Category "Social Media Marketing"

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were created to be enjoyable and convenient ways to connect users to their friends and family. But, with advancements in technology, constantly changing market trends, and the big shift from in-person interactions to online connections, social networking platforms eventually found themselves heavily utilized for business and marketing.

These days, social media is used by both small businesses and big corporations as a major means of reaching and engaging with clients all across the globe in real-time.

For small-scale entrepreneurs and those who are looking to start their businesses, social media is an incredibly handy tool for establishing connections with potential customers.

One thing most businesses fail to realize, though, is that while posting good content is key, the timing of your posts plays a very important part in casting a wider net.

Read to learn more about social media platforms and the best times to share content.

The Top Social Media Platforms for Businesses

Many social media platforms are utilizing many different forms of media available to consumers right now but, for businesses, the most important ones are:

Facebook

Facebook is the most popular social media platform in the world. As it has the most active users of every demographic, this is the one platform business owners can’t be without.

Its interface allows businesses to create and share content in a wide range of media formats, including text, photos, videos, and stories. It also allows users to schedule posts for future publishing, which is perfect when doing bulk content creation.

Facebook’s design also allows customers to easily engage with businesses through comment threads and post reactions. On top of that, Facebook allows people to easily share content to their timelines or through private messaging for instant word-of-mouth marketing.

Twitter

Many celebrities, politicians, and other people of note utilize Twitter for sharing announcements, opinions, and recommendations. Because of this, Twitter has a user base of all genders belonging to a wide range of ages, social classes, and beliefs.

Twitter allows its users to publish (or ‘tweet’) images, videos, and short text posts with a 280-character limit in real-time. As Twitter’s design puts a heavy emphasis on conciseness, this requires users to create straight-to-the-point and witty content to attract the eye of other users.

Business owners can take advantage of Twitter’s interface that allows for the easy sharing (or retweeting) and quoting of user posts. Besides sharing, users can also like posts. These liked posts are archived in the user’s profile, which can serve as a bookmark for future reference.

Another feature that makes Twitter ideal for businesses is the ease of communicating with other users. Many corporations use this platform to engage with users, as well as for customer support purposes.

Instagram

One of the most downloaded apps in the United States, Instagram focuses more on the photo and video content and less on text.

Setting an Instagram account properly is just as important as knowing when to post. Businesses need to take advantage of linking their website and writing a good bio for their accounts as these are some of the first things a user sees when visiting an Instagram profile.

As a platform that prioritizes visuals, the key to making a good Instagram account is posting very aesthetically appealing photos and videos. It is important to make your Instagram grid appear cohesive, so crafting a strong visual identity for your brand is a must.

Instagram also recently added an update that enables businesses to directly sell and transact with consumers by hosting their online shops within the platform.

To be able to reach many people when starting on the platform, utilize popular hashtags to make your brand visible.

The Best Time to Post On Social Media For Optimal Engagement

Besides creating good content, it is also important to study the demographic you are trying to reach to identify the best time to post. Important factors to consider, besides age and gender, include habits and interests.

If you already have an existing social media account, you can also look into your top posts to determine your peak time for posting. You can sort through your analytics by certain metrics, such as engagement and number of likes and shares.

Keep in mind that each platform has its algorithm that may affect your post’s visibility. For Instagram and Facebook, it was found that their algorithms prioritize “recency” for ranking, so it only makes sense to post when your target market is online. These algorithms are revised occasionally, though, so business owners must adjust to that, too.

If you would prefer to leave the social media optimization and analytics to someone else, you can reach out to a social media management company in Philadelphia for help.

Facebook

Around 73% of Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users were found to log onto the platform every day, with 57% of users from the United States primarily using it for sharing content.

Through user data, Wednesday around 11:00 AM CST was discovered to be the peak time for general engagement, although 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM on all other weekdays are not far behind.

As for marketing your products, Facebook users are most receptive to posts about consumer goods on Wednesdays and Fridays, from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with a distinct drop in interest before 8:00 AM. Meanwhile, media consumption sees a spike at 5:00 PM mid-week.

In general, individual consumers tend to check Facebook most right before work hours, during lunch break, and during downtime after work. Sundays typically see the least amount of active users.

Twitter

Unlike Facebook and Instagram algorithms, Twitter’s algorithm ranks tweets by potential user interest instead of in chronological order. With over 500 million tweets per day, businesses need to know when to post so as not to be buried under other tweets.

Twitter sees a jump in activity around 8:00 AM every day — weekends included — as users tend to use the platform as a news source, checking for updates right before starting their day.

