Objectives

In the transportation and logistics industry, Coyote is considered one of the fastest-growing companies on record. The Coyote brand makes a promise no one else in our industry makes: "No Excuses." We do the right thing every time, and that's our approach to service, to communication, to business. We've been energizing the industry since our founding in 2006, but in 2015 we aimed to redefine the social presence of a third-party logistics (3PL) service provider. Check us out @CoyoteLogistics.

The brand that drives our "No Excuses" commitment is powerful, real, and innovative, from our eye-catching Coyote green to our bold visualization and authentic photography to our strong messaging. Coyote's Marketing team is an in-house creative agency: a team of eight with Chief Marketing Officer Jodi Navta at the helm. We're agile, we're lean, we collect our own data, and we imagine and create. This ensures consistency in our brand identity and message.

We bring all of these elements into our social strategy to ensure a strong visual presence and grab the ever-wavering attention of social users. Our messaging on social encapsulates what we believe in and support every day: our people, culture, responsible entrepreneurship and leadership, sustainability, technology, innovation, and philanthropy.

Strategy and Execution

Coyote's social media strategy is to offer a unique look at the brand that is transforming an industry, changing people's lives, and giving back to the community. Our culture is unique—it's one supported by teamwork, by collaboration, by respect; it's entrepreneurial, it's familial, it's passionate, it's fun. To understand it is to see it at work. We believe in being authentic and in showing—not telling.

To do this, we create powerful visuals and capture authentic imagery within our four walls so we can share our many stories with each other and with others to explain our purpose, support our mission, and drive engagement.

• Content: To communicate with a broader audience, we take a unique approach to our industry's social media space by not discussing transportation and logistics unless the story appeals to a wider audience. Every day we're posting about topics we are passionate about, including responsible entrepreneurship and doing what we say we're going to do; meaningful career advice; how culture drives a company's mission and supports its bottom line; our fundraising mission for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital; and stories about how Coyotes make a difference in each other's lives, outside and inside our four walls.
• Photography: We have two in-house photographers who attend every company event, internal and external, to capture our brand's special moments as they unfold in real time. We don't use stock imagery. We photograph real Coyotes acting in their natural habitat. When people visit our office, they see further that what we do and say is truly what we're about. These visual elements support our brand.
• Design: Our graphic designer uses our color palette, complete with Coyote's custom green, typography, and unique visual aesthetic to visualize and create unrivaled graphics, most of which feature our Coyote Brad, a real coyote, to reflect our driven and adaptive spirit.

In 2015 we ran several successful social campaigns via Twitter, including promoting Unite on the Ice (here, here, and here), the kick-off event to the 2015 Coyote Hockey City Classic at Soldier Field; live-tweeting during our annual company hockey tournament called the Coyote Classic; recruiting Coyote pups to #jointhepack at career fairs; sharing our sponsorships with the Big Ten Network (here and here, too) and with the Chicago Blackhawks; announcing our big news when we became a subsidiary of UPS; and supporting our fundraising mission to raise $400,000 by December 31, 2015, for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, for which we've raised $825,000 in the last four years.

Results

We deem 2015 our best year yet in social media. We focused on quality over quantity, yet we doubled our reach from 8.3 million in 2014 to 16.9 million in 2015 by sharing engaging content, by generating trust and building relationships with our audience, and by taking a deeper, more calculated approach to what we post and share. Our audience grew 17.7 percent because of it.

In the months of January and February, during which we actively promoted and then covered the Coyote Hockey City Classic, organic impressions reached 2,860,739 alone. If you remain true to your mission and your brand, you'll be successful every time. Because of social media, Walker Sands recognized us as a top B2B Chicago tech company on social media; the Coyote Den was recognized as one of Chicago's Coolest Offices; and we were a finalist in three categories honoring culture, technology, and CEO Jeff Silver at the 2015 Moxie Awards.

Media