(Editor’s note: The following article excerpt on how the office products channel was leveraging social media was written three years ago for Independent Dealer magazine at a time when I as well as many office products dealers were bullish on social media.)
At Garrigans Office Plus in Dayton, Ohio, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Constant Contact are integrated into an all-inclusive social media strategy. Social media is an excellent platform for promoting specials and other activities. Facebook is used for promoting weekly specials, Twitter for promoting clearance items, and Linkedin for prospecting. Response from Garrigans’customers has been positive and growing numbers are ‘liking’ their Facebook page and receiving Twitter tweets. It didn’t happen overnight though.
“It took time to get them to interact with us and see the value,” reports Libby Scott, business development and social media manager.
Since social media is still in its infancy there’s bound to be some lessons learned and Scott, just 23 years old and savvier than the average office supplies person when it comes to social media, has learned her lessons well. “The biggest lesson is that Facebook changes and coping with the new timeline has been a hurdle because there’s no longer that “fan gate” where people had to like it to see what was behind our page. Now everything we do is focused on making sure they interact [with us].”
One of the biggest challenges in the social media realm is ensuring that one’s posts are consistent and relevant. Garrigans uses HootSuite a subscription program that allows subscribers to manage unlimited social networks and profiles under one interface as well as schedule Facebook posts and Twitter messages; track trending topics, keywords, and mentions; and integrate social analytics for measuring engagement and campaign success.
“I can load everything we’re going to post for the next two months and it doesn’t have to be updated daily so it takes minimal time,” notes Scott.
Metro Office Supply in Festus, MO has posted close to 200 videos on YouTube. Most are tips and demonstrations such as how to use an office chair, how to change the toner in a copier, or how to change out a battery backup. “There’s no real end as far as the different types of videos you can do,” says Chris Hagan, one of Metro’s owners.
Social media has done a lot to raise Metro’s profile. “I’ll be 100 miles away at a gas station and people will come up to me and say, ‘I saw your video on YouTube or Facebook,’” states Hagan.
One of the challenges of social media is translating it into dollars. “It’s kind of scary, you post a video on battery backups, but nobody calls to say ‘I need a new battery’ even though you have 300 people watching the entire 45-second video, laments Hagan.
That hasn’t stopped Hagan from posting videos. He understands he’s ahead of the curve and learning as he goes along. One lesson learned is that timing is everything. “There’s an enormous amount of people on Facebook between 8 and 10 at night and if you post something at that time literally thousands of people see it.”
Twist Office Products, formerly Twin Cities Office Products, in Roseville, MN and Bensenville, IL has a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Linkedin page, a blog, and recently added Pinterest, a social photo sharing Website to the mix.
For Twist the reason for using social media is to engage customers. “We send out an e-blast every week and it has links to Twitter and Facebook so they can connect with us that way,” reports Wendy Pike, Twist’s owner.
A recent promotion found Twist showcasing their latest line of office chairs at a tabletop show aimed at administrative assistants. Attendees who agreed to have their photos taken sitting in the chairs and posted on the Twist Facebook page were entered into a drawing to win a chair.
Although Pike was one of the first on her block to have a Facebook page she’s smart enough to realize she and her employees can’t keep up with it all by themselves. She’s hired two college interns to write content, assist with promotions, film customers at customer events, and post those on Twist’s Website and Facebook page.
Pike is also looking forward to tracking results of Twist’s social media efforts.
Social media is all about engaging the customer and Twist makes an effort to like and follow those customers who also have a Facebook page and Twitter account. “We try to engage them in a conversation by seeing in our feed what they’re talking about and how can we promote what they’re doing,” says Pike. “We might re-tweet or repost things they do like a Christmas toy drive. We want to show them that we’re interested in what’s important to them.”
Dale Mahabir, creative and social director for Fortune Web Marketing, spends a lot of time monitoring the social media realm, keeping abreast of trends and new developments to better assist Fortune Web’s office product dealer clients. Something new that has started showing up on some client’s Facebook pages are promoted posts. “If you’re willing to pay $5, and I think it goes up in $5 intervals, you can promote your post so that it stays at the top of people’s news feeds and reaches a larger base than it normally would,” reports Mahabir.
For example, take a Fortune Web client with 500 Facebook friends. “Had we been willing to pay $5 for one of her posts to be sponsored it would have reached 600-700 more people,” Mahabir estimates. “The higher you are willing to pay the more people you can reach.”
