The Guide to Using Social Media to Your Professional Advantage

Hey, want to feel old? This August will be the 21st anniversary of the launch of Myspace. Yes, the social media platform that pretty much started all of this with an unassuming guy named Tom who claims he is your friend, will be old enough to drink.

In the decades since, we’ve had the dawn of The Facebook, which famously became just Facebook, and they made a whole movie where Justin Timberlake tells the creators to drop the “the” and make it “Facebook.” We’ve seen the rise and relative fall of Twitter, which maybe some day will be the subject of a movie where Justin Timberlake also plays Elon Musk telling some over-worked techie that he’s renaming the company X.

We’ve seen Instagram go from retro filters to a Facebook offshoot, Snapchat killer, and even a competitor of TikTok.

And that’s not even to mention TikTok.

The point we’re making here is that social media is everywhere. It can’t be overstated just how deep it’s rooted into our modern society. And that includes on the business side. It’s no longer “Are you using social media?” That ship has long since sailed, and anyone who was a social media holdout X amount of years ago is now firmly behind, or viewed as some Luddite. It’s now a matter of which ones you’re using, and when and how you’re using them.

What distributors should be considering is this: Are you using social media to its fullest potential? With so many different platforms, are you using the right tool for the right job? Are you just spinning your wheels posting things that don’t resonate? Or worse: Are you posting things that are annoying your followers and turning them off to your business entirely?

Especially in an age where travel isn’t necessary to meet your potential clients anymore, an effective social media presence can make or break your business.

Who’s Using What

In January 2024, ASI’s research department asked promotional products professionals which social media platforms they actively use for their business. Facebook was the overwhelming frontrunner, with 75% of respondents saying they use it. That was followed by Instagram (54%) and LinkedIn (51%). That number is a little surprising, given the fact that LinkedIn was designed purely as a business-assisting social media platform.

Twitter and TikTok both clocked in at 11%, with Other (Pinterest being mentioned the most often) at 6%.

Perhaps the most surprising of all, though, is that 10% of respondents say they don’t use any social media platform for their business at all. It’s hard to fathom that in 2024.

Let’s compare this study within the promo industry alongside the U.S. population on the whole. A Pew Research study surveyed U.S. adults about their social media usage in September 2023.

It found that 83% of adults use YouTube, 68% use Facebook, 47% use Instagram, 35% use Pinterest, 33% use TikTok, 30% use LinkedIn, 29% use WhatsApp, 27% use Snapchat, 22% use both Reddit and Twitter, and 3% use BeReal.

When divided by age group, Facebook was most popular among the 30-49 crowd. Instagram dominated the 18-29 demographic. LinkedIn was just slightly more popular among 30-49-year-olds than 18-29 and 50-64. TikTok, SnapChat and X (formerly known as Twitter) were all most popular among the 18-29 demographic.

So, what can you take away from this? For starters, it can help you tailor your content for the audience. If you’re spending most of your effort on a site dominated by teenagers who aren’t actually buying promotional products, you might be wasting your time and WiFi. But, that said, if you do want to appeal to a younger audience for something, you can know that these platforms are full of Generation Z, who are aging into buying positions.

Let’s look at one particular success story from TikTok.

Viral Sensations

In early May, one TikTok user told a story about when she was in the marketing department for an apartment management company. She remembered signing her own lease agreement with a particularly nice pen, and when the time came for her to order some for the business, she knew what she wanted. It was the BIC Gel Intensity Clic Pen from Koozie Group, and it became a sensation seemingly overnight. Koozie Group was now inundated with sample requests, and was trying to parlay this pen’s fame into attention for the rest of its products.

Clare Deaton, marketing coordinator for distributor Executive Advertising, noticed a spike in demand, too, as someone who carried the pen, which was exclusive to the distributor market.

After the video, and literally overnight, her company had 30 sample orders by 10 a.m.

By the time they tracked down the source of the traffic, the TikTok post had 3 million views (only 12 hours after posting). To make sure that it ended with actual business — rather than just sample requests or demands for free pens from TikTok viewers in a frenzy — Executive Advertising’s marketing team stitched together the original post with a video letting potential customers know how they could get the pen by 11 a.m.

“That video was short, sweet and to the point,” Deaton says. “And that video climbed to over 1 million in 24 hours.”

After the TikTok fame, Deaton opened a specific TikTok shop for the Gel Intensity Clic Pen for people to buy as a self-promo.

