After joining Vantage Plastics as a one-man marketing team, Tim Bish transformed the company’s social media presence from basic twice-weekly PowerPoint templates to an engaging, strategic channel that drove significant results. By using Agorapulse to manage multiple platforms, schedule content, and generate comprehensive reports, Tim achieved an incredible 25,000,000% growth in social media performance and 175% year-over-year engagement growth, while convincingly skeptical leadership of social media’s value for B2B manufacturing.
Moving From PowerPoints to Powerful Posts
Tim Bish serves as the strategic marketing, training, and AI specialist at Vantage Plastics, a conglomerate of five different companies in the plastic manufacturing industry. With 400+ employees, Vantage Plastics specializes in thermoforming and injection molding, creating large-scale parts primarily for B2B customers. Before Tim joined Vantage Plastics about a year and a half ago, he spent 15 years in education, with eight years as a school principal and as a teacher of graphic design and media.
When Tim joined Vantage Plastics, the company’s social media presence was virtually non-existent. The previous marketing role had been vacant for six years, and the company had been outsourcing minimal efforts to an inbound marketing firm:
“They were doing about two social media posts a week. And be quite honest with you, it was a PowerPoint template that they changed the picture and the heading for. Just shared that on Facebook and LinkedIn on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:00 AM.”
That approach to social media resulted in almost no engagement, limited brand awareness, and missed opportunities for lead generation—critical for a B2B manufacturer wanting to stand out.
Plus, Tim faced the challenge of balancing multiple responsibilities as a team of one:
“I am the content creator. All of our photography, video, web design, all the social media marketing. It’s, uh, it’s me.”
Add in the responsibilities of heading the company’s training department and exploring AI initiatives , and Tim needed a solution that would help him manage his workload efficiently and improve results.
Drowning in Digital Demands
Before discovering Agorapulse, Tim was struggling with two significant challenges that consumed his time.
Pain point: social media scheduling
First, the scheduling nightmare: “I was actually just using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn’s features, and a few of those have scheduled posts; some don’t.”
That piecemeal approach meant Tim was constantly juggling multiple platform interfaces, often having to be present at specific times just to publish content . For someone already wearing multiple hats within the organization, that irregular pattern was becoming unsustainable.
“It was just a lot of work, and it was becoming a bit too much to keep up with,” Tim says. The inability to plan ahead meant he was constantly in reactive mode, stealing time from his other responsibilities.
Pain point: measuring social media performance
Second, the analytics abyss: Tim found himself drowning in disparate data from multiple platforms, each with their own metrics and measurement systems.
“In order to pull that from the four different social media sites that we’re using, it was pulling all kinds of disparate stuff and trying to figure out how these measured up back and forth,” Tim says.
For Tim, who values data-driven decisions , that fragmented analytics approach made gaining meaningful insights or demonstrating value to leadership nearly impossible. “They were, all of their metrics measured things in a slightly different way because of their algorithms,” making it challenging to present a cohesive picture of social media performance.
These frustrations came to a head when Tim realized he simply couldn’t sustain this approach while managing his expanding responsibilities. “I had to be able to multiply myself as much as possible,” Tim says. “And using tools to do so is obviously one of the easier ways of accomplishing more in less time.”
Tim immediately recognized the need to elevate Vantage Plastics’ social media strategy, increasing posting frequency to five days a week and diversifying content with videos, images, and written content. However, managing multiple platforms without proper tools quickly became overwhelming.
The turning point came when Tim realized he needed to “multiply” himself to handle his expanding responsibilities. After reaching out to trusted colleagues for recommendations, Agorapulse consistently came up as a highly suggested solution.
“It was a friend of mine that also does some marketing … I did some research, some reviews, and jumped on board,” Tim says.
From Chaos to Control
After implementing Agorapulse, Tim experienced an immediate transformation in both his workflow and results. The platform’s scheduling capabilities allowed him to plan content in advance—a game-changer for someone wearing multiple hats.
“I already have all of tomorrow’s social media posts planned out. I have Thursday’s planned. Having the ability to get a little bit ahead on that, whereas I had to post them that day at the time that I wanted to for a couple of those.”
But the most significant impact came through Agorapulse’s reporting features, which Tim describes as “absolutely a game-changer” and “my favorite part.”
