We always keep our eyes peeled for companies doing social media well and this month, we were drawn to an organisation who utilise Community Management and to their advantage.
TracMap works hard to use social media conversation and community management to build community and create an authentic voice.
Our Community Chatter Anna regularly sees them chatting it up, liking, and sharing content in multiple social media circles. We grabbed their attention to share why they are working so hard to be a social media butterfly.
Meet Lynnette. She is responsible for social media with Marketing Manager Kat who work together to make TracMap come alive on social media.
Thanks for agreeing to this Lynnette! For our friends who don’t know, what is TracMap?
We’re a kiwi agtech company on a mission to help our customers improve efficiency and productivity on farms. Our systems plan, map and capture activity such as nutrient application, break fencing and k-line shifts making the day-to-day easier for both managers and staff. That data can then be easily shared with a number of other on-farm systems for planning and reporting.
We’ve got a great bunch of people working behind the scenes at TracMap, with around 50 staff all up. The majority have set up camp in Mosgiel, just south of Dunedin, and we’ve got 4 sales staff out on the road across New Zealand, supporting farmers and contracting businesses. We also have small teams based in Australia, California and Washington.
We use Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube to engage with our community.
Yeah you do! We love seeing social media used well in the rural sector. Great work.
With all of these pages, why is it important for you to do community management? Why don’t you just push content out for people to read about TracMap?
We feel that this is at the core of our brand voice, being Customer Centric, Genuine/Authentic, and Agtech/Rural Experts. We don't want to talk about ourselves or give the hard sale on social media. That's not who we are. That's not TracMap.
So if we can engage with our customers and have them talk about how our products are helping them, then we're doing a pretty good job.
Being in the rural sector, there are so many other layers then just selling a product too. It's about the people and caring and why not share what our awesome customers are doing online with others.
Yes! It’s all about the people and social media is a good tool for that purpose.
With this in mind, how do you structure your community management - who does it and how much time do you invest?
I (Lynnette) basically do “stalking homework” in the evening, every evening.
I make sure I follow relevant pages in the sectors that we work in, as well as "popular ones" such as Tangaroa Walker (who's blown up on social media at the moment), Ag Proud NZ, I am Hope, RuralHQ etc, and watch and read the posts, and like.
Sometimes I will also share it if something is relevant to us. I also double check whether they are a customer in a particular article I've read so I can like and share if it's appropriate.
Our day-to-day content comes in from our Area Managers on the road and throughout the day which is great. Sometimes it gets a bit quiet so it's a good time to do a bit of stalking and finding other interesting content to put up. I like to make sure I have a good variety of content, since we're in Australia, the US and NZ as well.
Since you have started your intentional community management, what benefits have you seen across your social media accounts?
In the short time that Kat and I have been doing the social media (since February), our engagement has definitely grown.
We've discovered how different channels seem to work with different markets, such as on Facebook we seem to get a lot of interaction with our Ag contractors and on Instagram we have found a community of Aviation Ag Pilots that are engaging with us and sharing their videos and pics, and tagging us.
We have grown our Instagram following by a lot too. Our customers are posting great stuff, we only need to re-post and acknowledge them.
Who have you discovered that is good at commenting, liking sharing and starting conversation back to you?
Definitely our customers and our partners. We like their posts and share where appropriate.
The more we post sharing customer stories, the more likes and engagement we seem to get back. We have our regulars that like our posts and that is definitely growing too. They even get talking amongst themselves which is awesome.
"The more we post sharing customer stories, the more likes and engagement we seem to get back."
What is one piece of advice that you would give someone else wanting to build up their community management?
Have bit of game plan as to what their brand voice is. We're really just starting on that journey and it just gets easier the more you start engaging on social media. Experiment with posts on different channels is a good idea as to what kind of engagement it creates.
Above all be genuine.
When I write content I try and make sure it's close to how I would speak in person, so being genuine and having a little humour comes through on posts.
