5 Social Media Community Management Tips for Manufacturing Marketers

Manufacturing Marketing from CGT Marketing

Since a large portion of your audience is seeking and sharing technical information on social media, it’s important to remember that a critical element of an effective social media program is community management.

It’s often overlooked or not attended to on a consistent basis, yet it remains a key step to increasing engagement, which eventually can lead to business opportunities. In fact, 81% of engineers spend some time reading and/or sharing information with their LinkedIn networks each week.

What do you do when you see comments on your company’s LinkedIn page or other social media channels? Do you just disregard them because you’re busy? According to the 2022 State of Marketing to Engineers report, both LinkedIn and YouTube are considered especially valuable for helping engineers stay up to date on the latest trends and technologies.

Make community management a priority in 2022. Follow our tips.

1. Check on your community regularly.

To ensure you’re not missing important comments and messages, check up on your social media pages at least twice per day – once at the beginning of the business day and again at the end.

 2. Respond to every comment.

We recommend individually responding to each and every comment, even if it’s just a Like. This shows your customers that you care, encourages interaction on future posts, and increases engagement.

When comments go unnoticed, your consumers may feel ignored and get the wrong impression of your business, which can negatively impact your brand image.

3. Remain empathetic & genuine.

Make an effort to communicate with your audience more effectively.

Your responses should communicate that you care. Failing to be empathetic and mindful of what’s going on in the world can make your company appear insensitive, uninformed, and solely profit-driven.

Continually engage with your customers and prospects, and always make an effort to understand the challenges they’re facing.

Learn as much as you can about your audience as much as you can. Creating a buyer persona for each target market is very helpful when figuring out how to communicate. You can find a downloadable worksheet here.

 4. Humanize your brand.

Be friendly and conversational in your responses.

Avoid using the same comment for each reply, but rather respond in a thoughtful and effective manner that addresses each person’s concerns.

5. Listen to your community.

As a business executive or marketer at a manufacturing company, we know your schedule can be busy, but it’s worth dedicating some time each week to social listening.

Social listening involves actively monitoring your social media pages and various online forums for conversations about your brand and products/services. It’s all about hearing what your audience is expressing, learning how they are referring to and talking about your industry, and understanding what concerns they might have.

There’s no better way to learn about your target audience than from the source.

Some helpful free tools for social listening include:

  • Facebook interest groups
  • The comments sections of your posts (such as on YouTube)
  • LinkedIn interest groups
  • Twitter
  • Reddit communities
  • Google Trends
  • Mention.com (Free trial)

Discover what’s important to your audience and address their concerns.

Does your brand need assistance with community management? Give us a call at 631.842.4600.