By Lindley Estes
It used to be that the reception area of a business set the tone. The greeter, the setting, table top literature and signage —all clued people into who they were dealing with and the experience they might expect. But in the digital age, social media acts as that first glimpse into the character of an organization. It’s the first point of contact for those looking to work with you and your presence online is not just noted, it’s expected, in 2022.
As Susan Carol Creative, we manage social media accounts for numerous clients. And since we assumed responsibility for curating these accounts, our clients have seen a marked increase in engagement with customers, capturing new opportunities that would have been left on the table before, and name recognition within their industries that boosts their profile.
Here are a few examples of how our approach maximizes just a few hours of work per week into these outcomes:
Media Relations
As a public relations firm, one of the major functions we perform for our clients is in managing social media communications. Reporters use social media to find story sources every day, especially in Twitter and Facebook. By posting regularly in a chosen channel, a company can create a trustworthy online presence. We develop posting schedules, determine the best voice to use and links to share. We write content that portrays our clients as open thought leaders.
This creates a gateway to reporters and media outlets. A company without a robust social presence is a red flag for them; it signals a company is closed off and perhaps even out of touch. We also monitor the various social channels for media opportunities as they surface. We recently linked a financial tech client with a Wall Street Journal reporter this way.
Reaching Your Industry
Staying current with media, though, isn’t just about the big fish. We have had repeated success in helping clients to gain coverage from industry trade publications by maintaining engagement with them and sharing their content in return.
A firm we work with in the equipment finance industry received feedback at a conference from a potential purchaser — that their visibility was impressive and one of the things that attracted the potential buyer in the first place. That’s what consistent posting with the right voice can do: It can fortify a company’s cache within its sphere of influence.
Continuous social media monitoring also means messages aren’t missed, and customers have trust-building interactions with their audience. We monitor and report impression and engagement rates to demonstrate the value.
We are equipped to recommend which sites work best for a specific business and can launch social media profiles or improve existing ones. For example, a client approached us in mid-2022, seeking to revive a LinkedIn presence. By focusing on the real people and news of the business, and leveraging content that we knew their existing audience would appreciate, we are seeing tremendous returns on just a few hours of work per week.
These first two graphs represent days when we prioritized the LinkedIn audience, specifically:
Within just a month of regular posting, we began to see these incredible returns and this is a B2B client that just began to post regularly:
Targeting Ads to Reach Niche Customers
At Susan Carol Creative, we focus on maximizing organic reach first. We want our clients to have a following that is actively engaged, rather than simply gaining unknown irrelevant followers just for data. But sometimes, specific sales campaigns require paid advertising. We have done this on LinkedIn and Facebook with success. In early 2022, a lender we work with wanted to distribute a message about a specific loan product. By narrowing the target audience and designing an eye-catching image, we were able to achieve a cost-per-click rate that far exceeded expectations.
The average cost-per-click for a Facebook ad is $2.12. This ad performed much better at $1.10 per click, even with a narrow audience. The engagement rate also was impressive for such a specific audience.
Our approach is straightforward: In just a few hours a week, the team at Susan Carol Creative can build out your chosen social media into a robust, client-facing, attractive page that instills trust in your brand among customers and acts as a beacon for media coverage.
