What You Need to Know About Social Media Marketing for Manufacturing Companies

Running a manufacturing business is hard enough without having to become a content creator overnight.

Here is a practical, fluff-free guide to turning your shop floor expertise into online revenue using a smart, hybrid strategy.

In this Your Intern article, we'll cover:

• Why does your manufacturing company want to do social media marketing?

• What's a social media 80/20 principle manufacturing companies can work with?

• Why video should be crucial for manufacturing companies doing social media marketing

• LinkedIn posts and the other 80 for manufacturing companies

• How Your Intern helps manufacturing companies automate social media marketing

Why does your manufacturing company want to do social media marketing?

Before you hire a videographer or start scheduling tweets, you need to pause and answer a fundamental question: Why are you doing this?

Every marketing initiative requires a clear "why" to be effective, and social media is no different.

Are you hoping to go viral on Threads? Do you just want a valid excuse to dance on TikTok during your lunch break?

Believe it or not, these can be legitimate reasons, depending on your company culture.

Some manufacturing firms - specifically those without an obvious direct-to-consumer product - use social media primarily for team building rather than brand building.

Posting fun, behind-the-scenes content humanizes the business. It shows that you are real people who enjoy working together, which can be surprisingly effective for recruitment and general morale. It signals to prospective partners that you are a good group to work with.

However, let’s be honest: most manufacturing firms aren't setting up social media profiles just to have a laugh.

Most of you want to generate leads, close deals, and drive revenue. You want your digital presence to result in purchase orders.

If that is the goal, your strategy needs to look very different from the firm just looking to boost morale. You have to figure out exactly what your specific goals are before you type a single caption.

Are you trying to reach procurement managers at large OEMs? Are you selling custom parts to hobbyists?

Your "why" dictates the platform, the tone, and the content you produce. Without this clarity, you are just shouting into the void.

What's a social media 80/20 principle manufacturing companies can work with?

I know what you are thinking: "I barely have time to manage the shop floor, what does the Pareto Principle have to do with my LinkedIn profile?"

The answer lies in efficiency.

Social media marketing functions on a distinct variation of the 80/20 rule. To be successful, you must identify your "20": the 20% of high-effort, high-impact content that truly moves the needle for your business relationships.

This is the content that proves your expertise and closes deals.

However, you cannot simply post that 20% and ignore the rest.

Social media algorithms are hungry beasts; they reward consistency and frequency above almost everything else. If you only post your best work once a month, the platforms will deem your account inactive, and your audience will never see it.

You need volume to earn visibility.

This creates a dilemma for busy manufacturers. You can't spend all day creating filler content just to appease an algorithm.

The solution is a hybrid strategy: Automate the 80% and focus your limited human energy entirely on the 20%. By using smart tools to handle the volume - the daily posts that keep your account alive and credible - you free up your schedule to focus on the high-value content.

For manufacturing companies specifically, that critical 20% should almost certainly be video.

Your industry is visual, tactile, and complex. Text alone rarely conveys the precision of your machinery or the scale of your operations. By automating the text-based maintenance work, you buy yourself the time to capture the visuals that actually sell your capabilities.

Why video should be crucial for manufacturing companies doing social media marketing

Video is the ultimate proof of life for a manufacturer.

In an industry plagued by supply chain uncertainties and "ghost" vendors, video proves your capacity and capability instantly.

When a potential client sees a walk-through of your facility or a close-up of a CNC machine milling a complex part, they are seeing proof that you can do what you say you can do.

This builds trust, which is the single most important factor in winning new B2B customers.

Furthermore, video creates parasocial relationships. When prospects see your face or hear your voice explaining a technical concept, they feel like they know you before they've even booked a discovery call. This familiarity significantly lowers the barrier to entry for sales conversations.

The best part?

It doesn't need to be polished, cinematic, or expensive.

In fact, raw and authentic often performs better. You can easily execute a video strategy by hosting short live streams using tools like Riverside.fm.

Use these sessions to talk to the specialists on your floor, interview your happy customers, or even chat with your own material suppliers. This serves a dual purpose: it creates engaging content for your audience, and it deepens your existing business relationships with the people you interview.

If you create content in this interview format via live streams, your audience will forgive lower production values. They understand it's live; they aren't expecting a Hollywood production. They are tuning in for the insight, the expertise, and the look behind the curtain.

LinkedIn posts and the other 80 for manufacturing companies

If video is your high-impact 20%, what makes up the remaining 80% of your output?

For B2B manufacturing, this should be consistent, text-based content on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook.

While video grabs attention, the "feed" is still dominated by text. To keep the algorithms happy and your profile visible, you need to lean into long-text posts.

These posts serve as the bedrock of your online presence, ensuring that when a prospect finally clicks on your profile after seeing a video, they see a company that is active, thoughtful, and engaged.

A key concept here is "zero-click content." This refers to posts that deliver value right there in the feed without forcing the reader to click a link to visit your website or blog.

Social platforms hate when users leave their site.

If you post a link saying "Read our new blog," the algorithm often buries it. If you take the key insights from that blog and write them directly into a LinkedIn post, the platform rewards you with reach. The user prefers it too, as they get the information immediately.

This type of consistent, educational, long-form text is exactly the kind of workflow you should not be writing manually every day. It is time-consuming and mentally draining to stare at a blank page every morning.

Fortunately, this is exactly the area where modern automation tools shine.

You can automate this "maintenance" content partially or wholly using tools like Your Intern, ensuring your brand stays top-of-mind without you having to lift a finger daily.

How Your Intern helps manufacturing companies automate social media marketing

If you are ready to implement this hybrid strategy - focusing on video while automating the rest - Your Intern is the tool that makes it possible.

Your Intern acts as a specialized AI agent designed to handle the heavy lifting of your LinkedIn presence.

Unlike standard AI tools like ChatGPT where you have to constantly feed it prompts and hope for a decent result, Your Intern is proactive. It creates LinkedIn posts, analyzes their performance, and then improves its strategy based on your real data.

This means the system adapts to your specific audience. If your manufacturing insights get more engagement than your industry news commentary, Your Intern learns that preference and adjusts future drafts accordingly.

It outperforms generic, off-the-shelf AI solutions because it is learning from your actual results, not just a static database.

The workflow is designed for busy business owners. Your Intern sends three high-quality post drafts directly to your email every week. You don't need to log into a complicated dashboard. You simply open the email, review the text, and click once to load it into LinkedIn.

From there, you have full control. You can edit the post to add your unique voice or specific technical details before hitting publish. This ensures the content remains authentic while removing the time-consuming burden of ideation and drafting.

At just $12 a month, Your Intern allows you to maintain a professional, active presence while saving you over 10 hours a week. It’s the smartest way to keep your "80%" running smoothly so you can focus on running your factory.

Sign up today to try Your Intern out!