Latest Press

Social Media — A Valuable Marketing Tool During COVID-19

By Maureen Lepke

All industries are feeling the effects of Coronavirus. Manufacturing and industrial companies are not an exception. So what can you do in a time where trade shows are cancelled, everyone is working from home and trying to find new ways to get their company’s message out? The answer is social media. Social media is a low-cost, yet valuable marketing tool that allows your company to talk to your customers every day throughout the month.

What’s the benefit of having an agency do your social media for you? We have a full-time social media director here at the agency and we are strictly industrial so we understand your world. We are consistently posting 5 days a week. Social media is usually the first thing that slows down when a company gets busy. It becomes an afterthought when social media should be a critical part of your marketing strategy.

Here’s how we work. We’ll start by setting up a phone call to discuss your strategy and messaging. Then, we take your customer and lead lists and begin to follow those companies to build your audience, ensuring that you’ll be connected to the right people. We do research to find the best hashtags to extend the reach of your posts and we are constantly gathering the latest industry news to share with your followers. By sharing industry news, your company becomes a thought leader in your industry. People see you sharing industry related news and not just promoting your company.

Social media is also a great way to shout out the latest PR pickups. We send out PR for our clients every month to thousands of publications. When PR gets picked up, we share it on social media tagging the publication who posted it. This also helps to extend the reach to even more of the right types of people who could become leads.

We’ve found the best channels to be Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. If your employees are actively engaged on social media, a great tactic to boost the performance organically is to have them share the company posts on their own pages with their connections. Again, this only helps increase the visibility of the messages.

Another option is to use paid social media advertising which works similarly to Google Adwords retargeting and geotargeting. (We offer both of these services here at Bernard & Company). This is ideal if you have a new product you’d like to promote or if you have an upcoming event or trade show and you’d like to advertise what you’ll be showcasing and what booth you’ll be at. This is something to seriously consider when trade shows happen again. It will make you stand out among your competitors.

Social media can be done for a monthly retainer and you get 240 characters of text with each post to share what’s new and exciting at your company.

Please give us a call if you have any questions or if you are interested in this service. We even have the option to do a 6 month trial to get you started. Consider social media to boost your marketing strategy!