As mentioned earlier, many corporations turn to Twitter for addressing customer support issues. Unlike Facebook, Twitter’s best day for business engagement is on Sundays from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. General engagement, though, still does best on weekdays from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM.

Instagram

While Instagram does somehow show posts based on recency, it is also notorious for being unpredictable and does not present content in chronological order. The best workaround is to know what your target demographic’s peak hours are.

Like Facebook, Wednesday around 11:00 AM tends to be the best for user engagement. General engagement also peaks on Fridays from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM but is consistently good on all weekdays from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM.

For marketing goods of any kind, Wednesday at 3:00 PM has seen the most movement, followed by Tuesdays to Fridays from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM.

Moreover, Facebook acquired Instagram and has now established a cross-posting feature between the two platforms, which business owners should take advantage of.

Conclusion

For businesses venturing into the world of social media marketing, it is important to partner in creating good content with an effective posting schedule.

Different platforms see different activity trends from their users, and it is imperative to take note of your preferred platform’s peak hours, as well as studying your target audience’s online habits, to make the most of your social media experience.

In today’s world, social media is one the most effective marketing channel for any company. With billions of people handling at least one account each on a social media site, it’s critical for you as a business to be on these platforms as well if you hope to reach members of your target market.

However, building up your social media isn’t quite as easy as you might imagine. For one, you need to remember that there’s fierce competition out there. Companies in your field are also on social media, and there’s a significant chance that many of these firms have larger budgets than you. With that in mind, you need to play smart.

Thankfully, this one of the many benefits of digital marketing strategies. Social media is ruled by trends — things and concepts that are the most “in vogue” right now. Trends differ between social media platforms broadly, but some are generally encompassing. It’s important to consider these as you chart a course forward.

Live Streams and Sessions for Engagement

If there’s one thing that captured everyone’s attention in 2020, it was the COVID-19 pandemic. It forced life to halt to a standstill, and people were instructed to stay at home.

Nevertheless, life must go on, and social media played a significant part in this. To maintain social distancing but still connect with others, people hopped online. Meetings soon became a standard on Zoom, and companies turned to live streams on social media to optimize their operations.

Naturally, this led to a surge in the use of live streaming tools across all social media channels. For instance, Facebook saw a significant upsurge in its live streaming and messaging channels — especially in areas most hit by the virus, like Italy and the United States.

As a stat sheet from Facebook showed, the number of views on Facebook Live and Instagram Live doubled in just a week at a certain point.

In 2021, it’s pretty evident that we’re not entirely out of the woods just yet. Life is slowly beginning to return to normal, but the coronavirus situation continues to evolve. People and companies remain committed to communicating through their devices, and social media live streaming is still a prominent part of this.

If you’re looking to optimize your social media strategy, you can’t possibly do it without live streaming. While everyone remains at home, you could engage your followers with live streaming sessions and grow your audience base from there.

Stories as Instagram’s Top Content Source

Instagram launched Stories in 2016. While the feature had a pretty rough landing due to comparisons with Snapchat, it has since risen to become one of Instagram’s biggest hits. On average, 500 million people react with Stories daily on Instagram, and there’s no sign of them going away soon.

If you aren’t using your Stories, it’s recommended that you do so. Incorporate videos and pictures into the component — primarily videos, which seem to outperform other content formats on Instagram.

People tend to spend more time viewing videos on their Stories than images. You need to get on Stories now, and you need to do so with engaging videos.

Virtual Reality is Coming

Thanks to the stay-at-home orders and prolonged social distancing requirements, people have begun looking into alternative reality iterations. For now, virtual reality remains one of the most effective technology trends out there.

The allure of virtual reality is easy to see. It allows you to get the sense of actually being somewhere — or with someone else, even if they’re on the other side of the planet. In a period where people are forced to stay home, this is the type of development that we desperately need.

There are already signs that 2021 will see more integration between social media and virtual reality. Facebook is working on revamping its Oculus to allow people to connect with others, play games, explore, and more. 

As a business, you could leverage virtual reality to enable consumers to view what you’re selling. Industries like art, real estate, e-commerce, and more — those which deal with tangible assets and products — will undoubtedly benefit from this. 

Upwards Growth for Social Commerce

Over the years, we’ve witnessed a significant shift that brings social media together with improved user experience. This shift has led to the development of more tools to connect social media with seamless online shopping.

For instance, Instagram allows e-commerce companies to add product tags and embed checkout links for products on their pages. Facebook even allows you to set up an entire shop, encouraging people to browse what you’ve got and make purchases right from the platform.

