Daktronics (@Daktronics) is generally a BtoB outfit, but company execs Justin Ochsner and Matt Anderson see a few side benefits to having a brand presence on social media. Both execs have been with the company for 11 years and have overseen most of its social media evolution. Anderson: "I helped manage a Facebook group for Daktronics, for the operators at professional and college stadiums and arenas that used our displays. We had a small private group to talk with them and for them to share ideas, tips and tricks of what they do. I would get pinged all the time because that was when they didn’t want anyone on Facebook during work hours." Ochsner added, "Around 2013, we started doing a lot of monitoring and watching the conversations happen more than participating in them from a Daktronics perspective. We slowly started getting more content to share and starting to plan out campaigns to the point we were scheduling content. For a year now, we have about three meetings a week for an hour looking over the content that we’ve been asked to share." As Daktronics celebrates its 50th anniversary, Ochsner and Anderson share insights on what the firm sets out to accomplish on social media as well as working with clients and their projects.
SOCIAL SNAPSHOT
Must-follows: MA: Wendy’s because it’s hilarious
Favorite app: JO: Lately for me, it’s been Audible.
Average time per day on social media: MA: It’s easily an hour and half of work time a day.
Brand’s social media mission:
Ochsner: Right now we want to make sure to have a presence to make sure we are there, but we want to be sharing our customers’ success and give top-of-mind awareness to potential customers about what Daktronics can do.
Anderson: When we get news releases or a new project, the level that a team wants to be with us or interact with us varies. We get some people who don’t want to talk about the board because they get nervous about taxpayer money getting used at a school. Some customers absolutely love it and want to use the publicity of that project to sell tickets or sponsorships.
Describing their audience:
Anderson: One of my main focuses is on college sports. ADs say they go to Twitter for their news. Things like that make a light go off and make me say 'I need to do more college stuff on Twitter.' We try to use hashtags to separate some of that.
Ochsner: Being such a large company, we have so many product bases and so many different customer bases, so we have a lot of different target audiences coming from one main account.
Limitations with renderings/photos:
Ochsner: We work with our customers to make sure they are comfortable with the message we are sending. We’ve already sent a news release and had their approval with that. We might reach out to them quick and say we are going to share a picture of your display being made in manufacturing today or we’ll say we haven’t talked to the customer about any external promotions so we need to reach out to them before we surprise them before sharing a picture on Twitter or Facebook.
Anderson: If it was up to us, we would love to promote the hell out of all these stages from all these projects. It’s just a matter if they wanted us to.
Social media as a recruiting tool:
Ochsner: There are two sides: As a Daktronics recruiting tool, yes, we are using certain posts to promote open jobs. As far as our customers using it as a recruiting tool, it is a way to get the word out that we have a brand-new display system. If you come play for us, your face is going to be on this is front of all our fans.
Anderson: We are a publicly traded company, so there are these general -- even if it’s not B2B -- side benefits. People see Daktronics and see what we are doing, so it’s good to show the projects that we’re working on.
Daktronics’ 50th anniversary:
Anderson: We got a special 50th anniversary logo, it’s a little different than our normal one. We made sure it’s on our profile page for Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. We decided on using the hashtag Dak50 for anything 50 related and encouraging customers and employees to reminisce anytime they interacted with us. Then we’ve been doing some different blog posts to promote it. We’ve done some videos, including a 50th overview. I feel like it broke our social media channels. It took off. We’ve never had a post shared, liked or commented so much.
If you know anyone who should be featured for their use of social media, send their name to us at
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