitive analysis and learn what you could be doing even better for maximum engagement.
Step 5: Assess Results
When it comes to social media, you must constantly assess your results to see which posts are performing well and which need tweaking. See what topics appeal to your audience, what headlines are attracting attention, and what content is getting the most engagement. Use this data to shape your current and future social media marketing campaigns.
Make the Most of Social Media Marketing
Shanahan Strategy is an experienced marketing agency that helps manufacturing and industrial businesses plan for growth and success. We’re attuned to the latest trends in marketing for manufacturing companies, and we can help you create a social media marketing campaign that builds awareness, drives traffic, and boosts sales.
Contact Shanahan Strategy today to learn how we can help you make the most of social media marketing.