If you’re a marketer, this is a significant trend that you should be working on. Data shows that around 54% of social media users use these platforms to research products before purchasing. With social media playing a more critical role in influencing purchase decisions, you could use it to optimize your sales.

With social commerce, you can significantly optimize your customers’ purchasing journey. Now, users will be able to see a product on social media and purchase it from the app directly. There’s no need to leave the platform, go back to the website, and then begin looking for the product again.

By allowing customers to purchase straight away, you’re improving their experience and also reducing the chances of abandoned carts and transactions. Putting a “buy now” link or button on your platform will improve your chances of making a sale on your own. If your business deals in selling, you’ll need an effective social media storefront that provides shoppable posts and easy-to-purchase links. 

Purposeful Marketing Campaigns

Social media has always been an excellent tool for driving engagement with meaningful causes. With the pandemic still going on out there, “meaningful causes” have taken on a new form. People want to lend a helping hand, and brands are also expected to do something.

This year, it’s important to lend a helping hand as best as you can as a business. With social media, it’s much easier and more comfortable to do so. You can use purpose-driven engagement and relief campaigns that help the most vulnerable of people, and you can use social media to increase your following while doing it. 

Collect leads from events or customers entering your store. A product like OnSpot Social has the software that will help you collect the leads so you can create some purposeful marketing campaigns on top of your current marketing.

At the end of the day, customers follow brands that they can relate to. When they see a more humane side of you, they’re bound to believe more in your message. 

Interested in developing your own social media marketing plan? Contact our social media marketing agency in Philadelphia to learn more!

Social media stories provide an avenue of opportunity that many businesses have overlooked. According to Facebook, over a billion people use stories across their social media platforms. These include Instagram and Snapchat. Many people access their stories daily, and it can be the way for you to take your business to the next level.

How Do Stories Work?

Social media stories are a separate feed that allows people to share full-screen vertical images and videos. They cater to people who want to focus more on this content, as made popular by websites such as Instagram. Platforms like Snapchat, YouTube, and Facebook allow stories to appear for 24 hours.

While they are temporary, some sites like Instagram allow storage into collections for later viewing. However, it doesn’t derail from the advantage that stories provide. Stories are an avenue of content that is only available for a short period. The temporary nature appeals to a broad audience who doesn’t want to miss out on their favorite brands.

Since they are short term, they become more personal. It makes your audience feel like they are the first ones to experience your post. The full-screen aspect of it is also immersive. Stories have been so popular that at least 75% of all users access them regularly.

The Target Audience

Most users who access social media stories are from the millennial and generation Z eras. A study showed that more than half of all millennials frequent stories. At the same time, around 70% of generation Z uses them. This trend exists because the stories feature began on Instagram, which was already used by these generations. While stories are now more widely used, they remain as the majority of the audience.

There is an opportunity for businesses who have these age groups in mind. Around 25% of these users browse stories to learn about new products and services. It has become a selling tool that many can take advantage of. Not only that, it is these generations that are also becoming a significant part of the world’s purchasing power.

Stories also have a high lead rate, with around 15% of all viewers checking the links associated with branded stories. Since stories only last for a short period, your audience will view the image or video through to the end.

Using Social Media Stories for Your Business

While stories are a relatively fresh avenue you can take advantage of, many don’t know how to start. It is a different type of media, so you should use its strengths to your advantage. Here are some ideas you can use for your content.

Develop a Series

Creating a story series you update weekly is a way to connect to your audience and build your brand. You can use it for discussion, updates, Q&A, and more. The trick to creating a series is to find content that matches your brand. You may need a more creative name or be more experimental.

A weekly series helps people stay tuned to your business. Those who want to learn more about you will have something to look forward to. It builds brand loyalty and makes you more interactive.

Behind the Scenes

For most consumers, all they see is what is at your storefront. They view the website, the products, and the services. You can use stories to help bring people deeper and give them the information they might want. By doing so, you transform otherwise generic content into something more engaging.

Sharing insights into your business, crazy events, and even simple things you use can be captivating. People love learning more about the endeavors of people behind the scenes. It gives you personality and makes you relatable. Here are some ideas of what behind-the-scenes content can look like:

• Making the product
• Stories/Background about team members
• Favorites in your inventory

How-To Content

Content that brings value to its watchers is very popular. We see videos of instructional videos, tips, and hacks everywhere. They are a hit for a reason. Think about your ideal content and think about how you can help them.

