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Which Social Media Platforms Are Best For You?

Posted on August 24, 2018December 7, 2018 by Kate Smith

You know that social media will benefit your organization. But did you also know that all social media platforms are not created equal? Each platform functions like different items in a toolbox. You wouldn’t use a hammer to perform the same task as a wrench and if you did…it probably wouldn’t go too well.

So we’ve made you a list of the three most popular social media platforms and the unique benefits each can provide for your brand or business.

Facebook

Facebook is your one stop platform for reviews, ads, and customer engagement. In the U.S. population alone, 68% of adults are on this platform. Facebook has evolved from a strictly social platform to a semi-professional one. What does this mean? Well your Facebook page is likely to be a little more casual than LinkedIn, but a little more professional than Instagram.

The casual side of your Facebook page may include engagement posts, entertaining content, or questions for your audience. The professional side involves responding professionally to reviews, complaints, and personal messages.

Both the casual and professional side of the Facebook coin are important for building customer loyalty. Your audience wants to feel heard but they also need to be engaged.

Instagram

I’m going to let you in on a little secret about Instagram. It’s the happy place on the internet. Don’t ruin it for people. They won’t respond well to controversial topics or posts that seem too “salesy.”

People open their Instagram app for the stories, quippy captions, and quality photos. This means you have an opportunity to present your story and brand personality. Instagram is all about connecting with your audience. People are more likely to make purchases from people they relate to.

A great way to relate with people on Instagram is to find and repost user-generated content for your brand. Why? People relate to it more because of its authenticity. It also shows that somebody out there is endorsing your brand simply because of its quality and not because they’re getting paid for it. In fact, users trust UGC content so much that it has a 4.5% higher chance of conversion than one of your average posts.

Twitter

Twitter’s primary uses include customer service, reputation management and keeping your audience informed.

Twitter has stated that 80% of customer service requests come in through their platform. This means the majority of customer comments and complaints have now gone public. Some individuals may choose to view this as a negative. However, if you respond to your customers promptly and professionally, it can actually enhance your reputation.

An example of reputation management and customer service through Twitter can be seen in most airline services. For example, Southwest Airlines responds promptly on Twitter to both complaints and compliments. In the event of an accident, Twitter would be an important source for communicating with the public.

Brands that primarily use Twitter to keep their audience informed include news organizations and sports teams. Do you want to stay in the know during the next NFL draft? Do you want updates on the latest breaking news? You just need to follow the right Twitter accounts.

Depending on how many retweets you get, the lifespan of a tweet is only 20 minutes to 3 hours. The lifespan of your tweet is when you can expect it to get the most engagement before it’s lost in the Twitter-Verse forever. So if you’re using Twitter as a tool for your company, make sure you stay active. Be sure to check out our tips for growing a Twitter following if you feel like Twitter is the right platform for you!

What now?

Maybe your organization uses all the above platforms. Or maybe, you just stick to one. Whichever platform you choose, be sure to do your homework on it if you want to properly connect with your online audience.

6 Steps For Creating a Successful Social Media Strategy

Posted on May 15, 2018 by Kate Smith

Whether you’re a social media veteran or you’re just barely breaking into the social media realm, your focus should be on creating the best social media strategy possible. While things like brands and budgets vary, there are some things that should always be a part of your calculations. Here are the 6 steps for creating a successful social media strategy.

1. Understand Your Audience

A key element in any great social media strategy is an understanding your audience. In the beginning stages of determining your social media strategy, there should always a discovery phase to determine who your audience is, where they are, and what motivates them. Most companies pour a great deal of research into this initial stage, but many fail to maintain that level of research throughout subsequent campaigns.

Who are you trying to target? What are their needs? What social platforms do they use? These are just a few of the questions you should be answering on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, because of the pace at which the digital landscape changes, last week’s data may already be too old to inform today’s decisions. For this reason it’s important to continually research your customers’ pain points as well as larger societal trends.

2. Set Clear Goals

When you know who your audience is, where they are, and what they want, then you can set some goals. Examine what your strategy is and identify some metrics you can measure that will help determine your progress. Some common metrics used in goal setting are: reach, shares, clicks, etc.

