The short answer: GMI Group, a flange, fitting, and pipe manufacturer in Houston, published its first LinkedIn post in January 2025. Unrth built and ran the page from that first post. In 2025 alone it published 59 posts, earned 61,272 impressions, reached 31,104 LinkedIn members, gained 399 new followers, and held a 9.2% engagement rate, 23.2% above its competitors. Through April 2026, the page had earned 73,201 impressions and 1,420 reactions.
Industrial manufacturers often assume LinkedIn is for software companies and recruiters. GMI Group is proof that a company making flanges and fittings can build a real audience there, starting from zero.
Where GMI Group started
GMI Group serves oil, gas, and industrial projects, and its family of companies includes Wilhelm Maass. When Unrth started working with GMI, the company was growing through acquisitions but had never posted on LinkedIn. The page's first post went live on January 6, 2025.
Before posting anything, we did the foundation work. Unrth built GMI Group's brand guidelines, now on their fourth version, so every post, brochure, and document would look like one company. We wrote the press releases announcing GMI's acquisitions, including Alloy Stainless Products, so the news landed with one clear voice.
What we posted, and why it worked
We published consistently, roughly once a week, all year. In heavy industry, consistency beats cleverness. Psychologist Robert Zajonc described the mere exposure effect in 1968: people tend to like things more simply because they've seen them more often. Buyers in industrial markets work the same way. The supplier whose name they've seen fifty times feels safer than the one they've never heard of, long before anyone asks for a quote.
Because the brand guidelines came first, every post reinforced the same identity instead of starting over each time.
The results
From LinkedIn's own analytics for 2025 (January 3, 2025 to January 2, 2026):
59 posts published
61,272 impressions
31,104 members reached
1,139 reactions, 21 comments, and 14 reposts
399 new followers
9.2% engagement rate, 23.2% higher than competitors
Through April 30, 2026, the page had earned 73,201 impressions and 1,420 reactions in total, all built from a first post sixteen months earlier.
What other industrial companies can take from this
Build the brand before the content. Guidelines first, posts second, so everything compounds.
Show up on a schedule. Familiarity builds trust, and familiarity takes repetition.
Tell the real story. Acquisitions, people, products, and projects are content. You don't need to invent anything.
Measure against your competitors, not against influencers. A 9.2% engagement rate in a niche industrial market is a strong signal, even without viral numbers.
This is the Unrth Method™ applied to B2B: research, a clear hypothesis about where the brand was invisible, and a consistent experiment run long enough to measure. For the science underneath, read what neuromarketing actually is.
Manufacturer, distributor, or industrial brand that's invisible online? That's an Unrth project. Start at unrth.com.