If you’re a food business, teach them more about picking ingredients or give them fun facts. Give them an idea about how you create food and the history behind it. You can even cover local events and interact with your audience.

Promotions

People are always looking for deals. They are looking for value with their purchases. By providing promotions in stories, you give your audience a feeling that they got something only a few people were able to snag. It keeps them tuned in, and they will start to monitor your feed regularly. It opens the door for you to do more marketing or build your brand.

Promotions are also easy to do, as you won’t need a lot of resources to give them discounts. You can even add something unique to your promotion to make it stand out from your competitors.

Shaping Your Story Content to Success

When it comes to creating social media stories, it is important to keep up with trends. Learning more about what is popular at the time can help you stay in the conversation. Here are some other tips that can help you build a business.

• Post Regularly: Create a schedule and stick with it. You don’t need to post every day but go at a pace that works for you. If you stick with it, you start to build a regular audience.
• Social Media Challenges: Challenges appear from time to time and become a trend. You can use these challenges to your advantage and bring more visibility to your business.
• Hashtags and Advertising: If any avenues can bring in more people, do it. You may need to spend a little to advertise. Also, don’t forget your hashtags, as it helps people when they are doing searches.

Social media stories will be one of the defining features of social media moving forward. While you have the chance, you should jump on the train before everyone else does. We all understand the value of being one of the first in any industry. Doing so will help you yield the rewards.

Interested in learning more about optimizing your social media? Ready to start your business’s social media strategy? Check out our social media marketing agency in Philadelphia and start building your digital marketing strategies!

TikTok is perhaps one of the top conversations in the social space. With millions of users and metrics going higher by the day, the service is currently the most popular social media buzz. 

Like every trend, companies have been looking into the possibility of using TikTok to promote their business. So, it begs the question, “Is TikTok really worth it?” The short answer is a resounding “Yes,” and we’ll look into the details to see why below.

Understanding TikTok

TikTok is quite different from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media that most people are familiar with. It was built as a video-sharing platform.

With TikTok, users can create, edit, and share videos that last no longer than 15 seconds. You can add music, animations, special effects, and several filters to your videos to spruce them up. 

Depending on the style of your video and what you included will determine how it reaches people. While you can share with your followers, there are also themes that your content can be placed under, certain hashtags can help determine how a video will rotate through with Tik Tok’s algorithm. The views are based on the viewer’s theme preferences and what Tik Tok has created for them.

TikTok is available on Android and iOS. The service has grown significantly over the past year, combining internet connectivity and artificial intelligence to change how users consume their information.

How TikTok Works

TikTok operates primarily using artificial intelligence. The service provides customized suggestions for videos and content based on your feed to send you videos directly. It also provides filters based on facial recognition data for you. The end goal is to provide users with precisely what they desire when they want it. 

For now, TikTok is one of the best ways to reach people under 25. However, several members of the older generations are also using it to reach out to their base and build new audiences, and there have been significant success stories so far.

Understand What Performs Well on TikTok

Now that we understand what TikTok is, it’s beneficial to understand what drives this social media platform’s operation. If you run a business, you’re probably wondering how TikTok knowledge can translate to marketing gains. Well, the answer will depend on your target market and brand. 

You will need to study TikTok before launching your business there. Just as it is with other social media platforms, you need to understand how best to develop posts that will rank and perform well on the service. It might take a while, but it’ll be well worth the effort. 

To begin, you need to understand the type of content that performs well on TikTok. You will also need to learn how best to interact with the service’s users to ensure that your business easily fits into the platform and its audience. By knowing who you’re serving and how to reach them, you essentially find the right fit for your content overall. 

As you dive into the best type of content on TikTok, keep the following in mind.

First, TikTok is all about creating visually appealing content. You simply need to check the trending page to find that out.

Also, keep in mind that most of the people on TikTok are between the ages of 16 and 24 but as the platform grows more age groups are getting involved. 

You will need to approach engagement more creatively. If you’re hoping to come here with a serious sales pitch, you will not get far. Be fun and creative with your content. 

Creating Attractive Content

With the two principles above, let’s look into the type of content you should create while on TikTok. To begin with, understand that you don’t need perfect, highly-polished videos. TikTok is more about simplicity than anything else. So, instead of making a large production budget, just get your phone and start filming.

As long as you keep your content funny and wacky, you can reach millions with amateur video quality. It’s all about being light-hearted and informal. If this tone doesn’t fit your business, TikTok might not be your preferred platform.

