Social media marketing for manufacturers is a digital marketing strategy that’s ripe with opportunity. Creating social media content that resonates with your ideal customer can turn casual social media followers into lifelong buyers and your brand into an industry authority. Social Media Marketing Best Practices Social media marketing is a digital marketing strategy that follows its own set of rules and best practices. Within those guidelines, creating compelling content looks different per industry, target audience and marketing goal. As you begin planning your manufacturing company’s social media marketing strategy, following these general guidelines is a great place to start: 1. Conduct Target Market Research Consider the demographic data of your manufacturing business’s ideal customer. Identifiers such as life stage, age, occupation, geographic location, home ownership status, education level and interests can help your social media marketing team craft content that’s immediately relevant to your manufacturing business’s audience. Researching the demographics of individual social media platform users can give your building manufacturing business a good idea of which social media platforms your target audience is on and how to best market to them. Your marketing team may find that your ideal customer engages more with one social media platform than another. With these data points in mind, your manufacturer’s social media marketing team will be able to craft compelling content with confidence from day one. 2. Leverage a Multi-Channel Approach While multi-channel social media marketing is generally recommended, it’s important to research which platforms your ideal customers are on the most and invest more heavily into those platforms. Once you’ve identified which social media platform will offer the most ROI, establish a repeatable, sustainable and consistent strategy that leverages that platform’s algorithms. It’s likely that your manufacturer’s ideal customer spends time on multiple social media platforms. Expanding your manufacturer’s presence across all social media platforms ensures multiple touchpoints between your target audience and your brand. Multiple touchpoints can help keep your manufacturing business top-of-mind for in-market consumers and increase your brand’s overall reach. 3. Create Video-based Content Video-based content and ads tend to outperform static image and text content and ads across social media platforms. When drafting social media marketing strategies, make sure to include plenty of video assets to capitalize on their virality. When creating video assets, it’s important to shoot vertically. Vertically oriented videos outperform landscape videos and offer a superior user experience. Static images and text content shouldn’t be ignored, however. Designing these posts to offer immediate value and represent your brand well can help create a strong connection between consumers and your brand just like video. When consumers and potential customers visit your manufacturer’s social media profiles, its feed and timeline should be full of relevant content so that first-time viewers get an immediate feel for the brand. 4. Measure Key Metrics Instead of Vanity Metrics Metrics such as likes, impressions and comments are called vanity metrics — they look and feel nice, but they don’t have a strong connection to valuable conversions, sales or brand loyalty. Key metrics like engagement rate, follower growth rate, conversion rate and sentiment analysis offer much more value to your manufacturing business’s growth, its social media presence and future social media marketing campaigns. A well-performing social media presence takes expertise, consistency over time and sometimes more resources than you might have readily available. In this case, hiring an agency to handle your manufacturing business’s social media marketing might be the best move. Venveo’s clients experience a higher than average engagement rate and their social media accounts. Learn more about Venveo here. 5. Develop a Consistent Posting Schedule A consistent posting schedule is a bedrock best practice for successful social media marketing strategies for manufacturers. The algorithms in social media platforms reward and serve accounts that post consistently over accounts that don’t. The algorithms also reward and serve accounts that make native content instead of cross-posting and sharing. For example, if you create a Reel on Instagram and share it to your business’s Facebook Timeline or Story, that content is more likely to be outperformed by a piece of content created and posted native to the platform. Repurposing content is an effective digital marketing and social media marketing strategy. However, it’s important to repurpose thoughtfully and use native posting and creation tools instead of cross-share options. 