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Comment by Donald Fitchett Open Networker on June 11, 2012 at 3:29pm

Lee Anne, I checked out the promotional campaign you have to try to get your exhibitors to create a youtube video (potentially their first). You all at at IMTS are to be commended for that effort. 

 

In reply to other comments and Bernard's there is  bit of sad irony. That being IMTS trying to promote others to utilize youtube to it's full advantage and surveying its exhibitors for youtube utilization, and yet IMTS's own youtube channel only has 41 subscribers. The irony is IMTS is one of the disconnect corporations that IMTS via you Lee Anne) is referring to. :>/

 

It may be those in our industry don't yet understand the metrics and what a "subscriber" is. If you have subscribers in our industry (as opposed to not related subscribers gotten some black hat method), the number of subscribers indicate 2 KPIs. Reach and quality. The more your youtube marketing program reaches, the more subscribers you get, if you have quality relevant content. With only 40 subscribers, that means only 40 people get notified, see on their channel you new videos as you release them. It also indicates where your video content will appear in searches to attract new subscribers, followers, potential customers. So subscriber (loyal followers of your channel) take a lot of work, but offer a reasonable ROI. 

Hope this better illustrates the value of YouTube subscribers. Only have a few is like having a low ranking website, not seen as an authority site. Which we all know, means most your great effort in creating videos and the channel are going to waste.

Hope this helps.

Comment by Lee Anne Orange on June 11, 2012 at 8:30am

Good morning Don, this was done back in April, 2011 - I will do another review after IMTS 2012 in September.  While I'm reviewing I will look at our exhibitors YouTube channels and let you know if I find any that are over 1,000 subscribers.  Our exhibitors range from huge corporations to small 2-3 person job shops so we really run the gammet of all shapes and sizes in manufacturing.

Please take a look at our YouTube videos - we are also running a Convince Them in 60 Seconds contest for exhibitors, here is that link:  http://www.imts.com/exhibitor/market/60seconds.html

 

Are you coming to IMTS?  Lee Anne

 

 

Comment by Donald Fitchett Open Networker on June 7, 2012 at 8:22am

Thanks for the great blog post, it confirms our own market studies. While you where viewing all your exporter's youtube channels, did you see any with 1000 or more subscribers? We have almost 4000 subscribers from our industry (http://www.youtube.com/user/bin952) and looking for other substantially trafficked youtube channels in our industry to swap Featured links with. (We feature their channel on the right side of ours, they in return feature our channel on theirs.) I am hard pressed to find any company in our industry who has even 500 subscribers, actually hard to find any who even have 100 subscribers. :>( Except engineering.com who I helped build up and out their youtube channel to be as prominent as ours. Which is actually doing the world a favor because engineering.com has the most, and best videos I have ever seen in our industry.  :>) appreciate you input Lee Anne, looking forward to your reply.

Don

Comment by Lee Anne Orange on April 19, 2011 at 12:46pm

Achinta & Bernie,

How I gathered my stats for this post was a combination of who I found and followed, or "liked" on Twitter and Facebook - and by reviewing every exhibitor's homepage.  You are correct in that some companies didn't list their social connections anywhere on their site, and I spent time looking, some had them behind "contact us" tabs or buired pretty deep in their product content. 

As you have said, there are some great examples out there of companies who do it right, Surware, Inc. www.surfware.com has a nice homepage.  And again, I completely agree with Achinta in that ones that "get it" - really got it and ran with it.

As Bernie mentioned, there was also a large number of companies, who not only were not participating in Social Media, but hadn't even updated their web page in Years!  In my opinon, reviewing your face to the public everyday is a basic first step to customer engagement.

Thank you for your feedback!

Comment by Achinta Mitra on April 17, 2011 at 4:21pm

Lee Ann,

Good post with some keen observations about manufacturers and social media.

I’m curious too about the answer to Bernard’s question.

The popularity of YouTube among manufacturers doesn’t surprise me. According to a report released by the Content Marketing Institute, YouTube usage by manufacturers (50%) is higher than other B2B marketers (38%). You can read more about this and download the report from my post, “More Manufacturers Are Using Videos For Content Marketing.”

I’m a bit skeptical about Facebook and Twitter usage among manufacturers. According to a survey done by GlobalSpec, 59% of industrial professionals have a Facebook account, an increase from 42% in 2009. However, more than two-thirds of these professionals indicate that less than 20% of the content on their Facebook page is work related. In other words, they use it more for personal social networking.

The same study also reported that 53% of engineers ranked their likelihood of signing up for Twitter in the future as only a 1 on a scale of 1–7, with 1 being “Not at all likely” and 7 being “Highly likely”.

LinkedIn still remains the most used social media channel for manufacturing and industrial professionals. Its low numbers in your stats surprises me.

One reason for the low adoption of social media in the industrial sector could be the restrictions placed by company IT policies. In GlobalSpec’s study, 70 percent of respondents stated that they are restricted from using Facebook, and 66 percent are unable to visit YouTube and Twitter.

The few manufacturers that have incorporated social into their Websites, I find have done a very good job. Take a look at Miller Electric Manufacturing Co. Companies like them unfortunately are the exceptions and not the norm.

As far as blogs are concerned, they are still a rarity among manufacturers but two of the best in my opinion are Indium Corporation Blogs and Emerson Process Experts.

Those are my observations. Thanks for letting me share them here.

Comment by Bernard Martin on April 15, 2011 at 12:15pm

Lee Anne, I had a quick question:  Is the data in your chart based upon a website link from their homepage to their social media site (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc) or from other sources ( companies that follow you on twitter, etc) or both?

The reason I ask is because I have found that many many many companies actually do not have their YouTube  or other Social Sites listed on their own website... although those companies may have connected as friends of RPM on YouTube.  When I combine my observation with Achinta's recent blog post "Most Industrial and Manufacturing Websites are Still Stuck in Web 1.0" It makes me wonder how many companies still have a static website (web 1.0) and have not updated the backlinks to their "new" social sites.

Comment by Bernard Martin on April 13, 2011 at 7:59am

I think it's worth mentioning:

IMTS named No. 2 trade show in the United States.

April 6, 2011 - International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS), which spanned 1,137,375 net sq-ft at Chicago's McCormick Place in September 2010, has been named the No. 2 trade show in the U.S. Total registration for the 6-day event was 82,411, with 1,728 companies exhibiting in 1,180 booths. The No. 3 show, held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, was the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute's biennial Pack Expo International/Process Expo/CPP Expo, with 1,054,505 net square feet.