In a year’s time, we brought General Equipment Company’s Facebook following from 100 to more than 5,000 – surpassing all its key competitors. More importantly, engagement is much higher than industry averages, meaning that not only are we hitting the right people, but they find the content compelling.
General Equipment Company wasn’t first to the social media table. In fact, most of its competitors were well established on Facebook, whereas General only had a handful of posts and a little more than 100 followers. General knew the potential to reach the right people (dealers and end-users) was there, it was just a matter of getting a consistent effort going and accelerating engagement to make this a viable branding and sales tool.
Though the “experts” say to focus on generating solid content and the right following will naturally come, that can be a very long-term proposition. As many have experienced, Facebook notoriously shows organic posts to a tiny percentage of a company’s own followers, much less to new audiences you’re hoping to attract. With a clear “pay-to-play” system at work in the social media world, it seems like a lot of good effort and content can potentially go to waste.
We engaged a modified approach, aligning General’s public relations efforts and overall branding initiatives to quickly and regularly generate content. From there, we dedicated a small portion of the budget for ads to increase the page following and to boost posts – all of this activity directed toward carefully-constructed audiences of the people most likely to use, sell or rent the company’s equipment.