There are plenty of misconceptions about what social media can do and Mahabir clears up a few. “One thing a lot of our dealers struggle with is trying to quantify social media and determining the ROI,” acknowledges Mahabir. “Determining the ROI of social media is an ongoing debate. But an equally important question is ‘What’s the ROI on ignoring social media?’”
He adds, “You have to look at the intrinsic benefits of social media and the explicit benefits of well—brand recognition, reaching a wider audience, sales, discounts, things of that nature. That said, the second thing we see dealers misinterpreting about social media is they want to post as often as possible about whatever sale or great product they have. That strategy doesn’t work. You need a variety of different posts. You want to ask questions. You want to engage your audience.”
Mahabir recommends Facebook polls as a promotional tool. “If you’re offering freebies or promos you can actually ask your Facebook fan base what would you like to see from us and that level of engagement always brings in more likes. It gets people following your page more and gets your status updates to the tops of people’s news pages.”
He cautions against over posting and having customers un-friend you or block your posts.
He considers Twitter the second best thing to Facebook. “You need to be direct and to the point but a lot of strategies for Facebook can be carried over to Twitter,” suggests Mahabir. You don’t want to barrage people, but you do want to engage them. If somebody sends you a message or responds to something you posted, you should respond. That’s true for all social media channels.”
As far as other social media outlets, he cites Google+, a competitor to Facebook. He considers it a good social network but the problem right now is that not enough people are on it. “We still recommend our clients have a Google+ profile and be involved with it to a certain extent for the purpose of search engine optimization.”
Mandy Pusatera grew up in the office products industry. Her parents owned an independent office supplies dealership. Being a millennial she’s well versed in social media and works for The Highlands Group, a manufacturer’s rep group helping manufacturers get their marketing and promotional materials to dealers for their social media pages. She was the brains behind the promotion “Heads Up from The Highlands Group”. The Highlands Group also provides dealers with content.
Pusatera’s background gives her a unique perspective on how dealers can best leverage social media. She says Facebook ads are fine, but posts and communications that are more conversational are particularly effective. For example, a dealer marketing Exit signs might start with a post or a poll asking customers if their business has an evacuation plan. That post might also include links to evacuation plans and then a statement like “And don’t forget to have working signs,” which for all intents and purposes is a subtle sales pitch.
We asked Pusatera about the most frequently asked questions she hears from dealers. Number one is how do I get people to like my page?
“You can read 15,000 articles that tell you they know exactly how to do it,” says Pusatera. “Nobody knows exactly how to do it because nobody knows who you’re going after. You know who you’re going after.”
She contends it’s a trial and error process. Customers in Florida might not be the same as customers in Hawaii or Washington. “The same methods to get them to like the page aren’t going to work,” maintains Pusatera. “You need to have conversational content regardless. Some people are going to be motivated by a contest, some aren’t and will be motivated by the personal factor that goes with social networking.”
If you’re a family owned dealership she recommends including information about the members of the company. “You should make customers feel included in the process. It’s a matter of trial and error; there’s not going to be one thing that works with every person. I don’t think anybody can tell you for sure.”
The other thing she hears from dealers is “I don’t have the time.”
“It’s a valid complaint because it takes up more time than people realize,” says Pusatera.
The most useful advice she has is to engage the customer. “Don’t post something or send out an e-mail, come back in a month and hope you’ve got 100 likes. Social networking is all about engagement, it’s all about joining the conversation, and the only way you’re going to get somebody who isn’t a customer of yours to like your page is to go where they are and start talking to them. You don’t go to a Chamber of Commerce page and say ‘come check out my products,’ you go there and talk about whatever people are talking about. You wait until there’s a topic that allows you to bring up your company in a certain way.”
She recommends dealers not obsess about content creation or go out and hire someone just to do social media. If they don’t use an organization like The Highlands Group for content, she suggests searching online for content that doesn’t have anything to do with the office products industry. The person responsible for this might be someone in the office who is already responsible for the dealership’s online presence. Maybe they spend an hour a day online copying and pasting some sort of worthwhile post. That, she says, may only take 10 minutes. “The other 50 minutes can be spent engaging and drawing people in as opposed to spending two hours on content creation and who knows if anybody’s going to go to the page to begin with.”
