Really? 9 points to consider and thousands of industrial users waiting for you!
Do you remember back when people thought that fax machines were ridiculous? And then email… it’s too hard and time consuming… plus, who would use that? A cell phone? Why would anyone need a big, bulky phone in their car? A DVR? My VCR works just fine.
Are you stuck in the same mind set? I hope my clients and friends in the industrial world will take an honest look at social media. And I sincerely hope that you won’t simply dismiss it using common objections I hear every day.
Time and again when I talk to my industrial and manufacturing clients, they say that nobody in industry uses social media. They say that they don’t have anything to say. They say that they don’t have the time for social media.
Really? You have nothing interesting to say? Don’t you want anyone to know about your expertise? Don’t you ever have any good articles to share? And consider these 9 points:
- Tools like HootSuite.com and BufferApp.com make Twitter and Facebook updates and replies very easy. There dozens of such tools;
- Using a social media schedule can keep you on track and, combined with the tools mentioned herein, allow you to invest only an hour or two per week to get your message out;
- OnlyWire.com serves as a multiplier by automating distribution of one blog post to 30-40 different social media and bookmarking sites automatically and simultaneously. A new tool I’m investigating would ramp up that number to thousands of back links to every blog post you do by combining the power of 50 or more similar companies cross posting for each other… all automated through RSS feeds;
- Your blog posts, tweets and/or Facebook posts can be embedded in your website so your site visitors will always see updates from you!
- You can tap undiscovered talent in your own company to run your social media effort (or hire an intern!) Ask around to see who is into social media. And don’t limit yourself to office staff. You’d be surprised how internet savvy and social media savvy some of your shop floor workers might be!
- Age demographics are changing the nature of industrial companies… as younger workers rise in industrial and manufacturing companies nationwide, you can be sure they’re social media savvy;
- Some companies use social media internally to communicate and collaborate within their own company;
- Your social media posts can be morphed into an email newsletter for your clients and prospects. They surely won’t see every post you make. So recycle and re-purpose those posts into an email newsletter so they’ll have another chance to see your brilliance;
- Social media activity carries enormous search engine optimization (SEO) value.
So now you might say, “nice in theory, but is anyone actually using social media in the industrial world?”
- GlobalSpec has 2,757 followers on Twitter (see GlobalSpec’s tweets)
- ThomasNet.com has 4,850 followers on Twitter (see tweets by ThomasNet)
- Mfg.com has 13,767 followers on Twitter (see tweets by Mfg.com)
- LinkedIn.com has many active industrial and manufacturing groups and robust ongoing discussions;
- the “Metal Fabrication” group on LinkedIn has 4,314 members;
- the “Fabricators & Manufacturers Association, International (FMA)” group has 4,482 members;
- the “Fasteners Industry” group has 7,676 members
- the “Material Handling Professionals” group has 6,302 members
- 2,646 tweets in the last 7 days used the identifying hashtag #manufacturing according to Topsy.com.
- Also according to Topsy, the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) was referenced on Twitter about 100 times in the past 30 days with the hashtag #imts, and that show is still six months away. Also, check out this IMTS blog post about the increasing rate of social media usage among IMTS exhibitors.
- YouTube – any decent website today should have videos and a YouTube channel
- Industrial Twitter – an always updating “mashup” of tweets from 145 industrial companies
- Even Baer Marketing already has 186 followers on Twitter!
I bet some of these folks using social media are your customers and potential customers!
So yes, there are possibilities for social media in an industrial company, and you can’t ignore it forever. Twitter and LinkedIn are currently the most interactively used social media sites.
So the question is… will you be an early adopter or a late adopter? Will you cede that space to your competitors or will you plant your flag and get out ahead of them? Do you want to enter the game when your competitor has 500 followers, or would you rather be in the lead with 500 quality industrial followers?
Get involved… we’ll have more on how to get going in social media on future posts. And let us know if you have questions. We welcome your comments!
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by Brian Baer, BaerMarketingNetwork.com