Goals help shape the direction your campaign takes and they give you something measurable with which to track your progress. Just the act of writing down your goals will help keep them top of mind as you make important decisions in your campaign.

3. Plan Effectively

You must have a calendar.

A content calendar is essential for planning a winning strategy. It will allow you to see the bigger picture and keep your team on track. As you move forward, it will act as a reminder of important dates and events so you can spend more time engaging and less time worrying.

Just be sure your calendar reflects the goals you’ve set.

The second half of the planning step is building a content bank. While you should always carefully plan out each post and where it should fall in your campaign, contingencies are important. A healthy content bank contains not only additional new posts, but old posts as well. Whenever you have a gap in your content calendar, this will allow you to fill it with a fresh new post, or give you a starting point to repurpose old content.

4. Measure

What’s the point in setting measurable goals if you never actually measure them?

By this time in the process you’ve put a lot of work into your social media strategy. Check your measurements! This will help you see how you’re doing and assess what, if any, changes need to be made. Measurement can help you identify successful content, as well as any gaps that may exist.

5. Make Time

Now that you’ve created a great social media campaign, don’t think you’re out of the woods just yet. Great content isn’t enough anymore. Creating engagement is growing in importance, now more than ever.

Social media feeds are filled with millions of posts, messages, pages, and groups. Most algorithms are built to favor posts that get a lot of people talking and taking action. The best way to make your posts stand out from the others is to engage.

Set aside time to engage with your customers as they engage with your posts. Respond promptly messages and questions. If you do, your efforts will be magnified and your all-important metrics increased.

6. Audit Regularly

Finally, be sure to perform regular social media audits. After weeks and months of running various campaigns, it’s important to assess the state of your online presence as a whole.

Check for old posts on your Facebook page that may contradict the current brand image you’re trying to build. Remove them. A self-audit can also help you identify inconsistencies and assess previous campaign success. Use these insights to improve your current strategy and inform your content decisions moving forward.

25 Tips To Improve Your Facebook Ad Targeting Strategy

Posted on July 20, 2017October 30, 2017 by Kate Smith

Have you ever seen an ad pop up in your Facebook feed that seemed like it was targeted specifically to you? Sure, most ads online are at least somewhat relevant to you because of the many calculations and algorithms that ads have to go through before they reach you. But I’m talking about seeing an ad that seems like it KNOWS you personally. If you have, you’ve probably also wondered how the advertiser knew exactly how to reach you. The answer: Targeting.

For businesses looking to get their message to the right customers, targeting is essential. Finding the right place to put your Facebook ad is paramount to achieving good results, just as it is in traditional advertising. Many businesses spend extensive amounts of time and money creating their ads, from the research phase to the creation phase, but fail to put the same amount of effort into choosing the right Facebook audience. As much effort should go into targeting as goes into writing creative briefs and exploring execution strategies. Depending on your brand and messaging, dropping your ad on the right newsfeeds can be more effective in reaching your target market than even the most sought after traditional media placements, especially in terms of bang for your buck.

To help you get started, Facebook has provided some instruction on how to use its targeting platform here. But that just scratches the surface of what Facebook targeting can do. The amount of targeting combinations is staggering. Below, we’ve listed 25 targeting suggestions from Connectio that you may not have considered. Happy targeting!

Generations (millennials, baby boomers, etc.)
People with an upcoming anniversary
Rate of technology adoption
Household member composition
Friends of people with anniversaries
Small business owners
People with new jobs
People in relationships/relationship types
Facebook event creators
Recent travellers
Parents
Technology interests
Political interests
Facebook payments platform (spending activity)
Browser type used
People who responded to your event
Email domain (AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, etc.)
People living away from home
Mobile device users (brand and device)
Friends of people who like your page
Computer operating system used
Sporting fans and events
Types of travellers (business, leisure, commuters, etc.)
People who used your app
Advanced combination of connections

7 Tips for Creating Effective B2B Facebook Ad Images

Posted on June 8, 2017October 30, 2017 by Kate Smith

Sometimes the greatest ideas fail to resonate with the intended audience. This is particularly true when it comes to B2B advertising. Nothing is more frustrating than designing a beautiful Facebook ad only to have the relevance score plummet and the cost-per-click skyrocket.

