Social Media Success

Adding social media marketing to your marketing arsenal can provide your shop with added customers, sales, and profits. But experts acknowledge that to achieve success with social media, you must be all in. Half-hearted attempts to reach customers through social media can be worse than no effort at all.

That said, it’s up to you to decide if social media marketing will be worth the resources you’ll need to invest. It may be, given all the following benefits. First, social media can help you humanize your brand and spur customers to become brand loyal. It can permit you a highly visible way to respond quickly to customer concerns and questions. Social media can also positively impact your website’s search results. And, because it’s much less expensive than running ads or doing mailings, using social media can reduce overall marketing costs.

For the latest thinking on this still-evolving marketing practice, we turned to a trio of experts knowledgeable in the printing industry’s use of social media.

In the Mix

Should every print company be using social media? No, said Tawnya Starr, president of Lincoln, NE-based PrinterPresence by Firespring.

The company is a provider of websites designed specifically for printing companies, from quick print shops to large, commercial printers. In addition, PrinterPresence offers ancillary marketing services that allow printing companies to promote and market themselves to current and prospective customers.

Not every company should use social media. Only those companies that have resources dedicated and committed to engaging on a daily basis with the channels of social media should be in social media marketing, Starr said. “It is ineffective to use social media if it isn’t being engaged with daily,” she added.

“That’s where a lot of printing companies struggle. They are challenged by the extent of their daily production demands, and therefore have no dedicated person handling the social media. And then it falls out of date, and is stagnant.

“If what is out there in the world about any company didn’t happen in the last 24 hours, it can actually reflect poorly on the business. It can suggest that they’re not up to date and don’t care about their image. And it is better not to engage with social media than to engage and let it become dated.”

John Foley, CEO of Interlink One/Grow Socially, in Wilmington, MA, said social media should be part of a shop’s marketing mix. Shops should be using social media, he says, but not by itself. Those companies that do use social media by itself tend not to obtain the kind of results sought. Often, they launch a social campaign because they thought they needed to do so.

So what are their incentives to include social media in the mix?

“First, they want to be where their audience is, and second, they want to drive inquiries to their website. Social media are tools to drive that traffic, engage, communicate, share and be a thought leader,” said Foley, whose Interlink One provides marketing software as a service platform. Grow Socially helps service providers grow inquiries and leads via strategic marketing services.        

Echoing the sentiment that social media is but one part of the portfolio is Barbra Bannon, president and CEO of Epsom, NH-based Spark Evolution, an inbound marketing agency helping companies grow by means of rich, interesting and meaningful content. “Social media is just one gear that turns in the overall marketing machine,” she said. “It is one distribution channel for your content, but not the whole picture. In fact, social media is used for many things.”

Those uses include starting conversations with your client base to create a feedback loop directly with your community, and providing useful advice and resources on an ongoing basis to your community. One additional use missed by many is building relationships with strategic partners, Bannon said.

“The environment has changed drastically from one where information was scarce, pre-Internet, to information overload in our modern day,” she added.

“It’s very easy for a consumer to price shop and compare companies. It’s critical you have a professional website with lots of content to help the consumer make a decision on what is best for them. Your goal in marketing is to be the resource to help them navigate the marketplace. And if you aren’t the best choice, refer them to one that would fit their needs.

“Be consumer focused and transparent, and you will become a trusted source for your clients.”

The website is the core marketing asset and main gear in the machine, she added. Social media, PR, advertising, and many others are the other gears. Content is the fuel that keeps the machine running and generating leads.

How to Start

Start by identifying social media channels your target audience is using, Foley said. There is an abundance of research available that can divulge that information. He believes YouTube, as the number two search engine, should be used on a daily basis. “Every time we post a video, and put the keywords around it, it’s picked up by Google and can optimize your search. It’s fresh, updated content, which is what Google looks for and can improve your search rankings.”