6. Incorporate Trending Audio, Hashtags and Post Formats The most important element for virality with Reels and TikToks is the audio. The algorithms favor trending audio over almost any other factor within these short-form videos. To greatly increase your chances for a viral video, your manufacturing business’s Reels and TikToks should include a variety of trending audio and sounds. Becoming an audio trendsetter is another way to increase your manufacturing business’s reach. Others can save your video’s audio to use on their own videos and soon you’ve started a trend that exposes your brand to millions of eyes. Utilizing trending, relevant and descriptive hashtags is also an essential element for short-form videos, static images and text posts. Keep in mind that while trending audio is important for increasing your chances of a viral video, many social media users scroll with their volume off. To keep attention and add value, make sure your video’s captions are well-crafted. Whichever format of post you choose, following the current trends and best practices for each will give the post the best chance at performing well and offering maximum value for your building manufacturing business. Social Media as Lead Generator Social media marketing has recently evolved into a lead generation tool for manufacturers as well as a brand awareness tool. With more and more consumers (especially Gen Z) using social media platforms like TikTok for search instead of Google, the ROI possible for social media marketing has skyrocketed.The manufacturing industry isn’t saturated on social media yet, meaning there’s ample room for high ROI and building brand loyalty. There are many other benefits that building manufacturers can reap with a strong social media presence. Benefits of Social Media Marketing For Manufacturers 1. Increased Brand Visibility and Recognition We’re in an attention-currency economy and social media captures consumer attention. When your building manufacturing business has a strong presence on social media, you’re ensuring increased brand visibility and recognition. Advertising in the places where your ideal customer spends their time and attention is vital for your manufacturing business’s growth and ROI. Every industry is on social media, and the opportunity is wide open for building manufacturers and building manufacturer marketers to develop a creative and compelling social media presence. 2. Lead Generation and Customer Engagement Don’t Miss the #1 Live Event for Building Products Sales & Marketing Leaders! Building Products Customer Workshop December 3-4 | Nashville, TN - Only a Few Seats Left" Grab Your Ticket Before It’s Gone As aforementioned, social media used to primarily be a brand awareness strategy. Today, it’s transforming into a powerful lead generation and customer engagement and service tool. Shoppable content, influencer marketing and AI chatbots for direct messages are just some of the technologies responsible for this shift. 3. Competitive Advantage and Market Insights Because social media marketing is still a relatively new strategy in the building manufacturer space, a strong social media presence offers an unmatched competitive advantage for your business. There’s a large opportunity for unique market insights beyond what traditional market research methods can obtain. Regularly conducting sentiment analyses by reading through comments, direct messages, social reviews and mentions can give your manufacturer’s social media marketing team direct insight into the feelings of your ideal customers and how they view your brand. How Manufacturers Can Win at Social Media Marketing When drafting a social media marketing strategy for your manufacturing business, following the foundational best practices above is your first step. As a review: Conduct target market researchLeverage a multi-channel approachCreate video-based contentMeasure key metrics instead of vanity metricsDevelop a consistent posting scheduleIncorporate trending audio, hashtags and post formatsEstablish a comprehensive brand voiceBenchmark performance of other marketing channels, e.g. existing traffic from search enginesOnce these best practices are in place, you can begin tailoring your building manufacturing content to your niche audience and specific marketing goals.It’s important to continuously test, experiment and analyze the effectiveness of your manufacturer’s social media strategy. For example, you may come to realize that your target audience responds best to a certain format of post (i.e. video, text or image) and that you have an opportunity to capitalize on that type of post.Handling social media marketing for your manufacturing business in-house or outsourcing it is an important discussion topic. In-house social media marketing can offer your business a seamless connection to your social media and could be a budget-friendly option.However, outsourcing social media to an experienced social media manager or digital marketing agency can offer more expertise, creativity, professionalism and consistency for your brand’s social media presence.When making this decision, ask yourself the following questions: Does my current, in-house marketing team have the bandwidth to take on social media marketing while maintaining their current responsibilities?Does anyone in-house have the expertise needed to create and oversee effective social media campaigns?Do we have personnel to work with camera gear and editing software?Will my social media marketing goals remain stunted without additional help?Are we able to scale social media marketing at a desired pace with the in-house resources available?Does my in-house team have the capacity to foresee industry trends and pivot to stay ahead of the game?If you find that your in-house marketing team is able to tackle the challenge of social media marketing, congratulations! If you learn that you may need some assistance, rest assured that there are hundreds of digital marketing agencies that specialize in social media marketing for manufacturers. Unique Social Media Marketing Strategies For Manufacturers Getting ahead with your building manufacturer’s social media marketing is about pleasing both social media algorithms and your target audience. If you handle social media marketing in-house or if you choose to