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It’s Time for Machine Builders to Get Social Media Savvy

Consider these social media content strategies and advertising must-knows to enhance your Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest presence to gain customers and effectively tell your company’s story.

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The pandemic has forced OEMs to rely on digital communications, which has caused many manufacturers to pay closer attention to their marketing and social media strategies. In a digital world, it’s more important than ever to effectively communicate your brand story through social media to engage existing and new customers as well as to attract potential employees who are looking to LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest, to learn more about prospective companies as they consider their next career move. 

More than 3.6 billion people are on social media, which is expected to increase to 4.41 billion in 2025, according to Sprout Social, a social media software company. And right now, social media users spend around 144 minutes on social media every single day.Scan this QR code with your smartphone to follow OEM Magazine on social media.Scan this QR code with your smartphone to follow OEM Magazine on social media.

There are many ways to participate in social media as a manufacturer and there are many platforms to engage with. Whether you already have a strong social media presence, or your company is hoping to boost its activity and engage with customers, suppliers, or the present and future workforces, these best practices will help you identify a strategy so that your company can stay consistent with its social media goals.


Read article   Read this story on how OEMs can make marketing meaningful

Social media best practices for manufacturers

1. Take advantage of social media’s strengths.

One of the biggest advantages to becoming more active on social channels is the ability to reach your prospects where they already are consuming media and without email’s spam blocking or regulations. There is also an immediacy with social that’s difficult to achieve elsewhere, as you have direct insights into your audience’s needs and message preferences in ways like no other.

2. Determine your voice, audience, and goals for your company’s social media presence.

Whether you are embarking on your social media journey or wanting to improve your approach, it’s important to have a discussion about your company’s mission, the story you want to tell on social media, as well as who you want your audience to be. Having these conversations can help your marketing team create a strong plan for social media that provides you with the results you’re looking for, according to Clare Blodgett, CEO, Clareity Marketing and Principal of The Sourced Collective. The Sourced Collective specializes in helping manufacturers find their voice and drive engagement on social media.

“Great brands are built, they’re not marketed,” Blodgett says. “You build a great brand by having that foundation and an understanding of who you are. Then, having a plan that you’re going to consistently execute over time versus just jumping into something without structure, which is a recipe for failure. We encourage manufacturers to start with a really strong and well-articulated brand strategy and that sense of ‘who we are.’ So now, they have something that they can consistently communicate to their audience through social media.”

While it may seem straightforward that your social media audience should be your customer, there may be other people you want to reach on social. Blodgett shares how to narrow in:

“When we engage with a manufacturer, the leadership team has one idea of what they want to see for their marketing, but the salespeople have a different idea of what they want to see, and then marketing may have a different idea, too,” Blodgett says. “So, we interview each sales team member and ask them what are your clients asking you for? What are they asking from you? What do they want to see? Do they need to see a video? Do they want to see more photos of the application? They’re the ones with boots on the ground so asking the sales team and doing that research will give you a deep understanding of the audience you should be speaking to.”

3. Create a content calendar and schedule social media posts.

One of the most important factors in growing your social media presence and audience is consistency, Blodgett says. “Hashtags are important to use if they are specific to the people you need to reach, but the biggest audience development tool is posting to your accounts consistently.”

Morrison Container Handling Solutions’ marketing communications manager Allison Wagner uses a content calendar and other planning tools to make sure Morrison is always present on social media.

“We use platforms like HubSpot, which has been really helpful for us from a social media scheduling perspective,” Wagner says. “It will allow you to really build out that content into a calendar. And if you put it to paper and spend two hours every couple of weeks scheduling and laying out your next two weeks of content, it allows you to maintain that presence while not actually taking up too much of your time.”

4. Harness the power of video.

Morrison Container Handling Solutions has been uploading videos of their equipment running on their own floor for more than 10 years, with some of their videos amassing views near the 100,000 mark. Video content comes naturally for Morrison as it is company policy to shoot video for every single system that leaves their facility because everything they build is highly customized. The Morrison team uses a Canon DSLR camera to shoot these videos, but they also use an iPhone to take videos and edit them in Adobe Premier Pro.

“Within the past year, we are trying to post a couple of times a month, if not more, because we have such a backlog of video content,” Wagner says. “We get a lot of calls from people who say they saw our equipment on YouTube and that they need something like it. Because what we do is so custom and unique, YouTube has really allowed us to showcase the array of solutions that we can provide. And it really also serves as inspiration for people to watch and discover what they could need. We see people use YouTube all the time to discover what type of packaging equipment they need. And it just makes sense to be where your customers are at.”

5. Keep videos short, but informative.

The sweet spot for videos that perform well on YouTube and other social media platforms is under two minutes, according to Jon Nigbor, president of Media 272, a North American B2B video production company. 

“People are willing to watch a video one to two minutes,” Nigbor says. “You have to be brief while also telling your audience a lot. When you shoot video, you may end up with 10- or 15-minutes’ worth of content, which you have to cut down to two minutes. You’re only going to use 10% of what you capture, and that’s where it may be beneficial to hire a media company to help you organize information and edit these videos to perform well. Customer success story videos are the most relevant and influential videos.  If a company could get their customers to show and tell how their machines work those videos are considerably more effective than a company demonstration video.”