Starr is convinced that when it comes to launching a social media marketing campaign, it is best to pick one social media channel. An example might be LinkedIn. “[The shop] should use the tools and services that allow businesses to manage their social media presence,” Starr said.

“They can do one engagement, and that will push to multiple channels or sources. For example, if they’re engaging on LinkedIn, there are tools that can allow that engagement to be on Twitter, or on Facebook.”

Many companies are showing preference for YouTube. Videos being consumed on YouTube can be either informational or entertaining, Starr said.

“It has to be either entertaining, meaning clever, fun and visual, or geared toward educating a prospect about how their business can profit,” she added.

“For instance, it could focus on what role direct mail could play in making a company more profitable. Or it could talk about the power of variable data in a fun, engaging way. Social media is about content, the message shared through channels, whether LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Instagram.”

The printing space is not an exceptionally competitive arena, Starr noted. The majority of print buyers are purchasing in local markets and selecting among five or 10 companies. In short, printing is not like selling a widget or a t-shirt to a national audience. Moreover, she said, search engines are more and more frequently changing the rules and how content impacts the rankings.

“Printers should be discouraged from putting too much weight on social media as a determinant of search engine rankings. There are few print buyers following PSPs on social media; they don’t talk about anything exciting.”

Foley pointed out that the social media marketing effort shouldn’t be any different from any other marketing effort. Questions still need to be asked. Is it relevant? Is it the right message? Is it the right target audience?

“It needs a plan,” he pointed out. “What should be included is whatever is specified in the strategic plan. It’s the same thing with who we are trying to reach and what channels we should use. The first thing that needs to be done is the strategic plan for the marketing.

“When we get to the online side, we need to think about how our website is going to engage and capture information from our marketing efforts, how search engine optimization will improve our organic search ranking by using content distributed in the social channels, what kind of content is needed and how often it needs to be shared through my channels. It’s only as time-consuming as your strategy calls for.”

Quality Content

Starr has not found a specific content mechanism that works better than others within the print space. There are few printing companies that have written white papers, or created blog posts, because they aren’t great writers, she said.

Businesses need to find good partners capable of creating exceptionally good content, and relating their stories, Starr asserted. Such a story might focus upon a company whose ongoing problems were solved by that print service provider, with the result that the company became much more profitable. The before-and-after performance could be quantified through sales or profit figures.

“Perhaps the marketing pieces had not been getting the right response, or their budgets had been cut but they still needed to generate print materials,” Starr said. “There are so many different stories they can relate, about problems they have solved. Social media is all about an emotional connection, and telling stories in a provocative way is one way to create that emotional connection.”

Foley said content needs to be relevant to the target audience. What’s more, it should be relevant in solving an issue or challenge the audience faces, or in helping the audience be more knowledgeable. That content can take the form of white papers, e-papers, videos, posts, photos, articles or press releases.

Bannon urges brainstorming different issues your buyer would find valuable, and then beginning to create blog posts focused on those topics.

“You need to have a very clear understanding of your buyers and what drives them to purchase,” she said. “I don’t mean things like ‘grow their business.’ I mean addressing core psychological human drivers like success, freedom and power. How can your company help them achieve those things?”

A good starting point is to write down all questions your customers often ask, and use these as topic areas, Bannon said. Once content is created, repurpose it. “For every popular blog post that received great attention, create different pieces like an ebook, webinar or infographic,” she said.

Other steps Bannon recommends include the following. Find strategic partners to co-promote and co-create content with you. Build a content marketing strategy that includes search engine optimization, social media, public relations and advertising. Don’t forget to include in your strategy tools like content recommendation engines and re-marketing campaigns.

“Make sure you are collecting tons of data and integrating it all together to create a robust understanding of your customers,” Bannon said.

“Use a platform like Hubspot to integrate your customer relationship management with your website and social media activities. And ensure you are analyzing that data on a regular basis. The success rate for companies using data to drive marketing is significant.”