Role of social media in a waste management company

With the rise in use of smartphones, the huge impact of social media in driving customer behavior is undeniable. Using social media and getting insights about customer behavior and driving the acquired data to generate revenue for the business is something that makes use of social media worth a try. With easy access to internet, 518 million people used internet in India in the year 2020. Social media is no more just about being staying personally connected, with brands using it for marketing, they are reaping the benefits of it and taking their businesses to next level. Social media helps in telling the story and cause of the business in an engaging way that helps people understand the services provided by the company. Social media is all about outreach and engagement and eventually that helps in brand building and marketing. To rapidly increase the outreach and growth of any brand in virtual and real world, social media has a pivotal role.

We at social lab try and use social media to motivate people in adopting a sustainable lifestyle and reduce waste. We plan clear and simple strategies for our social media content for getting a broader reach. For example, we share about our IEC (Information, Education, and Communication) activities which usually happen on ground and this not only helps us target the audience offline but online as well. Be it small ‘Eco-facts’ or infographics we try to use all kind of medium available for awareness on social media. Last year we did a digital campaign called ‘cutitright’ on Instagram where we challenged our followers to make a small habit of cutting any plastic packet properly to avoid the microplastic waste which eventually ends up in landfills. Not only we got good reach in this week long campaign but also gained followers.

• Choose right platform: Select social media platforms which are relevant to your company’s domain. Keep in mind your company’s goals and values while choosing the social media platforms. Apart from this make a list of target audience at very initial stage. Be clear of the purpose for use of social media, whether you want to bring in clients or you just want to use it to showcase your work. In our case we divided our social media handles in two categories, one for lead generation (target-clients) and other for awareness regarding waste management (target- citizens). So basically we use platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook for lead generation and platforms like Instagram and Twitter for awareness where our main goal is citizen engagement.
• Use of Hashtags- Hashtags are the words used to tag content on social media platforms like twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc. The words or phrase are preceded with the sign hash(#) and hence the term hashtag. Hashtags are important when it comes to reaching out to relevant audience on digital platforms.
• Create apt content- Followers engagement is very important for any social media, keep your followers updated with great content. Make sure the content highlights the company’s products or services. Take help of proper SEO for using appropriate keywords that will help you generate great traffic. When it comes to waste management company, the content curated is very broad. For us, we had to categorize it according to our services and worked accordingly. You can curate information from other sources as well like blogs or articles. Stick to concise word limit for blogs, you can refer our blogs (Social Lab) for reference.
• Creatives- A very vital part of social media posts apart from content is the graphically represented content, which includes posters, infographics and many more such visually appealing things. Waste management is a broad concept and had various types of processes which only represented with words won’t make sense. And hence representing it in a form of infographics makes the processes look apt and easy to understand (Check out our Instagram for such infographics). Don’t make graphic heavy posts, try to keep them simple and understandable in one go. Social media is for simplifying to understand your company services or products and not to make them complex.
• Be consistent- Lastly staying consistent is the key when it comes to social media and social media marketing. Apart from sharing posts regularly, be consistent in updating you company pages profiles. Try to post at least three posts every week on all social media handles. Use software like Hootsuite that helps in scheduling the content according to post and respective social media handles on a particular day and time.
• Online Traffic- Monitor your website traffic regularly using data analytics tools like Google analytics. Use this to analyze and curate content accordingly. Make sure to put all social media buttons (which will allow people to directly go on the social media pages) on websites , as website helps in generating good traffic.

With right strategies and great content and graphics social media is definitely a great tool for any waste management company. Social media is a low cost platform that helps you increase your engagement and outreach organically.

Contributed by- Ashlesha Karande, Communication Executive at Social Lab

Social Lab Environmental Solutions is a waste management company, which helps brands take-back and scientifically dispose of post-consumer plastic waste of their products. Brands take our services to fulfill Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) obligation under Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2018.

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