Modern Machine Shop Magazine (MMS) manages a comprehensive online presence, mainly via its website, mmsonline.com, but it also has accounts on some of the major SNSs, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
As research for this project progresses, with the ultimate goal being to compose a social media recommendation report for the brand, I will be evaluating MMS's social media marketing (SMM) and engagement practices and assessing their effectiveness in terms of B2B (business-to-business) strategy.
Here's a list of MMS's social media platforms in order of effectiveness, as reported by Emily Probst (associate editor and social media manager), with her comments.
As research for this project progresses, with the ultimate goal being to compose a social media recommendation report for the brand, I will be evaluating MMS's social media marketing (SMM) and engagement practices and assessing their effectiveness in terms of B2B (business-to-business) strategy.
Here's a list of MMS's social media platforms in order of effectiveness, as reported by Emily Probst (associate editor and social media manager), with her comments.
- Blogs
Probst adds that the blogs get little attention if any in the comments section.
One of the issues that initially comes to mind when approaching this is the fact that there are two potential (and very different) audiences when it comes to social media: the subscribers (shop owners, managers) and the advertisers (MMS's paying clients).
- Facebook (page, 2,063 likes)
Probst says that most activity consists of likes and shares, with few if any comments.
- Twitter (@MMSOnline, 4,866 followers)
It seems like fewer readers and more marketers from the client (advertiser) companies engage with Facebook and Twitter.
Probst also says that because mmsonline.com is not designed for mobile, advertisers prefer to use the social media sites to access magazine news and keep up to date.
- LinkedIn ("Top Shops" network, 1,569 members)
Probst explains that MMS primarily operates a closed group called Top Shops on the site which allows only the reading audience (not advertisers) to engage.
"It’s a safe place for your average shop guy to go in and ask questions and get feedback from their peers. While some people still do that, it seems to work better if we bait a member of the audience to ask a seed question. (That’s how we got the group started, and it worked really well.) We’ve backed off of that, and interaction within the group has gone down slightly."
- YouTube (channel, 353 subscribers