Written by Dr. Ralph Williams & Dr. Randy Clark, Middle Tennessee State University 

Over 5 billion people worldwide used social media in 2025, averaging 141 minutes per day, and more than 15 social media platforms had over 500 million active users. It’s safe to say, there’s a lot of social media marketing today. Indeed, we often see print service providers (PSPs) using social media to promote their products and services. In 2025, more than 90% of print businesses used social media in some form. For example, LinkedIn is used by approximately 90% of printing companies for networking; Instagram and TikTok are regularly used for e-commerce, including print-on-demand and custom apparel; and Facebook remains the dominant social media platform for small and medium-sized print shop promotion. But the question remains, are those social media platforms generating more leads and more revenue? Are your company’s social media posts effective and productive? If not, are you wasting time and resources?

The potential of wasting your company’s valuable time and resources prompts this question: What are the keys to effectively developing a social media marketing piece? We address that question by first presenting a process for creating effective social media marketing.  Then, we provide some advice for implementing those strategies. Finally, we close with general thoughts and observations.

Social Media Marketing Process.

  1. Define your goals
    • Determine what you want to achieve with your social media marketing, just like you would if you made a sales call. Using social media is another marketing channel to help you build your brand, promote your products and services, close deals with prospective customers, and build stronger relationships with existing customers. Without a goal, you are taking a trip with no destination. The ride might be interesting, but it’s inefficient and doesn’t always get you where you want to go.
    • Social media is effective at building customer relationships (either new or existing) because it provides another connection point at a time when you may not be able to reach the customer with other marketing messages.
    • Don’t underestimate the ability of social media marketing to connect directly to your website to generate e-commerce.
  2. Identify your target audience
    • While this is step two in the process, you need to understand your target audience as you develop your goals. Therefore, we can call the first two steps 1a and 1b.
    • Your target audience should direct the social media platform you choose. There is an outlet to reach both B2B and B2C customers, as well as people across many demographics.
  3. Set your message
    • Your goals and your audience should determine your message.
    • Also, your message will impact your platform choice. If you want to remind existing customers that you are available for all their printing needs, you would likely be wise to post short updates on LinkedIn that highlight your full range of services. If you want to attract new customers to your print-on-demand apparel business, you will benefit from using Instagram or TikTok to reach a younger audience or Facebook to reach an older audience with this message,
  4. Choose your platform(s)
    • Each platform has its demographic and purpose. Identify the platform that best meets your goal, audience, and message needs,
    • There is much overlap across social media platforms in the use of content. With a social media management platform, you can often create, post, and monitor presence across multiple outlets in one platform. Much of the effectiveness of social media lies in the ability to build a network of customer connections, so posting content on multiple platforms can increase your effectiveness in achieving your goals.
  5. Create your content
    • Creating content doesn’t have to be a time-consuming, over-produced task. Everyday activities can be the basis of content, so don’t be afraid to record the things you naturally do. This will help your content feel more authentic and perhaps resonate more with customers.
    • AI can help you create content quickly, but don’t over-rely on its use because your content will feel contrived.
  6. Publish and engage your audience
    • A social media management platform can help you schedule and post your content. Running your business is a time-consuming job, so constantly managing social media content may feel like more than you can handle. However, many create multiple pieces of content in one setting and then schedule those posts to publish over a couple of weeks. This helps you maintain a constant presence without a constant time burden.
    • Don’t forget to “engage” your audience. Sometimes you can achieve your goals with a brief comment on existing content. Remember that we are building relationships here, so that requires some back-and-forth communication.
  7. Track results and monitor reactions
    • Measuring the response helps you to understand what works and what was a miss. However, think of social media more like advertising than a sales pitch. It may take some time to see financial growth from social media marketing, so don’t give up too soon.

Effective social media marketing advice.

