PPB August 2018

by Terry Ramsay 12 | AUGUST 2018 | INNOVATE Q A DISTRIBUTOR ASKS: How are other distributors using social media to promote their businesses? What platforms are you using, what type of content are you having success with, and how are you building your base of followers? Who manages your social media presence, and how does it fit with your overall marketing strategy? A InTandem Promotions has found that the key to any successful post is twofold: you have to know your audience, and you have to use your unique voice. The easiest way to ensure that a follower will not Like, retweet, regram [use a hashtag when reposting something that you saw on someone else’s Instagram] or share your post is to publish pictures of different products that you believe are cool—consider yourself ignored faster than a thumb swipe. You are just stabbing in the dark that they are going to like that one product—literally shooting an arrow and hoping that it will stick or resonate. Managing social media in this manner is like sending a client a catalog versus curating the ideas ahead of time. At InTandem, we have found that showcasing products in a unique setting or in the manner that the product is actually used has been the most successful approach. We do silly. We do unique. We share successes and wins. We show where and how we do what we do. We include our partners as much as we can. To increase followers, we have found that using different hashtags and increasing our ad spend has been successful. We take stock in who is following us and look for opportunities to increase engagement based on those users. We follow what they are following. We like what they like, and we seek opportunities to cover common ground through promotional products. I am the main voice of InTandem’s social media, but the entire team routinely contributes. Our online and social presence has been one of our primary marketing components, and this year we have upped our game and increased our spend. We recently sent an InTandem employee to the Digital Summit in Atlanta to learn what’s new, what avenues we need to head into, and how we continue to grow our presence. Content is ever-evolving and so is our voice. We are fighting over viewer space with some truly amazing promotional companies, and if we are to stay relevant we must continue to evolve. Our future with social media currently includes looking at ways to increase our ad spend as well as finding our platform and voice in the blog and video space. But we need to make sure that we are doing it in a way that is unique to InTandem without Giving Social Media A Voice