As manufacturers look for new avenues to promote their services and products — as well as seek to attract a young, talented workforce — social media offers vast potential for marketing opportunities and exposure.
It also poses some potential challenges particular to manufacturing companies, such as the need to protect proprietary information and concerns about cybersecurity. And for some companies, recent news about particular social media platforms might cause more hesitation, including the Twitter ownership change and Gov. Tony Evers’ order banning TikTok from state-issued devices.
Marketing experts say these challenges are manageable, particularly when social media marketing can be so beneficial. It all comes down to companies discovering what will work best for them — and considering who is the audience that they hope to reach.
From a talent attraction standpoint, companies can focus on sharing content where that talent spends time, which might include the very popular platforms of TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, says Frank Isca, director of business development for Appleton-based Weidert Group.
“But you have to make sure it applies to your business, and your policies, and what you feel comfortable with,” Isca says. “So we always focus first on who’s the audience? Is that really the best way to reach them and engage them? And does it make the most sense for the company’s brand?”
Marketing for manufacturers used to have a stronger outbound focus: marketing materials to support sales teams, trade shows and email blasts. Now, it’s more about inbound marketing, or creating content tailored to the company’s target audience, since most buyers start with an internet search, Isca says.
“They’re not starting by talking to a salesperson,” Isca says. “They’re trying to get answers to a problem they have.”
That’s where companies have their best opportunity to showcase their products and services.
“And if you try to just be secretive and say, ‘Well, we’re not going to put anything out there because our competitors can take that information,’ the reality is, if you don’t do that, your competitors will,” Isca says.
Just as they compete for clients, manufacturers in Northeast Wisconsin are competing with other employers for talent. “A lot of the ways we do inbound marketing to help companies with lead attraction, we can apply those same principles for talent attraction,” Isca says.
Brad Cebulski, president and founder of BConnected, LLC in Appleton, says that manufacturing clients sometimes take a conservative approach to social media promotions until they are convinced of its effectiveness. There isn’t one social venue that’s the most effective for manufacturers, he says — it’s about looking at the company’s goals and using the best platforms to reach those particular target audiences.
“A lot of manufacturers will utilize consumer-facing platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, for hiring and culture,” Cebulski says. “Whereas they’ll utilize other social media platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube and blogs for industry-related things.”
While TikTok, owned by the China-based ByteDance, has raised concern among federal counterintelligence officials about potential data collection by the Chinese government, it’s one of the fastest-growing social sites, adding more than a billion users in just a few years, according to socialpilot.co.
“Facebook and Instagram and YouTube have all adjusted their prioritization of content because of the growth of TikTok,” Cebulski says.
For manufacturing companies that prefer other options, there are plenty of platforms that offer similar avenues for sharing their promotional content.
“People forget that YouTube is still one of the predominant search engines and something where a younger generation and even B2B buyers are going to consume and find information,” Isca says. “It’s the second-largest search engine outside of Google, and YouTube is Google’s product.”
Companies can use YouTube videos to showcase young workers talking about their jobs or feature videos about company culture, and that content can be shared across other platforms. But having it live on YouTube allows it to be easily discovered, Isca says.
“We’ve helped our manufacturing clients develop a strategy that helps them stand out as an employer brand versus blending in with everyone else doing job postings on Indeed,” he says. “It takes more than that.”
The popularity of video content has grown, fueled in part by the pandemic, as it became a great way to share walk-throughs of manufacturing plants when visitors weren’t allowed, Isca says. And it’s easy to work around the areas where clients don’t want to show proprietary equipment or processes, he says.
“Generally speaking, proprietary information is not given away with faces — but culture is,” Cebulski says. “It’s all about telling stories and creating stories around the people that work there, the atmosphere there, the culture there.”
Cebulski says telling those authentic stories is the best way to showcase a company’s brand or culture, rather than using stock photography or video, which might be tempting for companies that are hesitant about showing interiors or plant floors.
“People can see right through that,” Cebulski says. “They want to see brands that are authentic, and they want to see brands that are relatable.”
Knowing that employees can be among the best advertisements when it comes to attracting talent, employees themselves could potentially produce their own social media content, depending on company policy.
“The reality is every employee, especially in the manufacturing space, all owns a smartphone equipped with a camera, whether they’re taking photos or video,” Isca says.
Some manufacturers may implement policies that limit internal social media to protect data, and others may have more open policies — but could ask employees to filter photos and videos through the marketing team, then employees can re-share content on their pages.
“Done the right way, it can be very powerful,” Isca says. “A lot of times that is where things get the most engagement and most viewership.”
Mike Kawleski, public affairs manager for Georgia-Pacific in Green Bay, says as the company seeks to attract talent, it has been turning to social media.
“With everyone looking for people, of course, you’re looking at every tactic and every strategy that you can in order to reach people,” Kawleski says. “And of course, besides things that we’ve always done — postings on our websites, radio ads, billboards, more traditional media — we’re looking at social media.”
Georgia-Pacific has participated in the NEW Manufacturing Alliance’s All Star videos, for example, which is one way that the company can share the stories of young workers, and these videos are shared across social venues.
“We are seeing more companies that are using social media for shorter videos that might be on Instagram or TikTok,” Kawleski says. “And certainly we’re talking about those things. We think they are useful because the audiences for those are some of the people that we’re looking to hire. If the rewards outweigh the risks, we certainly want to look at it carefully.”
Georgia-Pacific’s social accounts on Facebook and Instagram and other platforms are mainly managed from the company headquarters in Atlanta or through its parent company, Koch Industries, but the Green Bay facilities will share content through them.
Local company leaders are on LinkedIn and other sites, though, and will post information about open positions, for example. While GP doesn’t have a formal social media policy for employees, it maintains a communication standard for social media, email and phone calls, including protecting information and devices.
Companies should develop policies that best fit their culture, Cebulski says, while remembering that authenticity is the key.
“Recognizing that you can generate your own media with your own people and your own voice is going to be the key to what separates you as an employer of choice,” he says.
