The Thomas Blog

4 Steps to Expanding Your Industrial Network on LinkedIn

Chances are you’re already using LinkedIn to keep an up-to-date roster of contacts, check out what connections are up to, scout out potential hires, and send messages.

This powerful tool serves as much more than a social network or recruiting outlet, though — it can play a major role in generating leads and sales for your industrial company.

There are a few steps for you to benefit from using LinkedIn to connect with people in their industry, so we wanted to lay out a few tips on how to get started. 

(We do want to note that although there's a paid version of LinkedIn known as LinkedIn Sales Navigator, we know you’re as budget-conscious as you are business-savvy, so we’ll be solely focusing on harnessing the power of free LinkedIn in this post.)

Meet Manufacturer's Best Friends

At Thomas, we have a special place in our hearts for our furry friends and love to celebrate them on our new Instagram account, @manufacturersbestfriend. Below you'll meet some of the industry pets you'll see on our feed: 

Social Media Definitions For Manufacturers

For today’s industrial marketers, content is critical — but it’s not enough to simply publish a blog post. Once a piece is written, you need to help it reach as many people as possible. One of the easiest and most effective ways to amplify distribution is through your company’s social media channels.

Whether you’ve already hammered out a sophisticated social strategy or you’re just getting started, this glossary of social media terms will provide the keys to optimizing these channels.

The Best Days and Times to Call, Email & Post on Social Media: For B2B Manufacturers

With B2B marketing, the adage “timing is everything” applies — well, maybe not “everything,” but it is certainly crucial to successful marketing campaigns.

This is key as the the digital marketing space for US manufacturers becomes more crowded. For instance, did you know that more than 80% of manufacturing marketers promote their presence on social media platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn?

The Right Mix Of Social Media Content For Manufacturing Marketing

Social media allows industrial professionals another vehicle to connect with their existing client base and showcase their expertise while attracting new prospects. It has been playing an increasingly important role in today's digital transformation of sales and marketing.

Posting regularly on your social media platforms using the right hashtags helps to gain broader brand awareness. But to really get the most out of social media, you need to truly engage your audience.

Unless you stopped paying attention to how humans work when you were back in middle school, you know that talking about yourself nonstop is a terrible way to keep someone’s attention. Likewise, constantly promoting your products and bragging about solely your company is not a sound strategy for manufacturing marketing.

Proper social media marketing requires a commitment beyond the weekly Facebook post or the occasional Twitter retweet. You’ll need to maintain a constant stream of updates and, since you shouldn’t just be talking about your own company 24/7, let's discuss the mix of social media content that has been working for manufacturers and industrial companies.

4 Steps To Grow Your Social Media Networks

What now? If you’re like many other small business owners, that may be what you’ve been asking yourself after taking the first steps in a social media marketing plan: setting up your accounts, branding your pages, and creating and sharing content. There’s one important element missing: building your network.

And you’ve probably even begun that process and connected with existing customers who had also taken the plunge, big OEMs with hundreds of thousands of followers, maybe some friends and family, perhaps even a celebrity or two (depending on who’s in charge of your accounts). From everything you’ve heard about social media, there must be more to it. So, what now?

6 Social Selling Tips: For Sellers In Manufacturing

Facebook? Check. Twitter? Check. LinkedIn? Check.

If you’ve already put in the work of building out profiles on these major social media platforms and have gained some followers, you’re off to a great start. But even more important than gaining followers, of course, is gaining customers — and simply having a social media presence isn’t enough to reliably convert connections into leads.

Below, we’ve outlined six tips to remember when developing and optimizing your social media marketing strategy. These tips will help you to better leverage your professional online brand to create more relationships with buyers through social media interactions — the process known as social selling. Here's how you can keep your social selling on point.

The Basics Of Instagram For Manufacturers

When it comes to content marketing, social media plays an undeniably huge role in how businesses manage their online interactions with consumers and partners. You’re likely already familiar with the “Big Three” social media channels — Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. 

These networks are just the tip of the digital iceberg; the social media landscape is vast and teeming with a wide variety of platforms. In order to master your social media game, it’s important to understand these networks and how they can be utilized.

One of the most popular social media networks is Instagram. Synonymous with ethereal, nostalgic filters, and heavily edited photographs, this image-based platform might not seem like an obvious choice for an industrial social media marketing strategy. However, with its high popularity and excellent engagement rate, integrating Instagram into your social media marketing strategy is definitely worth considering.

The Social Media Accounts (And Hashtags!) You Should Be Following

In the digital age, the shop floor isn't the only place that manufacturing puts in work. Today, many industrial companies are incredibly active on social media, sharing their stories and interacting with fans and followers.

If you want to get in on the conversation, or see how a manufacturing company can effectively leverage social media as a sales channel, these are the accounts you want to follow.