A strong local economic footprint doesn't always translate into public understanding, especially when the day-to-day work behind it happens largely out of sight.
Port Tampa Bay, Florida's largest and most cargo-diverse port, contributes more than $34.6 billion to the local economy each year. The port and its employees understood its impact intimately, but too much of the surrounding community; its operations remained unfamiliar.
To close that gap, Port Tampa Bay needed to enhance its communications with the local community, ideally through social media given the channel’s wide reach and accessibility. Its social media presence needed to provide more than vague posts – it needed to create genuine awareness and engagement amongst the audiences who mattered most to its business and success.
The Social Media Strategy
B2 Communications began creating the social media strategy with a brand persona exercise and a full social media audit to understand who the port was already reaching: 45-54-year-old adults, with nearly one in five residing in Tampa. Its Facebook following was concentrated among women aged 35-54.
With this research, B2 built a 12-month social media strategy with clear goals: increase reactions and comments by 10% year-over-year while raising awareness of the port's economic role.
Each platform was assigned a distinct audience and purpose:
- LinkedIn: prospective and current clients, industry partners and regional business and civic leaders
- Facebook: regional partners, local visitors and community members
- Instagram: regional residents
To maintain post and theme consistency, B2 created monthly social calendars mapping out each post's theme and topic in advance. Weekly content blended event, community, informational and cruise business updates, with formats tailored to each platform, from Instagram Stories highlighting event links to LinkedIn polls testing audience knowledge.
Social Medica Success
Once a year passed, B2 created an analytics report to compare its Q3 2025 performance to Q3 2026. With B2's social media strategy, Port Tampa Bay's social channels exceeded each benchmark:
- LinkedIn impressions nearly doubled, and engagement increased too. Reactions increased by 46% and comments increased by 68%.
- Facebook impressions increased by 38%, but the real growth happened in audience engagement. Reactions increased by 45% and comments nearly doubled.
- Instagram saw the largest growth in impressions, increasing 3,124%! The engagement grew along with impressions, showing that the content resonated. The reactions nearly doubled, and comments increased 227%!
B2 grounded the Port's social media strategy in audience research and consistency. With this approach, B2 helped Port Tampa Bay turn an awareness gap into measurable growth across every channel, strengthening the Port’s ties to the community and partners that power its economic impact.