Source- https://pixabay.com/en/facebook-social-media-424521

Use Social Media Management Software

Even if your company is just getting into social media, using management software like the commonly used Hootsuite or Sprout is essential to success. Both of these are tools that beginners can use but also offer a wide variety of functions based on your company’s objectives.

A good practice with companies that employ these tools is to fully learn their functionality. Even in some digital marketing agencies, these tools are widely used to simply schedule posts and see how their feeds are doing but are capable of so much more.
Learn What Your Viewers Want Through Numbers

With an endless supply of analytical software available to businesses and digital marketing agencies, some are taking more advantage of these tools than others. These numbers may seem vague at first, but they can tell a precise story about exactly how your viewers interacted with your social media.

For example, The Archivist tool on Twitter is commonly used to track every tweet made by users that mentioned you and the path in which they found you. This information is very telling of what works and what doesn’t as you can tell what your viewers desire through these numbers.

Don’t Miss Out on Blogging

Most companies and Digital Marketing Agencies should be well aware of this best practice by now. Still need real proof? HubSpot listed blogging as the most crucial inbound project that companies should be undertaking as marketers that publish blogs are 13 times more likely to see positive ROI on their marketing efforts compared to those who didn’t. That’s a hefty figure.

Don’t forget to combine efforts though. Taking your blog and integrating it with your social media has been shown to be highly effective as opposed to keeping both separate from each other.

Save Money with Automation

When companies and advertising agencies really get invested into social media, it can become rather cumbersome. Social media has the potential to become a bottomless money hole without the proper usage of automation. Most people hear the word “automation” and the first thing that comes to mind is a soulless machine. It is entirely possible to retain a genuine human feel to your company while automating functions like:

• Automatically following back people when they follow you
• Retweeting messages that matter to you on Twitter
• Responding to direct inbox messages
• Auto posting from an expert’s website that you follow
• Mentioning people or other companies in your posts

No matter what, these things will take time and money. If a company or advertising agency has the opportunity to automate the smaller tasks like this, it is almost always a good idea to do so. However, there is no substitute for real customer engagement in the social media space.

Offer Something More than Just Text

When looking purely at share rates, photos have dominated the social media space. This isn’t just a theory, in Social Media Examiner’s Analysis, Facebook photo content came up with an astounding 87% share rate. This is astronomically higher than other types of social media content that didn’t even make it above 9%. To further this, on Twitter, posting photos on average made tweets perform 35% better than they would have without them.

These are some pretty big numbers to be throwing around. Don’t forget the power of this social media tool as well. Different social sites offer different tagging system that can be used to effectively save characters, especially on Twitter.

Success Has Never Been Found Without Trying, and Trying Again

You can read all the blogs in the world about what you should post and how you should post it, but no one could possibly know your audience better than you.

Using the analytical tools mentioned above and looking at the story that the number are telling, anyone could use the following strategy to improve their social media performance. Every day for a month try to post at least one update in your social space that you think will best resonate with your followers and viewers. However, use the analytical tools to find what works and what doesn’t. With this information, you can cut out the under-performing strategies in the future and build upon what really resonated.
 

Don’t Forget the Big Three

Historically, all the big social media site users have loved these three things: free giveaways, being famous, and being right. For starters, try to run weekly or monthly contests. This can create a sizeable traffic increase to your site. Last year alone, Frito-Lay ® created a “punny” social media contest called “Do Us a Flavor” where they asked users to submit what their new chip flavor should be. This social media marketing strategy allowed them to have over fourteen million submissions to their contest.

Having a live twitter debate using your own custom hashtag has also become a huge strategy to achieve success. Alas, who could forget the black & white vs blue & gold debacle that many digital marketing agencies decided to hop on to. As social media marketing historically has shown us, tailoring these posts to grab the user’s attention and work in an interactive manner would work the best to create maximum engagement. And of course as all social media users know, having a famous endorsement (Game of Thrones, please) is like coating the product or service in gold.

Read more about 10 tips for successful social media ads in 2018

When you invest money, you expect results. Nothing wrong there. But if you’re not things the right way, chances are that you will not yield any results. And if that thing is social media, then god save me. Things related to social media change so quickly that it’s difficult for a novice to adapt quickly and change the game as quickly. You need a complete social media management or SMM pro.

In case you still haven’t heard (though I wouldn’t believe if you haven’t), what is social media advertising?

These are ads served to users on social media platforms. The user information on social profile is a goldmine to serve the right kind of ads to the right people at the right time. That really is the key. The biggest advantage with social media advertising is that you can align target market with user demographics, and if it is supported with other factors of a successful ad – WHOA! You have big conversions and sales with low cost of acquisition happening there.

Why social media advertising?

Image Source: https://www.seoreseller.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SEOreseller_Future-Trends-Of-Social-Media-Ads.png

If you haven’t invested in social media advertising, you first question will be – why should you?

• You can grow your fanbase, visibility and sales
• You can have user generated content for the ad
• Improved customer targeting
• Better chances of having repeat customers
• A/B testing can be on the go and you can use analytics there and then for real-time analytics

There are many other reasons that you should invest in social media ads, perhaps I can write another blog on the topic. But the above reasons are compelling enough to invest in the technique from today.