Capitalizing on TikTok Ads

Understanding its reach, TikTok recently introduced ad features to its platform. This feature is a significant boon for companies looking to sell themselves on TikTok.

With TikTok Ads, you can generally use the following ad formats:

a.   In-feed native content

In-feed native content is basically an ad like the ones you see on popular social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram. They are more like story ads, and they support several features like web clicks and app downloads.

b.   Hashtag challenges

 A hashtag challenge provides the best means of going viral via a promoted hashtag and ad campaign. If you’re looking to get user-generated content to promote your brand, this is the ideal way to go.

c.   Brand takeovers 

A brand takeover essentially allows a company to take over TikTok’s platform for a period. It is usually a day, and on that day, users will be able to create videos and GIFs with embedded links to landing pages, hashtag challenges, etc.

d.   Branded lenses 

Branded lenses are high-definition glasses like those you see on Snapchat. They allow you to meet with new users via branded content.

The Power of Branded Hashtag Challenges

If you’re really looking to get your brand on TikTok, hashtag challenges are a perfect way. With this approach, you can encourage TiKTokkers to develop or redesign content and incorporate your brand’s hashtag into them.

Several brands, including Chipotle and Guess, have used this trend with significant success.

When it comes to marketing your business, there is hardly a better way to go about it on TikTok than with a branded hashtag.

Call Up TikTok Influencers

Like any other social media platform, TikTok also has significant influencers who can help you build your brand. Simply pay them to participate in whatever you’re doing, and they can use their videos and reach to get their followers to do the same thing.

The benefit of these influencers is that they help you to do what you otherwise couldn’t with a regular ad. Millennials and GenZ are more opposed to ads. You can bypass that wall with an influencer and get your material in front of these people without them dreading the pause in their scrolling.

All in all, marketing on TikTok is definitely worth it especially if you have a younger audience. You just need to understand what works and what passes as useful content. From there, it’s easy to get your target audience to pay attention to you.

Do you need help with TikTok advertising? Are you a business owner or an agency, we offer white label advertising, contact us today!

Social media connects our world in a way that no one has ever seen before. Revolutions, social movements, and critical political discussions are constantly happening on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. For small businesses and entrepreneurs, social media has become the great equalizer. It gives access to the same marketing tools that big companies utilize for themselves. 

Having a solid marketing plan enables you to use vital social media channels to help you reach your business goals. There are, however, common social media mistakes that even the most successful of companies tend to make at times. Here are some of them:

Ignoring Customers’ Social Media Habits

Using social media is not just about making customers understand your business. In fact, it’s the other way around. Your primary goal should be to make customers feel seen and understood. It’s not about you. It’s about your customers. 

If you dabble in social media without even an inkling of your customers’ online behavior, your marketing plan is already doomed from the get-go. 

As digital marketers, our first task is to get to know our clients’ target market intimately. The first step is to identify social media usage statistics. What social media platforms do the target audience use? How are they using them? What makes these platforms appealing to our market? What kind of content do they typically consume? When are they most active? 

Once you have the answers to these questions, you’ll find that formulating a strategic plan has become a lot easier. If your users tend to be active from 7 pm onwards, you must post content during that period. If they engage more with videos, it’s logical that your content must be geared more toward video content. If they spend more time on Facebook, you might want to put more effort into your Facebook page and cut back on Instagram or other social media platforms.

Use this information and incorporate it into the decision making process. Having a clear idea of where your target users are and how they behave saves you time and money in regards to marketing experiments. Leverage the knowledge to your business’ advantage.

No Solid Content Strategy

Some businesses might regard social media as an easy platform to leverage, therefore not allotting the much-needed resources for it. These companies often tend to generate lots of mediocre content, post non-stop, and wear everybody out.

Content is king, but great digital marketers know that quality content beats any other type of content. Quality content takes the what, where, and when into account.

Make sure that your posts provide value to your customers. Don’t just post anything for the sake of posting. Each piece of content must serve a purpose, may it be to educate, inform, or entertain. Use Buzzsumo or Social Blade. These tools can help you research what it is that your customers care about. Understand where their interests are. From there, you can brainstorm relevant content that has higher chances of engaging audiences. 

Post only once or twice a day to avoid people seeing your brand too often and getting tired of it. If you update your accounts too much, you run the risk of people getting desensitized and straight up ignoring you. Stories and live updates are great social media activities, but you must limit your status updates to once or twice a day to ensure quality and create anticipation.

