Using Social Media to Drive Your Fleet Forward

In an age when fleet companies are pursuing digital transformation, it is important to use social media to help your business to grow. Regardless of the size of your fleet, having a well-planned social media strategy is important to help create brand identity, increase recognition, increase website traffic, and enhance audience interaction – resulting in an increase in your fleet’s value.

4 Ways Social Media Benefits Your Business

1. Gain Insight to Your Audience Composition and Tailor Your Content to Their Needs

Looking at the reach of traditional marketing platforms, they are often limited to the area they are placed or where they are distributed. They also offer one-way means of marketing, meaning they never quite guarantee the exact number of people who will see it or even respond to it. But by sharing your content online, not only do you broaden the scope of who it reaches, but you get a much more accurate count of the number of views, likes, and shares it generates, as well as your audience’s makeup and characteristics. This allows you to better shape your content towards your audience.

For instance, if you generate a lot of likes and views from sharing information on energy efficiency, on your next blog article you could share information on the type of fuel your fleet uses, your company’s fuel efficiency strategies, and how these steps have helped your fleet minimize the emission of greenhouse gases. Not only does this reflect the position or core values of your business on climate change, but it will also help you secure more audiences, and possibly customers, who are big on going green.

2. Engage with Your Audience

There are many potential ways to reach out to the world around you, but this objective requires a strategy in order to approach it effectively. Similarly, the content you share must be targeted to a specific audience (industry related vs potential new revenue streams) using buzz words and imagery that will grab their attention. Once this has been achieved, social media provides a platform for you to connect with your audience. As the Digital Marketing Institute puts it, “Social media is also about connection and engagement”.

So, whether it’s by responding to feedback, complaints, or criticism about your drivers on the road behaviour or delivery time, taking your time to acknowledge and show appreciation for your customers goes a long way to keeping them engaged. Also, interacting with your audience will help you gain insight on how best you can improve your fleets effectiveness and address your customer’s needs.

3. Generate Business Leads

They say getting a foot in the door is always the best place to start. While this is often taken to mean a solid contact with whom a meeting can be set up, the groundwork that has to be done just to get that contact is often manual and time-consuming. What social media can offer you is an easier and low commitment means through which interest can be expressed in your business and product. Fleet managers can achieve this by:

Running contests and promotions
Providing links to gated content
Using lead ads and video content
Engaging in online webinars/Q&A sessions

The internet today is where businesses meet with their customers. As in all industries, your fleet needs to be known to be successful in the logistics industry. Generating leads on social media will help raise recognition and awareness for your fleet. It also has the potential to create a word of mouth effect once your brand is widely recognized, meaning one person will tell the next person about your services. This will lead to more customers and revenue generation.

4. Drive Traffic to Your Website

If people want to know more about your company, visiting your website is the first thing they will do. But if you are looking to gain new customers that might not have heard of you, your social media presence will help you reel them in. You can drive more clicks to your website by sharing attractive content from your blog/website, participating in chat forums, and using trending topics and hashtags to promote your brand.

Acquiring website traffic, creates opportunities for your fleet to thrive. Even though traffic doesn’t ensure that people will render your logistics services immediately upon visiting, it builds awareness that may translate into long-term revenue. Traffic to your website can also help bring in additional revenue into business. Selling advertising space is one of the most common ways. Advertisers can pay you for every click someone makes on their ad while on your page.

Author: Stuart Munien: Sim Card Administrator – Geotab Africa