Casim Khalid
Almost any business in today’s world needs a social media campaign to become successful. But, if you own a business in 3D printing, it becomes vital because most of the aspects of 3D printing are digital. In fact, you can say that the birth was 3D printing technology centered on the idea of lessening human intervention. So you have a proper 3D design file as a foundation for creating a part or functional prototype using 3D printing technology.
This 3D design file created in modeling software undergoes the process of slicing, where it is optimized. And only then the file is converted into G-codes, the language for conveying the instructions of printing to the 3D printer. The complete process is sophisticated, running with an aim to ensure the closest amount of relativity between the visualized part and the reality.
Marketing your 3D printing business by running successful social media campaigns is like syncing the two modernity together:
1) One is inherently present in 3D printing.
2) The novelty of social media marketing.
Having stated so, the task is not that easy peasy lemon squeezy. It requires a lot of technical knowledge to successfully launch and run your social media campaign for your 3D business.
What are those technicalities, and how to deal with them? Those are the two key issues that our article deals with. Here are the five tricks to successfully launch and run your social media campaign for your 3D business.
1) Research your competitors before crafting your strategy
If you have just ended up setting up your business and are planning to launch a social media campaign, we strongly urge you to not jump-in straightway. When you haste to promote your business, you miss out on some of the concerns. And this has obviously got to do with your competitors.
Researching your competitors exposes you to the answers to questions such as;
- a) Which topics are trending?
- b) What type of content are they creating, and what response is their content receiving?
- c) What is the time interval in which they regularly post something?
- d) Is their approach aggressive?
A summation of answers can be a conclusion for crafting the strategy of your social media campaign. Of course, it wouldn’t be this simple as it reads, but you’d be clear with the basics. While crafting your strategy, choose an epicenter, a goal. And then spiral out from that point. Whether it is building a community, or driving more and more people to your site, or promoting your blog, whatever you wish to keep as a goal, as a center.
Build your own checkpoints that you can go for reference whenever you wish to know whether you were up to the mark, above or beyond? Brainstorm with your team the content that you finalize. Ask them if it’s appealing to their eyes or not!
2) Promoting a single message with distinct viewpoints and balancing between Promotional and Non-Promotional Content
After you have drafted content and finalized it, try to put it forward with different viewpoints. So, say if you want to put a message, “our 3D business is the best one in the town.” Look for ways in which you can say the same thing. For example, a simple way to prove this is by showing services that you offer to your customers that your competitors do not. Another way could be by listing down case studies of your customers. Such viewpoints could then be posted on your social media in the form of infographics, videos, blog posts, etc. Then you can analyze which one is getting more responses than the other and plan accordingly.
Take special care of balancing the nature of your content. It should be only promotional, else, people will become uninterested. At the same time posting a lot of non-promotional content wouldn’t fulfill your purpose. A correct way to do this is by finding a reputable source in your business. Like there are a lot of 3D printing blogging websites, post some content from such media sources. Doing this will create a unique impression of your business on your customer’s mind.
3) Take time to think about new ideas, and use software to optimize your routines
The former part of the above-mentioned sentence has its effect on the latter. Finding unique content every time or writing it down takes a lot of time and effort. And your task is not over after you find fresh content or compose one. It goes on after that also; that is in making it appealing. Because there is a lot of content that is available that is fresh but complex and unappealing. So you do not want to buy in that content, as the audience is only interested in shorter content that’s more optimized and appealing. And because the creation of such content takes time, you want to carefully schedule your routine.
Committing yourself to several posts that can invest your full week’s time would be foolish. Just because you are creating content for those number of posts this week doesn’t mean you’d find it every week. So, it’s better to keep a clearance and commit yourself to a lesser number of posts. Doing this would allow you to fill the gap for the uncertainties that are about to come. In creating fresh content, making it more appealing, and then serving it out to people! Because once people are waiting to see it, and you are not able to post it, there are fewer chances that they’d return.
4) Social listening tools, engaging with your audience and creating a distinct hash tag for every campaign
For listening to the perceptions of people who view your content, you can take the help of social listening tools. And enrich yourself about what others think about your brand, how they are receiving your creations, what impact your contents are making on their minds, etc. You can also get to know the questions they carry in their heads about your brand, product, and the industry. If there are misunderstandings on either of the sides, it can be sorted. In short, it’s a very neutral way to hear for both the ends that are tied together.
Hashtags are multi-purposeful. They help you with your Instagram and Twitter campaigns. Engagement, which is a primary purpose of any marketing campaign, can be easily fulfilled with hashtags. They do the work of an announcer in the virtual world. By launching brand-specific hashtags you can easily track the engagements. The other area where hash tags can be useful is while recalling previously completed campaigns.
5) Going live and analyzing your performance from time to time
Live streaming is a special boon to all the brands from social media platforms. It’s for those who can take advantage of it and benefit from making your social media campaign more successful than ever. The kind of engagement going live can bring to your campaign no other tool can. You can host live Question and Answer sessions about your 3D printing service, your 3D printer, etc. Scheduling live expert sessions in which there is a discussion about the future scope of the industry is also a way to engage more audience. After the broadcast is over, you can share the discussion on various platforms and use it. According to Pick3dprinter, these are the best 3D Printers for beginners, ranked from the cheapest to the most expensive, to help you start.
One of the habits that you’d have to cultivate is the habit of analyzing. Be it a successful campaign or an unsuccessful one; analyze it to distill out the key learning. See what worked well, what did not. Why did it work well? Why did it not work well? Ask such questions, and try to get relevant answers which’s needed to improve your upcoming campaigns.
The Conclusion
If you think that social media marketing for your 3D business is a piece of cake, you are wrong. It’s time and energy-consuming. You need to painstakingly list down the information that you wish to convey to your audience. From that, create content, make it appealing enough for them to engage in it. After that, maintain them by posting new content regularly, so they do not have to go elsewhere. And the work is not done yet! Analyze your success or failure based on what went well and what did not go well.
A successful social media campaign is the one that is able to achieve its goal more closely than any other. For your 3D business, the goal would be even more difficult. Although the community is expanding, there are still not enough users utilizing 3D printers for professional or personal use. So, you do need to increase awareness. And, that makes the job a little more difficult than for the products and services which are already trending.
Prepare your milestones to achieve your goals. In other words, after you have fixed your goal, you need to break it down into parts and steps, which also become your checkpoints. Work on these in a highly detailed manner. And see how close you can get to achieving them. And, the closer you get, the more successful your campaign is!