“The idea was that it would ‘give the people what they want’ while taking the server load off of our normal e-commerce store,” Deaton says. “While this pen went viral to most pen enthusiasts, they were not our normal customer buying in bulk, so we didn’t want to build a store around people just wanting samples. We received plenty of full orders at Executive Advertising.com. However, our TikTok shop was the perfect support for getting people samples quickly.”

Executive Advertising offered the pens as three-packs or single pens, and went back to their post to let viewers know that the store was up and running.

“Meanwhile, the same day we ordered a batch of self-promos in the colors we had in the shop on a rush and overnighted [them] so we could meet the demand from the new store. And, well, it worked. We received about 1,000-plus orders over the first three days, and each one of those customers are getting some marketing material from Executive Advertising.”

Oh, and as a way to prove that the TikTok fame is what brought the customer, each pen came with marketing material with a QR code that allows Executive Advertising to track whether the pen came from TikTok.

The thing with viral moments is that it really is like catching lightning in a bottle. It’s rare, and it doesn’t often happen twice. The closest thing Deaton had seen to this was the fidget spinner craze of 2017, but that was more of your run-of-the-mill product trend that promo hitched onto. This was one specific item that they carried as a promotional product, and people wanted it now. This wave was going to break, and Deaton knew they had to paddle like hell and ride it for as long as they could.

“Acting fast is so important,” she says. “These trends don’t last very long — just a few days. And every minute that goes by, the trend is on a decline. In our scenario, within three hours of knowing there was something up, we had a response stitch video released. And within 24 hours, we built and put up a TikTok shop for the samples to be ordered. The shop collected over 1,000 orders in its first three days.”

TikTok has obviously worked for Executive Advertising. Deaton personally likes the way you can edit videos and literally put your products in front of an audience’s face. She also says that their marketing department has some Gen Z employees who know their way around a TikTok video. But, it might not be what works for everyone, and it certainly shouldn’t be the basket in which you put all of your advertising eggs.

You can’t bank on going viral, after all.

Get Personal

Your social media usage should be an extension of you, but it should be a curated version of you. Let me explain. A lot of people use their social media platforms as a stream of consciousness — a catch-all for every stray thought and opinion that pops into their mind and extends to their fingertips. Some people are interesting and witty enough that that’s enough to build a solid brand. But, I’m sorry to say, those people are extremely few and far between.

For your own social media use as it relates to your promotional products business, you need to use your personality to show that you are, in fact, a real person with a real life that people can form a relationship with. You also need to make sure that you’re giving ample screen time to your promotional products business.

But here’s where it gets a little tricky: You need to find that sweet spot where you’re showcasing your business and the products you sell, and doing it in a way that reflects your personality and individuality without leaning too far in either direction. It’s a balancing act that takes a lot of practice, according to Meg Erber, director of sales at Proforma, Cleveland, Ohio.

“I teach people not to use [social media] to push product, but to elevate their own awareness and brand and become that thought leader.”

To Erber, this idea of a social media magician is inspiring, providing real strategies for business, and not just putting a tumbler on the screen and talking about double-wall insulation for 10 minutes.

She uses the products as a prop, so to speak, demonstrating while talking how she might just casually sip from a branded mug to show the product in its natural habitat. It’s almost subliminal.

“That’s the Easter egg, right?”

Erber, like a lot of businesspeople, likes LinkedIn. It is specifically designed for professional development and networking, rather than a place for memes or cat videos. She had to get used to LinkedIn and figure out how it ticked, though.

“I didn’t like LinkedIn before because I wasn’t using it to its fullest potential,” she says. “I was using it like, ‘OK, here’s my network,’ and people were using it to spam the hell out of me. Let me tell you something: I just don’t even read those emails, because that’s not the right way to do it.”

She says that she realized the “proper” way for her to use LinkedIn was to use its analytics capabilities, such as looking at who is engaging with her posts.

“Knowing what their job descriptions are was so beneficial, because I’m looking at my posts, which I think are high-level, but you compare it to Facebook, and it’s like my family and friends that are liking it, right?” Erber says. “But if I’m putting that same post on LinkedIn and I pull up the job description, and they show five, four of those five are either an owner, a president and CEO, a vice president, or a founder or something.”

Basically, she realized she was able to make sure the people who engage with her posts are the people she wants to actually engage with her posts on a professional level. Your uncle thinking your newest T-shirt promo is “neat” is, well, neat and all, but unless he is ready to drop a big order on T-shirts for his bowling league or something, it doesn’t actually help from a business standpoint.
When Erber would see that someone in a certain position at a certain company was engaging with her content, she knew to continue that pattern and grow from there.

