I’ve been with Wepco Plastics for 7 years now, and as I reflect, I see that the company I work for is dramatically different than the one I began with, in hundreds of ways. One stark difference is our presence.
In 2013, we were just a small mold building and injection molding company from Connecticut that no one in our region or our industry knew much (if anything) about. We are still a small mold building and injection molding company from Connecticut, but I think that would surprise some people. We carry ourselves as a much larger company. We are also no longer anonymous.
This did not happen overnight. A lot of work over several years has allowed us to exist where we are now. The reason for this transformation? Social media. It is absolutely amazing to me that in just a few short years, we went from not even having a Facebook page, to a company recognized throughout Connecticut and the plastics industry as a social media leader.
The culmination of years of creating and curating content was an opportunity I had this past year to travel to Northern Ireland to discuss our social media strategy with students, faculty and staff at Ulster University. We have been able to speak often about social media, but this was our first international engagement and it was a tremendous experience.
On the plane ride over, I took time to reflect on our social media journey in order to paint a clear picture during my presentation. As Simon Sinek and my friend Rory McGloin (who put on this event) recommend, I started with “why”. Our reason for investing heavily in our social media presence was to allow people to get to know us. We wanted to display our capabilities, values and personality in hopes that we could deepen relationships with current customers, attract new customers and potential employees, and broaden our influence on the things that matter to us.
We attempt to make as many decisions as possible using data. It was difficult to track the effectiveness of the marketing methods we used before. With social media platforms, it is quite easy to track our effectiveness through reach and engagement. This allows us to decide which types of posts we should make and tailor them to specific audiences.
As I stood in front of the lecture hall, my phone buzzed several times in my pocket. After the presentation, I realized that all of that buzzing happened to be the students inviting me to connect on LinkedIn. They will all graduate and go out to accomplish great things at varying companies. Through all of that, we will remain connected. I believe that is extremely powerful.
That is what social media allows for: connection. There are no geographical restrictions. My small investment in time to speak to them has opened the door to infinite possibilities. Maybe someday one of them will come to the states and work for Wepco. Maybe one of them will work for a large OEM and will be interested in collaborating with us on a project. As long as we do our job of continuing to invest in our presence and our connections by posting content that is either educational, entertaining, encouraging and/or engaging, there is myriad potential.
I look forward to continuing on this journey. If you are reading this, hopefully you will be joining us for the ride! There is plenty of room, and now that we have taken the show international, who knows what comes next!