  • Determine your message and goals
    • Your target customers, goals, and message impact what social media outlets can best accomplish your objectives. You may need to revisit each of the first three steps in the process above as you determine your message and choose your platform. This process is more fluid than a step-by-step approach.
    • Have a consistent message. If social media says one thing but your salespeople say something different, customers won’t believe or trust your company. You should conduct regular checks across all your marketing methods to ensure they are aligned. Misalignment can hurt your business by eroding trust.
  • Grab your target audience’s attention
    • Your ads must capture attention. Engaging personalities, humor, and interesting facts make people look and listen. Build these elements into your message.
    • Offer a variety of content types using words, visuals, and video content. If you do the same thing repeatedly, customers will think all your ads say the same thing.
    • Make your content feel “real” and believable. AI-generated ads are numerous, and people know it doesn’t feel real. Be sure to engage authentically just as you would in person.
    • Engaging with your own social media can help to maintain customer attention. If customers expect you to respond to comments on your social media, they will continue to monitor your existing posts.
  • Plan and execute
    • Plan a content schedule. What messages will you share, and when will you share them? Remember, you can create multiple posts at the same time and schedule them to post over multiple days. That will help you maintain a consistent presence with your customers.
    • To broaden your customer reach and create message reinforcement, connect social media content across multiple platforms. You are building a network, so the more connections you build across that network, the more people you will ultimately engage.
  • Monitor your audience response
    • The unique promotional advantage of social media marketing is the ability to connect with a large audience. Be sure to track the response your social media captures, or else you are not maximizing your potential.
    • Identify what content or which messages generate the most attention. This will help you identify what to repeat as you create more content.
    • You don’t have to answer every comment, but you should be sure to show a presence with an occasional response. Remember, you are building a relationship, so not responding gives the impression you’re not interested.

There are two big messages underlying the points above. First, your firm must have a clear mission – who is our target market, what products and services do we provide to them, and what unique value do we offer them? Your mission should paint a picture of how your firm differs from its competitors and why customers should consider your firm. A mission is vital for steering your firm’s direction, serving as a ship’s rudder, uniting your team to pursue that path together, and forming the foundation for your marketing story. Indeed, in a printing industry study, we found that without a solid mission, effective sales management failed to produce superior results, reinforcing the importance of a mission. Your company’s mission should serve as the foundation for its social media marketing.

Second, effective marketing, including social media posts, requires diligent and ongoing planning. What message do we want to convey? How do we convey that message? And what media do we use to communicate that message? This is not a one-time action like buying a piece of equipment or hiring. Someone on your staff with marketing and planning skills (note the inclusion of planning) needs to prepare a path forward and share it with the firm’s leaders. Consider meeting monthly to assess previous marketing steps and review the plan forward.

We’ve seen PSP social media ads that we find effective, such as customer testimonials, in which individuals share what they gained from working with your printing firm. Additionally, we’ve seen ads featuring awards earned by printing products, often with a smiling customer who purchased the product from the printing company. We’ve seen ads featuring products that a printing company produced for a major business or organization, such as a major university. We would like to see more “eye-catching” ads sharing “this is what our customers gain from us” …customer success stories.

We often see social media ads showing off printing equipment. As we have “ink in our veins,” we love to see today’s printing equipment running like a beast. However, we wonder how effectively those ads draw in customers. Are customers interested in presses, folders, or binders? We also see “Print ain’t dead” ads. If you apply the “Print ain’t dead” view, you might specifically connect it with customer stories. And last, consider using printed material to reinforce your message. Interestingly, of all the printing companies I connect with, I see only two effectively using print to market themselves, and both are successful!

Effective marketing can also help to build stronger companies. Your labor market is more challenging than what I experienced when leading a PSP a couple of decades ago.  Social media marketing may help with employee recruiting and retention. We see PSP posting employee accomplishments and career opportunities, which are nice. But keep in mind that “employer branding” is ineffective unless the firm has an “Employee Value Proposition” that identifies the value your company provides to its employees (as we found in a previous study of the printing industry). Doesn’t this relate to the importance of mission when connecting with customers discussed above? If you are marketing on social media, either to customers or potential team members, know your company’s mission!

We hope these thoughts help you fashion effective social media marketing.

Dr. Ralph Williams

Management Professor

Middle Tennessee State University

 

Dr. Randy Clark

Marketing Professor,

Middle Tennessee State University