Social media marketing has become more popular than television advertising for businesses. However, there are not many resources that teach transportation companies how to market their company on social media. Follow this guide to learn the basics of social media marketing for trucking companies.
Start With Facebook and Expand to Other Platforms
Facebook is by far the most useful social media platform for trucking companies. The platform provides carriers with the ability to post multiple forms of content that share the company’s story.
Other platforms (Instagram, Twitter,etc.) all specialize in one area of content. Instagram is for visual content. Twitter is for short-form written content. If you start on a platform other than Facebook then you will limit the amount of content you can create.
Here is the real benefit to Facebook:
Facebook is a top-three cost-per-hire driver recruiting strategy.
By effectively marketing your company on Facebook, you will attract quality drivers to apply for your company. Considering that over 96% of professional drivers have a Facebook account, the pool of drivers using Facebook will never run dry.
Truck drivers that are interested in working for your company, no matter where they are exposed to your company, will search for your company on Facebook. They want to know what it is like to work for you before they apply.
Facebook is the most important platform when it comes to social media marketing for trucking companies. Starting on the platform will enable you to effectively tell your company’s story and recruit truck drivers.
Build Your Company Page
Now that you have decided to begin your social media marketing campaign on Facebook, you need to build your company page. This is the page that drivers will land on when they search for your company.
Visit this link to get started building your page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/create
Facebook does an excellent job of walking you through each step of the process. It will be clear what information is needed for the page and what content you need to publish.
However, certain strategies will further optimize your page.
To have an optimized Facebook page you need to keep things as simple as possible. Instead of describing your company in length with words, use pictures.
Keep your company description succinct and make sure that you link to your company website.
Join the Right Groups With Your Page
After you finish creating your company page you can join Facebook groups with your page. You do not need to join the groups with your personal account.
Go to the search feature on Facebook, type in “ trucking”, and filter to only see groups. You will quickly realize there are thousands of trucking-related groups across the country.
Go through all of the groups and join the ones that make sense for your company to join.
When you join a new group make sure to read the group rules so you can avoid being kicked out of any of the groups you join.
Creating Content for Social Media
For a more in-depth content creation guide check out this article: https://driveteks.com/guide-to-content-creation-for-driver-recruitment/
Content creation is what will motivate drivers to learn more about your company and potentially apply to drive for you.
You need to create content that people can read, photos/infographics, and videos. Creating different forms of content allows drivers to engage with your company any way they wish.
Not all of the content you create should be sales content. You need to create content that your target market will find interesting. Your content will lure people to your page and/or website where they will then consume your sales content.
Gathering Followers
The more followers you have the better. Your published content will reach more eyes for free as your following grows.
As you publish your content keep track of which people are interacting with it. These are the people that will be most likely to follow you. You should reach out to them and encourage them to follow your page.
Another great way to grow your following is by highlighting individuals that work for or with your company in an occasional post. The individuals you highlight will want to share the post about themselves and will expose you to all of their friends.
Finally, you should ask your current employees to follow your company.
Paid Advertising
Doing everything above will help your company get started on social media; however, to experience success you need to implement paid advertising.
Each of the social media platforms makes large sums of money from ad-buying. Because of this, their algorithms are built so that companies have a limited reach with free posting. They have built a product that requires paying for a large amount of exposure.
Paid advertising on social media is a complicated process. If you do not do it properly, your company will waste their money on an inefficient campaign. Done the right way, a paid advertising campaign will boost your web presence which increases site traffic and drive applications.
It is recommended you hire a professional to handle the campaign due to the complications of paid advertising.
Social media marketing is a necessary element of any business marketing strategy. Trucking companies need to take a different approach than other industries because of the nature of the industry. Follow this guide and you will cover all the basics of social media marketing for trucking companies.