So how do you know which images will resonate and which images will flop? Below, we will explore seven tips that will help you choose and design more effective B2B Facebook ad images.

Know your audience

The first step in any great B2C campaign is figuring out who you want to target. While basic consumer data is helpful in establishing your target, the best advertisers will go beyond simple demographics and into behavioral data. The same goes for B2B advertising. You may have enough information to set target audience parameters in Facebook, but unless you know more about your targets’ values and behavior, your executions may fall short.

There are many ways you can establish what your target is all about, but the simplest way is to spend time hanging out where they do. Look at their websites, social media pages, and past ad campaigns. Find the blogs and other publications that exist within the industry and read what your customers are talking about. In short, do your research. After a while you will begin to see what they value. This key information will help determine what type of content they’re likely to respond to.

Have a Distinct Call to Action

The most important part of your image is the call to action. Regardless of what you’re offering potential clients, it is essential that you ask them to do something. This means that if you use text in your image, make sure you include things like “click to learn more” or “get it now.” You could incorporate a button, which indicates the viewer should click on it to take action. Make sure to utilize basic graphic design techniques such as leading lines, color, and alignment to draw the viewer’s attention toward your call to action. Remember, this call to action should be the central focus of your ad image.

Start with a dark background

Using a dark background may seem counter-intuitive at first. After all, most psychologists agree that people are drawn to bright colors. But posts with dark background colors tend to do much better in terms of total engagement and CPC. There are a couple probable reasons for this. The first is that dark colors stand out when contrasted against the white and light gray hues that dominate the Facebook feed. The second is that while bright colors may catch attention as well, dark colors often convey sophistication, authority, and strength. People may be more likely to click your post if they associate your post with knowledge and authority, especially within the B2B space.

Use the Right Photos

Stock photos are a great resource when creating online content. They’re inexpensive (sometimes free), varied, plentiful, and they require little effort to incorporate into social media. Unfortunately, not all stock images are created equal and you should be very careful when it comes to Facebook ads. If an image looks too amateurish or staged, it’s often a turnoff to potential clients. It’s a good idea to pick an image that looks natural and genuine. Preferably, you would have access to professional photos featuring your product either in a natural location or tastefully overlaid onto an attractive background. The best images will stand out, look professional, and convey the essence of what you want to say.

Incorporate charts to Look Smart

Charts and graphs are a good decision if you want to appear credible. A chart usually suggest new research or an increase in metrics, so when business minded consumer see them, they are more likely to stop and pay attention. You don’t have to put an extremely detailed chart on your Facebook ad, but smart design choices that suggest charts or graphs will increase the amount of clicks you receive.

Use Sans Serif Fonts

When incorporating text onto your image, stick with sans serif fonts. While serif fonts are largely found to be the more legible choice in general, there are a couple {reasons} why sans serif fonts work much better online. The first reason is that online ads typically have very short copy. When used in long pieces of copy, sans serif fonts can cause readers to become fatigued, but in short doses, sans serif letterforms can more easily be distinguished. The ability to recognize and read a word quickly is especially important when placing an ad on Facebook, where users may only see your ad for a split second as they scroll through their feed.

Another reason sans serif tends to do better online is they hold their form when scaled down. As the text shrinks, the serifs often become obscured and start to create needless noise around the letterforms. Sans serif letters have more basic shapes, so scaling doesn’t affect their legibility as much.

Experiment

Even after doing tons of secondary research on your target audience, sometimes ads still flop. And that’s okay. Even if something worked well in the past, it may not work in the future. The best way to figure out what your audience will respond to is to try and fail. Don’t be afraid to test out new ideas. Just make sure that you write down the things that go wrong as well as the things that go right. These notes will prove invaluable when fine-tuning your online advertising images.

When it comes to creating B2B Facebook ads, the copy is quite important, but it’s not the first thing that people see. Images are what attract people to your ad and they’re ultimately what convert impressions into actions. Use the tips above to help you choose the right ad images that will help you raise engagement and conversions, while lowering your CPC.