Which social media channel should you focus on?

Now that my friend, I’ll have to say is an interesting question. You have the best answer to this. There is nobody else, other than you, who knows your product/ service as well as you do. You even know your target audience well. You must sit back and think about who best your target audience is (demography, gender, age, profession, marital status, and other such factors). Once you have thought about that, we will help you figure out how much money should you park in which social media channel to gain the maximum impact. Some of the most popular social networks are Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube and a few others. There might be some that are getting gradually popular like Vimeo, Tumblr, Facebook Live, Periscope and some other that can become popular overnight.

And finally – here we are with the 10 tips to get your social media ads right (we are waiting to hear from you in case you wish to make them insanely successful)

1. Be original

 

Image Source: https://media.makeameme.org/created/well-thats-original.jpg

Content that is original, useful, relevant and realistic resonates better with consumers. The audience is more receptive when the content is original and entertaining. Some brands use people who are technically sound but not creatively adept. It doesn’t take a great writer to create viral content on social media, you just must be original. They must tell stories, become visual, share ideas, ask for ideas, and just be conversational with their followers.

 2. Be contextual

Image Source: https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/62123009/haaaaaa-nope-still-not-contextual.jpg

Now you can’t ignore context in your content, can you? Dive into the lifestyle, motivation and preferences of your consumers to write content that makes sense to them. Personalized content drives engagement. Instead of plain information, share what’s in it for the consumers. Writing contextual content requires a mindset change where brands are required to think consumer first and not how sales will happen.

3. Beta test your ads with free social media posts

Image Source: http://lovemyecho.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/BetaTest.jpg

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn – you are perhaps already posting content on these channels. Perhaps even SnapChat and Pinterest. Some posts are more popular compared to the others. Are you keeping track of such posts? The high-performing posts will help you shape your paid social media ad campaign accordingly.

4. Take advantage of the targeting feature

Image Source: https://blog.salesflare.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/1Jh4iN2XAMmuPsKjAR-3BcA.jpeg

 

Ads were not as effective in the past as they failed to reach the target consumers. With advanced targeting features of social media channels, you can reach the desired consumers in the most effective way. When creating social media ads, you must leverage the targeting feature of the social media channels.

5. Use smaller ads to help you plan the big one

Image Source: https://media.makeameme.org/created/start-small-.jpg

One of the key differentiators of social media ads is that you can get instant feedback.  The effectiveness of your campaign can be measured within a short span of that appearing on the social media channel. You can start with small campaigns to understand what works with your target consumers and then plan the big campaign accordingly. Analyze the analytics, see which smaller campaign is working best and make that the guideline for the big one.

6. Keep a check on the Quality Score

Image Source: https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/500x/67511714/imagine-a-team-with-100-on-quality-score.jpg

There might be different names to it but basically the quality score is your performance indicator of ads. Facebook calls it relevancy score and it gauges the ad impressions (and if the cost of engagement is low, you’ve kind of achieved the desired goal). You must be prudent while promoting content – for example pick you best content to score a high-quality score.

How do you find out the best content? Rely on analytics. Check your top performing post on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook that has garnered the maximum traction. It’s always better to invest in high performing content.

 7. Understand how social media advertising works for different channels

Image Source: https://boostconnection.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/socialmedia.jpg

Each one of us has favorites. So, do our consumers. Understand the social media channel, the kind of people using that social media channel and what is the key feature of the platform. For example, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all social networking platforms while YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest are more visual. Planned focus in different channels will help you get better results from different channels.

8. Don’t forget mobile

Image Source: http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/5f/5ff1410c3cda9656a6ba889274b60d7ed01dd535cd2524973a669a6e49fef790.jpg

When more than 80% of your consumers access social media platforms from their mobile phones, you just can’t ignore it. It implies that even social media ads are viewed on mobiles. Don’t forget to have mobile optimized ads (or rather get them optimized for tablets as well). With ‘Geofencing’, you can even take advantage of mobile consumers when they approach near your business locations.

9. Listen to your consumers intently

Image Source: https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/500x/48376349/didnt-your-hear-no-one-cares.jpg

One of the biggest mistakes that brands make is to be so self-absorbed that they don’t listen to their online users. If you listen intently and respond earnestly, chances are that you will have better brand loyalty. Open your ears and hear what consumers might be saying about your brand on social media channels and discussion forums.

 

10. Be accessible

 

Image Source: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/howdoiknowifmywordpresswebsiteisaccessiblewcldn-131124024642-phpapp02/95/so-how-do-i-know-if-my-wordpress-website-is-accessible-53-638.jpg?cb=1493189639

Brands must start thinking beyond interaction. Being accessible to your consumers means that being available for a quick online chat (or have the bots cater to that need), answer consumer queries instantly, build relationship with followers and respond to their complaints. You must be quick to respond.

Well, we’ve given you a lot to think about and work upon to start generating leads from your social media ads. If you still need help, we’re right here.

Save

Save

Tags:- advertising agencyanalytical toolsArchivist tool on Twittercustom hashtag