Social media allows busi­nesses to connect with people who would other­wise be beyond reach. And while you can present your brand on your website, on social media, you can actu­ally engage with your audi­ence. “There’s a lot of poten­tial here,” says Marion Neubrand, Marketing Specialist at Uhlmann.

So far, we have made good use of this poten­tial. “Our goal for 2022 was to crack the ten-thou­sand follower mark on Linkedin,” says Neubrand. “And we’re delighted to have already achieved that goal in the first half of the year.” The overall objec­tive, he says, is to expand Uhlmann’s reach on the plat­form. “We are looking to increase our expo­sure. We create links to content on our websites, and our ulti­mate goal is to use lead gener­a­tion to attract poten­tial new customers. There’s a good chance that anyone who lands on our website via LinkedIn will use the plat­form to send us an inquiry or try to get in touch with us in other ways”, Neubrand explains.

54 Likes
is the average number of likes Uhlmann Germany gets on each of its posts

Partic­i­pating and gener­ating content

But it all starts with content. And our colleagues must first make this content avail­able so that it can be viewed, liked, commented on and shared. It’s not just our marketing colleagues who take care of this. “It’s impor­tant to us that other colleagues also get involved, propose topics, and send us photos or videos,” says Neubrand. That’s why people are regu­larly encour­aged to join in. Read about the guide­lines for posting on LinkedIn and other social media here. And what kind of content do LinkedIn users like? “Photos with people are the most popular, espe­cially when they’re not posing. A good example would be one of someone working on the shop floor,” Neubrand says. This kind of post simul­ta­ne­ously attracts a mixed audi­ence: Uhlmann employees, Uhlmann customers, or even suppliers of other equip­ment.

Some 300 posts
were counted in the busi­ness year 2021/22

Other coun­tries – other users

There is also a lively exchange with inter­na­tional social media colleagues: “We also make our content avail­able for the LinkedIn chan­nels of our sites in the USA, Singa­pore, France, Brazil and Spain,” says Neubrand, “But they also post their own content, of course.” She also finds it inter­esting to see how different users behave around the world: “People in South America, for example, tend to ‘like’ and share more than, say, users in Europe who are a touch more hesi­tant. In China, on the other hand, LinkedIn has been blocked and banned. So our colleagues over there tend to use the WeChat messenger app instead.”

2.900 addi­tional followers
were gained during this period, and around 2 million impres­sions gener­ated (that’s the number of times our posts were displayed to users).

So what’s the trick to extending social media reach?

Anything posted by Uhlmann is only displayed to those who also follow Uhlmann directly, and that’s currently around 11,200 followers. “But if an Uhlmann employee responds to one of our posts with a like or a comment, users who network with this colleague will also see this post,” Neubrand explains. That’s why it’s so impor­tant to us that colleagues actively use LinkedIn and network with their customer contacts or other inter­ested parties on social media.

In addi­tion to LinkedIn, Uhlmann is also on Face­book, Xing, YouTube and Insta­gram. Insta­gram is main­tained inde­pen­dently by our trainees.

And these are our colleagues