One of my very first clients was Industrial Electronic Repair. How much more boring can you get? I couldn’t get any pretty pictures for Pinterest, and no one wanted to know about our craft on Facebook. In fact, social media marketing was so fairly new at the time, that industrial-anything was difficult to build a community for. So, with such an obscure niche, how do you do social media for incredibly boring industries that simply aren’t made for social media? You engage.
Maybe you’ve recently been told by your boss to start getting the company on social media, or you’re the boss and you know you’ve got to start participating. Don’t worry, there are still ways to engage on social media in boring industries.
You need to know that your industry may not get a lot of traffic from certain platforms, mainly because your target audience is not there, but don’t avoid it. It’s a good plan to stay active on all platforms where you have an account, even if it’s just a little. With that said, you also don’t need to be on every single platform when you’re just starting out. My first recommendation would be to start with Twitter. Twitter is friendly and easy to engage on. You don’t have to stick with rigid rules on who to follow, as long as they are active and engaging, just like you will be. Of course, you may stay away from accounts that post questionable items, such as a lot of cursing or graphic images; use your best judgement. Your biggest concern will simply be to talk to others and get to know other accounts. Share information they share, join in conversations and show people that you are human. Don’t promote yourself too often, because it will only turn people off. The general rule is 80 percent content to 20 percent self-promotion. Or you could also use this rule; for every ten posts (meaning retweets and articles you find), share one tweet aimed at promoting your product or service.
Other Social Media for Boring Industries
Google Plus and LinkedIn are also fantastic platforms for the “boring” industries. You can find Groups on LinkedIn for your industry and begin finding great content to share, as well as new accounts to follow. Engage if you can, and LinkedIn can give you some great leads. Google Plus is attached directly to the search engine giant, so participating there and building a community there will help you with your SEO efforts. The more people that circle you and engage with you, the more it will really help your reputation.
What about Boring Industries on Pinterest?
You can still have an account for a boring industry on Pinterest. One way to do this is not to focus on “pretty photos”, but rather, pictures you can create with tips or helpful information about your products or services. You can create what one friend calls a “Pine”; and create a vine video of something your company does, or a how-to, then use that video on Pinterest.
So you have a boring industry on social media. So what? ;)
What is your industry and where do you get the most engagement? Tell me in the comments!