Social media reporting
These comprehensive reports allowed him to:
- Consolidate metrics across platforms
- Customize reports for weekly and monthly analysis
- Present clear data to leadership to demonstrate social media’s value
“The fact that I can customize how I need those … that part was, for me, absolutely useful was the reporting,” Tim says.
The results were nothing short of remarkable:
- A staggering 25,000,000% growth in overall social media performance (compared to the previous limited strategy)
- 175% year-over-year engagement growth since January
- 2.5x overall growth on Facebook and LinkedIn in just a year and a half
- Engagement increasing from “one or two reactions” to “dozens or hundreds every single time”
- More RFQs (Request for Quotes) coming through the website
Beyond metrics, Tim gained something equally valuable—time. “I’ve gotten some of my time back,” Tim says. “For me, that’s a big one. I try to be as efficient as possible.”
The mobile app also proved invaluable, allowing him to capture and share content on the fly: “The best camera you have is the one that’s in your hand. So when I see something, pick a picture and I can share that instantly, that makes a massive difference for me.”
Changing Hearts and Minds
Perhaps most significantly, Agorapulse helped transform leadership’s perception of social media. Initially skeptical executives who questioned, “how much time are you spending on the social media?” now actively participate: “It’s, ‘Hey, can you post this on LinkedIn, because this might be really useful.’ It’s kind of changed a mindset.”
Tim explained how Agorapulse’s visual reports were instrumental in this shift: “Once I started handing them some of these reports from Agorapulse and showing user engagement and tying that directly into website analytics and the RFQs have gone up… it’s kind of changed a mindset.”
For a traditional manufacturing company led by what Tim describes as “the elder age of the boomer generation,” this represents a significant cultural transformation. “There’s still a little bit of an age disconnect there, but it’s been getting a lot better. And a lot of it’s because of those metrics and reporting, being able to see that in black and white… with all the graphs and the bars really has made a difference.”
Discoveries Along the Digital Journey
One unexpected benefit Tim discovered was the ability to respond to comments directly within Agorapulse: “It took me like six months to realize that I could respond to comments inside Agorapulse … I just about six months ago realized, ‘oh, this is awesome. This is a lot easier.’”
Tim also learned the importance of content diversity to reach different demographics. By analyzing post performance through Agorapulse reports, he tailored his approach to include a mix of videos (preferred by millennials and younger audiences) and long-form content with images (preferred by older demographics).
This data-informed approach proved particularly valuable when Tim discovered that, contrary to initial assumptions, many of their B2B buyers were younger than expected: “When I got here, I was told to push towards a demographic of my age or above, and actually most of them are below my age bracket, so I’ve actually focused a little bit more on video content.”
Words of Manufacturing Wisdom
Tim’s enthusiasm for Agorapulse has turned him into an advocate who has “signed up at least five different businesses for Agorapulse in the last year.” When asked what he would say to others considering the platform, he emphasized that he has “actually only given them the option to sign up for Agorapulse.”
He particularly appreciates the platform’s continuous evolution: “One of the things I genuinely enjoy about what your product is, has been doing. You’re constantly adding new features or you’re taking existing ones and making them smarter, making them better.”
For B2B companies, especially manufacturers who might be skeptical about social media’s value, Tim’s journey demonstrates the power of consistent, strategic content combined with robust analytics. His transformation from PowerPoint templates to engaging multi-platform content shows that even in traditional industries, social media can drive significant growth when approached with the right tools and strategy.
As Tim puts it: “I’m that nerd. I earned these glasses. They’re not ironic. So when all of those new features get announced and how they work and what they do, I explore them immediately to see if it’s useful for me. And I appreciate that very much.”
Vantage Plastics’ journey from basic PowerPoint templates to explosive social media growth shows what’s possible when you have the right tools. If you’re a B2B manufacturer looking to elevate your social media strategy, save valuable time, and demonstrate clear ROI to leadership, Agorapulse can help you achieve similar results.
Experience the power of comprehensive scheduling, unified analytics, and streamlined engagement that helped Tim Bish achieve 25,000,000% growth and win over skeptical executives.
Want to see Agorapulse in action first? Schedule a personalized demo with our team to explore how we can help simplify and strengthen your social media management.