“That tells me that those posts are educational and inspiring,” she says. “They’re being picked up by the right people.”
Erber’s advice is to keep the focus and goal of each post on business, but to sprinkle in the things that make you human. Think of it like setting up a dating profile. The goal, for most people, is finding a long-term or even permanent partner. But you don’t just start messaging someone talking about getting married from minute one. Or, maybe you do, but you’re probably not the most successful person on Tinder in that case. Include your personal life within reason, and connect with humans on a human level, so they feel comfortable working with you on a professional level. In an era where robots are getting increasingly more jobs, it’s nice to talk to a person every now and then.

“It’s being that person where you’re creating an awareness of who you are,” Erber says. “You’re building your brand, you’re building that brand trust. If I’m the brand, and if I talk about my family right now, I’m not just their order-taker. I’m not just their sales rep. I’m a mom of seven kids, one of them in the Navy. Meg does jiujitsu. I’ve become interesting. My passions become the conversation.”

Before she knows it, she becomes that person’s go-to person for T-shirts.

“I humanize myself by putting myself out there and being vulnerable,” Erber says. “Because at the end of the day, if you only have phone or email interactions with your customers or vendors, that’s all you are.”

Human Connections

Stacy Garrett, vice president of marketing for Ideation, Lake Oswego, Oregon, recalls one instance where LinkedIn turned into a huge opportunity for her and her business by using those analytics and making herself available as a person first, and professional service second.

She had noticed someone she had worked with in the past on small orders had gotten a new job, and that he had viewed her profile.

“So I reached out to him and said, ‘Hey, I’ve been thinking about you, how are you doing? I hope the new job is going well. Let me know if I can do anything.’” Garrett says. “And he’s like, ‘Actually, I was just looking at your profile.’ Of course he was, because I knew that. ‘We have this project I’m hoping you could help us with.’ At the time, I was probably selling maybe $3 million a year, almost $4 million. And he wanted $400,000 worth of PopSockets for this program. And at the time it was my single largest order for one item.”

Garrett says she truly believes that had she not noticed that he viewed her profile and acted, that order would’ve gone to someone else. Instead, the order of about $400,000 in PopSockets grew to about $600,000 with other products.

“I made it really easy for him,” she says.

You should be following brands you want to work with and actively engaging with them. Don’t be a nuisance, or what is commonly referred to in social media-speak as a “reply guy” who just replies to every post without saying anything of substance. (Picture the person at a Q&A who starts with, “Well, this is actually more of a comment than a question.”)

“If you’re going after Nike, follow Nike on LinkedIn and engage with it, because then your contacts at Nike are going to see that engagement, and you are building rapport and trust with them because you’re not just there trying to make a sale, you are actually paying attention to the brand,” she says. “It give you a lot of insight into some of the things that are happening. You might see about an event that they’re having or an anniversary that’s coming up. So, engage, engage, engage. I would tell anyone on my team, whether they listen or not, they should spend five minutes at least every day on social media on LinkedIn. Just go through. You don’t have to comment on everything. You don’t have to be interactive on everything. But you should go on every single day for a few minutes.”

The "like” can put your name out there, where a prospect could see you’re engaging, but you’re just literally face in the crowd that way. An insightful comment sets you apart. Also, unlike places like Instagram, LinkedIn is a little more friendly to those who slide into DM’s. At least that’s what Garrett says.
After striking out through email, she just went to LinkedIn, found the person’s profile, and reached out.

“My message for her was, ‘Hey, I thought that you were included in an email the other day from one of our account managers, I thought I’d connect here, and see that you went to University of Idaho,” she says, making an example of finding something about someone’s personal life to go beyond just the sales pitch. “We started talking and found all these small world things. So fast-forward three weeks later and she came to an event we have here. This is a person who I have never met. It’s a prospect, it’s not even a customer. She comes to the event and she gives me a hug. I think with LinkedIn, you know, there are a lot of dynamics that are different, but I built this rapport with her. It was authentic rapport. But she brought two people from her company. One of them is the person in charge of all promo.”

Whatever platform you choose to engage with on social media, the lesson is that you should identify how people like to use the platform. If it’s X, don’t post a 20-post text-wall. For Instagram and TikTok, embrace the power of video editing and appealing to younger audiences. For LinkedIn, be the person at the professional mixer who takes the time to really go beyond your conversation partner’s business and break the barrier between strangers and friends. People like doing business with their friends.

And, if you like Facebook, remember to leave your aunt a message on her birthday. Maybe include one of those cartoons where you’re jumping out of a birthday cake with a cat or something.