outsource it, creating content around the following pillars will give your manufacturing business a creative leg-up: 1. Showcase Previous Work The age-old adage of “show, don’t tell” holds up even in social media marketing for manufacturers. Instead of creating posts that directly tell your audience that your manufacturing business is the best around, showcase previous work or happy customer testimonials. Creating a review marketing strategy can be helpful in generating reviews and testimonials. A simple social media strategy to gather and showcase previous work is to provide customers with a hashtag to use alongside their posts or to let them know to tag your social media account whenever they make a post about your work. Get in the habit of taking photos of your work or hire a professional photographer to capture the work your manufacturing business has done to streamline the process. 2. Thought Leadership Advertising expertise and industry thought leadership can build trust and authority with your manufacturer’s target audience and the industry at large. Sharing content such as blog articles, webinars and industry expert interviews on your social media profiles provides a variety of valuable content for your business’s followers to engage with and demonstrates professional activity within your industry. Consider getting your manufacturing business’s leadership involved in this strategy. Encouraging your business’s executives to make posts about their personal lives, how they interact with their employees and how they individually think and lead in the industry can humanize your brand and make it more accessible. When your manufacturing company shares these human elements, your business can act as an inspiration and leader for other manufacturing companies looking to grow. 3. Behind-the-Scenes Posting behind-the-scenes processes and personalities humanizes your manufacturing business and makes it more accessible to your followers. Behind-the-scenes content is a popular and powerful form of content because it shows a layer of unedited vulnerability and the nitty-gritty realities of the business that others can easily connect with. A few ideas for behind-the-scenes content pieces are: Employee spotlightsProjects in progressEducational videosCompany events, charity involvements or celebrations Manufacturing ASMR (recorded safely) 4. User-Generated Content Campaigns User-generated content (UGC) is a style of video. UGC is made by real product users, normally with their phones and filmed in their real homes or a space they normally frequent (i.e. their workplaces or nearby parks, not a professional videography studio). UGC videos can be paid advertisements or organic. Your manufacturing company can acquire UGC videos by one of two ways: Encouraging your social media followers to upload video reviews and tag your business on the postHire an agency to connect your business with a professional UGC creator. Entire agencies are dedicated to pairing businesses with UGC talent. Your manufacturing business can hire UGC talent and give them a script and a product sample to record. Your business can take the raw, unedited footage and create your desired ad or have the talent edit and complete the video ad. UGC ads are powerful forms of video ads as they blend in seamlessly with social media feeds and have an authentic, unproduced feel. UGC ads help to humanize your manufacturer’s brand and make its value readily accessible to potential customers. If you’re ever stuck with what to post, grouping ideas into these categories can help: Entertainment Education Promotion Most of your manufacturer’s social media posts should be entertainment and education-based. Promotion posts such as sales, event invites and product spotlights should be minimal. Entertainment and education posts offer immediate value to your followers and make promotion posts more acceptable and impactful when they are posted. Common Social Media Pitfalls to Avoid Avoiding wrong and amateur social media strategies is just as important as implementing the right strategies. Here are some common pitfalls to avoid: Not responding to follower comments, tags, mentions and direct messagesPosting mostly promotional and sales content Engaging in controversial topics such as politics or religion Posting irregularly and without consistent branding Not leveraging video content and only posting static images and text-based content Ignoring current algorithm trends like audio, hashtags and video lengthJumping from trend to trend without determining if it will be useful to your brand or social media marketing goals Steering clear of these common social media mistakes will protect your manufacturer’s brand from ineffective strategies and potential PR mishaps. Final Thoughts Social media marketing for manufacturers can be a surprisingly lucrative and effective strategy. However, randomly posting without a plan and a marketing goal will leave your marketing team frustrated with poor and inconsistent results. When your manufacturing company employs social media marketing best practices and adheres to platform algorithm trends, its social media accounts will begin to turn casual followers into lifelong customers. Venveo proudly stands in the gap between building materials and manufacturing companies and marketing success. Our proven digital growth processes guide your business in finding and connecting with your audience online while compelling them to take action. Contact us to learn more about how Venveo can help grow your building materials and manufacturing business’s online presence.