Using Social Media to Connect with Print Buyers
Many print companies tend to take one of two approaches when it comes to social media:
- Throw a few bucks at it ‘because you need to do it’ without any expectations of ROI.
- Ignore it completely.
Both of these approaches are understandable. With so many different platforms and options, it can be difficult to even know where to start. Attribution is another concern. If you are going to invest in social media, you should understand the metrics to determine whether you are getting any return.
Fortunately, there are a few practices any printer can adopt immediately that will, in time, pay off. These practices don’t require special tech-savviness and don’t cost anything to implement.
Using social media effectively as a printer comes down to one over-arching goal: connecting with print buyers and your industry peers. So, let’s look at the 3 steps you should take to turn your company’s social media accounts into business-boosting tools.
Share, Don’t Sell
The first step is to understand the landscape. As the name suggests, social media encourages interaction and isn’t necessarily designed for self-promotion in the same way traditional media is. Accounts used for business purposes occupy the space as personal accounts and play by the same rules of engagement.
That is to say, while people do expect to see businesses posting and sharing on social media, etiquette standards do exist. Overt selling and advertising are generally frowned upon on all channels. People use social media primarily for entertainment and connecting, not shopping.
The best way to approach social media is to focus on actual engagement and being a thought leader in the industry. Share articles, comment on insightful posts, be a part of the communities relevant to your industry. How do you find the time and motivation to do all that without any immediate gain in the form of sales and leads? Well, that leads us to our next point…
Make a Social Media Schedule
Understanding the difference between sharing and selling is a great first step, but to really get a social media strategy off the ground you need to do 2 things:
- Assign a social media champion. Without this crucial step, you won’t be able to sustain any sort of consistent social media efforts in your business. Find someone in your organization, most likely on the sales or marketing side, to take charge of the actual posting and connection-building on your social media accounts.
- Set a schedule. Brainstorm the types of posts and engagements you think will be most beneficial for portraying your company as a helpful and engaged member of the online community. Make a goal of how often you want your social media champion to do the work.
Once this groundwork is laid, the rest is simply repetition. As time goes by and your accounts start to gain more followers, you’ll be able to start strengthening connections with prospects and current customers. Which leads us to our next step.
Move Promising Conversations Off the Web
The third step in this process is to be ready to make the vital move off of social media when any conversations start to show promise.
Social media is a great way to build your brand image and identify leads, but it will have a limited impact on the actual sales funnel – especially with a product involving a consultative sale. Social media is where you build interest and start conversations. From there, it’s a matter of identifying prospects and reaching out to see if there’s an interest and moving to the next stage of the conversation.
Every time you get a comment on a post be sure to respond. If you start a conversation on Twitter about some topical print industry issue, keep track of the people who engage. This is how you turn social media into a prospecting tool.
To recap, social media is too popular to be ignored. Savvy print buyers in all sorts of industries use social media every day, so if you want to be where they are, it’s time to jump in. Choose your social media champion, develop a schedule, and start making those connections.
