This year, for #PrintHERstoryMonth at #GirlsWhoPrint, I had the honor of running the social channels (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram) and posting in the LinkedIn Group as we celebrated over 50 women who shared their print origin stories and advice for advancing in our industry.
I learned a lot. I improved my skills immensely. And I thought it would help to share some of the takeaways in case some of these issues could apply to you as you attempt to up your social media game. Because as great as you think you are, you can always get better.
Truth.
Here are just a few of the things I realized as the month of March 2021 marched on.
Establishing good activity and engagement in social media is a muscle. The more you work it the stronger it gets. I got so much better and faster at it as the month went on. If at the beginning of March, it would take me 30 minutes to post the same story on 4 channels, but at the end of the month, the same tasks took me less than 15.
The results were off the charts. As of the last day of March, the #PrintHERstoryMonth hashtag was responsible for more than 9,567,000 impressions on Twitter. I can only imagine that that number will continue to rise as more people discover the hashtag. We got another 81,000 impressions on Instagram, which historically has not been a channel that we have focused on in the movement. However, we shared each story there and found a new audience of people who spend more time there than any other channels, and we made some new friends, found some new inspiration, and gained several new followers. We also garnered more than 2000 likes throughout the month. Over on LinkedIn, we grew the Girls Who Print Group by over 300 women in one month, and as of press time, we are remarkably close to 8000 members worldwide. And while we cannot track the results of the hashtag on LinkedIn and Facebook, you need only to search the hashtag on those platforms to discover how many different organizations and individuals were using the hashtag, including media companies and museums as examples of the ones that surprised me the most.
Nothing replaces community building. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that connection matters. And we all had to redefine what connection meant. There are nearly a dozen or more women that I met through the Girls Who Print community in the past 14 months that I consider friends. These are the kind of people that, even though we have never met face to face, would help me if I asked, and I hope that they know that I would do the same for me.
As early as five years ago, I used to be fearful and not a little bit skeptical of social media. There was a lot I did not know. And if I’m being honest, five years later, if measured against the best of the best, I am a newbie at best. I have a long way to go and I learn something new every day; sometimes from my 8 and 11-year-olds.
Today, my goal is to engage, entertain, and educate my growing community. Showing up and doing the work is, for me, the best way to learn, improve, and PROVE that social media is worth the investment of time, energy, and passion. If you are a skeptic, I hope I have convinced you to jump into the game. If you are already dabbling in social media, I would say, “GO DEEPER” and if you are expert level, I say “good on you”, and I aspire to be just like you when I grow up.
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As a sales and marketing coach and consultant at Success In Print, and Girl #2 at #GirlsWhoPrint, Kelly Mallozzi advocates for graphic arts companies to keep fighting to keep print relevant. She may be irreverent, but what she lacks in convention, she makes up for in smart-assery.
Kelly is a regular co-host on the #GirlsWhoPrint Podcast along with Deborah Corn. She is also a mentor to several future sales stars and she connects to them through the Women’s Print Mentoring Network. Check out her book, co-authored by Bill Farquharson: Who’s Making Money at Digital/Inkjet Printing…and How. Kelly also occasionally guest blogs at Printing Impressions and you can see her most recent posts here.
Connect With Kelly: Twitter @SuccessInPrint and on LinkedIn where she regularly posts and is even often interesting.
