Your Guide to Social Media Company Pages for Your Print Business - Marketing, content, & technology to help printers sell more printing

While social media might sometimes appear more on par with the “Island of Misfit Toys,” it does serve a purpose and can be a powerful tool for your print business.

Yet many print owners wonder if they’re doing social marketing right, often asking questions such as, “Does social media really have any impact on whether or not someone will buy printing from me?” and “Can I just use my personal social media account to market my printing company?”

The short answers? Yes and no.

The Impact of Social Media on Your Print Business

Social media isn’t just for memes and political rants. It can have a profound impact on helping you sell more printing.

According to Sprout Social, it’s 57.5% more likely that a person will buy from a brand they follow on social media and 71% more likely that they’ll buy after a positive social experience.

Social media offers your print business an affordable and easy way to enhance your brand awareness, increase your website traffic and lead generation, as well as help improve your overall customer retention.

If you’re thinking, “Yeah, but how?” check out the following ways your print business can use social media marketing to prompt your print buyers to purchase.

Ways to Get People to Follow Your Printing Firm on Social Media	Ways to Get People to Unfollow Your Printing Firm on Social Media
Be responsive to their questions and comments.	Post too many promotional messages
Offer promotions or exclusive deals	Post information that isn’t relevant to your target audience
Provide relevant, educational content	Post too much
Share fun and interesting visuals	Use insider terms that are confusing or jargon that doesn’t fit your brand
Use humor to be funny	Remain quiet and don’t post hardly at all
Provide behind-the-scenes content, so they can get to know you.	Don’t reply to comments or questions.

Social Media Etiquette: Top 3 Tips

Social media marketing is an ever-changing, ever-evolving world of marketing.

Because of this continual evolution, it can be challenging for your print brand to stay on top of current social media trends, best practices, and digital etiquette. While trends will always come and go, these three tips remain steadfast and should remain your guiding compass when using social media marketing.

1. Separate business and personal.

Don’t be tempted to think marketing your print business is “just easier” on your personal social media accounts rather than creating business pages.

When you fall into that so-called shortcut camp, you not only risk your business reputation but you miss out on features available to you to specifically help you promote your business. Here are just a few of the reasons why it’s best practice for you to keep your business and personal social media accounts separate:

Benefit	Business	Personal
Track posts, users, and engagement to see how well posts are performing:	✅	❌
Take advantage of paid and promoted posts and ads:	✅	❌
Allow other employees access to the account without needing your personal email information, a.k.a. multi-user management:	✅	❌
Retain control of what can be posted (Hint: you can’t keep friends or family from posting that #ThrowBackThursday picture to your personal social media accounts):	✅	❌
Establish a brand identity (company news updates, reviews of your company, links to articles and videos relevant to your print buyers):	✅	❌

By not mixing business with pleasure on social media, you also avoid spamming your family and friends who follow you for personal updates and keep your content types consistent for your followers.

Need to know how to set up your social media business accounts correctly? Keep reading to the how-to section below.

2. Think twice, post once.

Just as you tell your kids to be mindful of the image they’re presenting to the world through their social media accounts, the same rule applies to you.

You represent your brand.

Make sure your content makes you look like the confident print expert you are. Before clicking away mindlessly to post content, think twice about the value you’re bringing to your print buyers. Review things like the best time to post or the best format to post for your audience for optimal engagement, or if you can add any virtual assets to your post to offer additional value.

3. Remember your mission: Interaction.

While some content is better than no content, your social media marketing goal is to create connections and interactions with current and prospective print buyers.

Creating conversations on social media isn’t as difficult as you may believe. Consider these quick tips:

Ask questions. Making a declarative statement doesn’t invite your reader into a conversation; it simply makes them aware of how you feel about something. If you want them to leave a comment or interact with you, invite them into the conversation with a question. For example, “What do you think about this?” “Have a tip of your own? Share it below.”
Send a friendly reply to any comments and tag the person in the comment. Remember, you don’t have to share some genius wisdom from on high with your replay. Just be human. It can be as simple as, “That’s interesting. Tell me more.”
Get your followers involved. Need a recommendation for a fun team event? Ask your Facebook audience. Wondering what topics to cover in your next newsletter? Try a poll.

The idea here is simple: Build the same connections online through social media just as you would in person.

How to Set Up Your Social Media Business Pages Successfully

If you’re unsure how to get your business social media pages up and going, the following how-to tips will help you out.

Facebook

To create a business page on Facebook, you’ll first need to create a personal Facebook account if you don’t have one already.

Once you’ve created your personal Facebook page and you’re logged in, go to facebook.com/pages/create. Here, you’ll enter the page name (the name of your printing firm), the category (up to three) that describes what type of business your Facebook page will represent, and a brief description of the page. Then, select “Create Page”. Next, you’ll be able to add your company’s profile picture and cover photo. Click “Save”.

You’ll want to follow the “Set your Page up for success” steps, but you now have a business Facebook page. Congratulations!

Other Facebook resources:

Similar to Facebook, you’ll need to create a personal LinkedIn account before creating a LinkedIn Company Page.

Once logged into your personal LinkedIn account, click on Work > Create a Company Page.

Select the type of page you wish to create (Company), then enter your printing company’s name, website URL, company details, and click on the check box to verify your authorization.

Lastly, to publish your page, click “Create page”.

Other LinkedIn resources:

Create a LinkedIn Page
Getting Started with Company Pages

Twitter

To create your business page on Twitter, go to twitter.com and click “Sign up with phone or email”.

Enter your business name, phone, and your date of birth. If you prefer to use your email instead of your phone number, click “Use email instead”.

Next, Twitter will walk you through a series of prompts to customize your Twitter experience. For your username, be sure to put your company name as your username. Usernames are unique identifiers on Twitter and will be what people will look for to find you and tag you.

Double-check your name, email address, password, and username, and then click “Create my account”.

Other Twitter resources:

Create a Twitter profile for your business

Social Media Delegation

While social media is a valuable asset to your print business, it doesn’t mean that you as the print owner should be slaving away at it.

Social media is the perfect marketing tool to delegate to someone you trust to handle it for you, so you can focus on what you do best: printing!

If you’d like help finding content for social media, consider these options:

Sign up for 30-days free of the Social Marketing for Printers subscription service. You’ll receive content throughout the week for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a blog, all delivered right to your email inbox for quick and easy posting.
Ask us about a free five-week content plan, so you never run out of ideas for posting to your social media channels.
Ask us about Enhanced Marketing Services. This all-new subscription service will take care of posting your Social Marketing for Printers subscription content on your behalf.

Get started today and happy socializing!

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