The Client
The International Liquid Terminals Association (ILTA) is an advocate and key resource for the liquid terminal and storage tank industry. With headquarters in the Washington D.C. area, ILTA advocates on behalf of the liquid terminal industry in Congress and at the federal agencies.
Our Goals
Serendipity Media took over ILTA’s social platforms—Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn—in July of 2021. It was after onboarding ILTA, during our discovery session, that we learned ILTA's primary goal: communication and engagement with members. Unfortunately, there was a lack of knowledge amongst the ILTA staff as to how to use social media for that purpose. They were unaware of what content would be relevant to their audiences, and therefore, they recycled the same 5-6 posts over and over again. Not surprisingly, the reach of those posts was miniscule and engagement was nil. A social strategy was needed.
Our goals for ILTA’s social media:
1. Boost engagement amongst current audience.
2. Garner new followers within the liquid terminal and storage tank industry.
3. Increase brand awareness within the liquid terminal and storage tank industry.
Our Approach
We conducted a social media audit and made adjustments to taglines, about sections and graphics in order to employ consistency. From a brand awareness perspective, logos and profile and cover photos needed to match and messaging needed to be tightened up, relevant and direct. Once ILTA’s Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn had a look and feel more conducive with the ILTA brand, Serendipity began creating content. We developed content types, posting tactics, engagement procedures and of course, key performance indicators to measure our success. We now deliver ILTA news, inform members of upcoming events, speak to ILTA’s advocacy programs, share member news and blogs, and with much improved language and graphics, we relay how liquid terminals are a part of our everyday lives. We post at least once per day but vary frequency on the individual platforms: The audiences differ on Facebook vs. Twitter vs. LinkedIn.
It’s Amazing What A Strategy Can Do
We started to see success almost immediately after taking over ILTA’s social media strategy. Yet, it was while in Houston for ILTA’s Conference and Trade Show that we started to see a big shift in how others were engaging with the brand online.
Over the 3-day period of the conference and trade show, we captured more content than could be shared, live tweeted keynotes, set up polls and questions surrounding educational sessions, took video and pictures, tagged as many people and organizations as possible, designed our own graphics that matched conference branding, shared nearly every mention of ILTA on social, virtually engaged with attending members, and captured quotes from attendees and exhibitors, which were turned into what we call “quotables.” All of these efforts made ILTA’s analytics soar; nearly every metric—impressions, reach, engagement, clicks—was up over 1,000%. Now that the conference and trade show is behind us, we're challenged to maintain the audiences’ attention and drive engagement in other ways. It’s our job and mission to continuously strategize content that speaks to members and informs those outside of liquid terminals about the importance of the industry.
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