Social Media For Your Print Business (Part 2 of 2)

Executing an effective social media for your print business is easier said than done. After all, social media marketing can be ambiguous. ROI is hard to measure. “Going viral” is close to impossible.

So why even try? Because social media, across its various platforms, is and will always be one potential step in your future customers’ journey to your business. It doesn’t matter if you hate Facebook, if you think Twitter is dead, or if you don’t understand TikTok. Billions of humans use some kind of social media every day. Some (many) of them buy print or somehow influence the purchase of print. You have an opportunity to deliver your brand’s message to them.

In November 2022, I posted part 1 of this 2-part series: 6 Steps to Rebooting Print Business’ Social Media Strategy. That article explored the first three steps of your social plan:

Research
1. Audit your social presence
2. Research your competitors’ strategies
3. Research your target audience’s behavior and preferences
Strategy
1. Content and messaging
2. Content roadmap and calendar scheduling
Optimization of your Profile.
1. Brand consistency across all platforms
2. Set up your profiles (if necessary)

Here is part 2 where we explore steps 4-6: Content Creation, Posting & Engagement, and Monitoring & Optimization.

4. Content Creation: Know your goals. Know what your audience cares about.

To design and write content that gets read and produces results, you must know what you want to achieve. Do you want new visitors to your website? Or do you want new leads, orders, and customers? Next, who is your target audience and what do they want to achieve? Understanding these points will help you produce content that is relevant and potentially informational, persuasive, or entertaining to them.

Knowing your audience will help you prioritize your social platforms. Are they more likely to be on LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube? Video, photos, infographics, and text articles deliver information in different ways? What’s the best way to showcase your unique offering to engage the people who care about it? Creating a content calendar will help you lay out a coherent plan for your topics, formats, and channels over multiple weeks and months.

5. Posting & Engagement: Determine the frequency and timing. Engage with others first.

Following your content calendar, you can determine the frequency and timing of your posts. How often and when to post depends on your customers. For some content and target audience, posting once per week is enough. For others, it may be multiple times per time. As for timing, test and compare your engagement levels for your posts in the mornings, mid-days, evenings, and even weekends. Post when your target customers are most likely to be online. To build engagement with your followers, a great strategy is to like, comment, link to, and share others’ posts, not just your own.

6. Monitoring & Optimization: Monitor each campaign’s progress. Make adjustments as you go.

Monitor each campaign’s progress and make adjustments as you learn from the insights you capture. No one formula works all the time so you need to continually tweak the details of your prioritized social platforms, content topics, post frequency, post timing, and engagement style.

In general, as important as social media is to a marketing strategy, it cannot stand on its own. Don’t expect miracles. In fact, expect slow growth of followers and engagement if you are only doing organic social posts. Print marketing, direct mail, events, and paid advertising all complement a comprehensive marketing plan.

Read David’s post from last month: https://printmediacentr.com/digital-marketing-for-printers-in-2022-a-year-to-remember