The answer is a little complex for a printing business. One thing that has not changed in social media from the beginning is it is not a good medium for push marketing. Sending one-way communications to people in the form of spam or outright self-promotion does not really work.
Sharing Constant Change
One constant in our world today is change. The printing industry has gone through an incredible amount of change over the past 10 years. There are all kinds of questions to ask today. Digital versus Offset? Direct mail versus Email? Can you combine digital marketing with print marketing?
As things are changing so quickly, there are many questions that can be asked. These are the questions that can trigger discussions and connections on social media. So, boards on Linkedin.com or Colorprintingforum.com or printplanet.com are good places to ask questions and find answers. They are also good places to provide answers without saying, “give me a call, I can sell you that.”
If you want to sell on social media, you have to find someone else to sell for you. The biggest trend in social media is having popular people sell for brands. Brands don’t sell directly on social media. They generally are using Youtube, Snapchat, Twitter or Facebook personalities to do it for them.
This is a primary approach for consumer goods. The same approach can apply in a printing business. You just have to find the right B2B personality that needs your product and likes it enough to tell all their friends. People trust people, they don’t trust companies.
In a nutshell, social media reinforces the mantra that, “People do business with people, companies do not do business with companies.”