Leverage your video content. Facebook, YouTube, and yes, even LinkedIn’s algorithms are friendly when it comes to videos. They want users to stay longer, and videos are an effective way to achieve that. Videos get twice as much engagement and views compared to other mediums. 

Disregarding Your Audience

Think of it this way. You’re a shop owner that sells plants. A customer walks in and browses the store. They notice a rare indoor plant that’s usually hard to take care of. They proceed to compliment you for taking such good care of it. Do you stand there and not answer them? Of course not. You smile, engage them with small talk, and perhaps, you might even score a sale. 

Social media is called social for a reason. It’s a two-way street. Meeting customers halfway is the best practice. We have noticed that some companies with exciting products don’t engage with their audience. Even though they have quality services to offer and superb content, their posts are not gaining much traction. They only receive a comment or two. This is because these clients are missing a vital piece of connection with the people. 

Likes, views, and comments will naturally come in if you put out a friendly persona that anyone feels they can talk to. Even if it’s just a simple “thank you” message, having a nice “You’re welcome. We hope you enjoy our services!” reply could make all the difference. 

People respond to people. If they feel that your brand is someone they can relate to and even respect, it will put you right ahead of the competition.

A general rule of thumb is to treat people on social media as if they’re right in front of you. Having a strong and genuine connection with your community is always good for the business.

Not Understanding the Difference Between Search and Social

We’re giving it to you straight. Social media is a different beast from search engines like Google and Bing. You must understand the mentality of why people go on social media and why they go to search engines. People go to search engines with a need, while people typically go on social media to kill time.

We socialize with our family and friends, watch videos, and consume articles on social media about things that matter to us. People aren’t necessarily going to social media with their credit cards in hand.

Unlike search engines, pushy or hard-sell posts don’t generally do well on social media. People aren’t looking to buy anything there. If you keep pushing the same direct response, infomercial-type posts to your audience, you might be on the wrong platform. If you’re looking to sell a product that is where a national SEO campaign can come handy. Social media is great for brand awareness and engagement.

Seek to engage customers by having content that serves to educate, entertain, and inform them. 

Being Afraid to ask for Help

Let’s look at the statistics. Facebook influences more than half of all online and offline consumer purchases. Pinterest accounts for 25% of all retail website traffic. 80% of millennials check Twitter at least once daily, and Snapchat reaches 41% of all 18-34-year-olds in the United States. Social media is inescapable.

With so many options available, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and put off from crafting a comprehensive social media plan. People usually end up posting content that doesn’t help them get to where they need to be.

Learn to reach out and ask for help. Whether it’s in the form of buying a book, taking online courses, or even hiring a marketing agency, entrepreneurs must actively learn how to utilize social media to help their business grow and become successful. Achieving virality is not just about luck. It’s about understanding the algorithm and learning how to play with it. 

The Bottom Line

Our everyday lives heavily involve social media. When we wake up in the morning, the first thing we do is check our phones. We spend hours scrolling through our news feed, taking in information left and right. Social media marketing is an essential tool that you can implement if you want your business to thrive.

Our agency offers top-notch social media marketing services that can help build your brand’s credibility. We have launched hundreds of successful social media marketing campaigns that helped local businesses boost their brand performance online.

If you’re looking to grow your presence online, contact us today. We’re happy to help out!

Start a Successful Social Media Campaign

Running social media pages is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase brand awareness, enhance customer experience, and boost sales. No matter how big or small your company is, social media marketing can help you achieve your digital marketing goals. 

As digital marketing experts, businesses often ask us for tips on how to improve their social media pages. Read on for six steps to effective social media marketing. 

Step 1: Clearly Define Your Target Market 

This advice is straight out of basic marketing classes, but many business owners forget about this step. We highly recommend clearly defining your target market before attempting to run several social media sites. 

Defining the target market involves knowing your potential customers’ age, location, gender, interests, and digital habits. Here are some interesting facts about how Americans’ age affects their social media preferences:

• Sixty-nine percent of American adults have a Facebook account, and 75% of them visit the site once a day. 
• Seventy-three percent of American adults use YouTube. 
• Thirty-seven percent of American adults have an Instagram account. 
• Smaller percentages of adults use  Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Whatsapp. 
• The top social media site for American teens is YouTube, with an 85% usage rate. 
• Instagram and Snapchat are the top two and three social media sites for teens, with 72% and 69% usage rate. 
• Fifty percent of American teens still use Facebook. 

Choosing social media platforms for your business entails knowing your target market. As you can see in the numbers above, markets have different digital marketing habits. If you are targeting adults, use Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram instead of Snapchat or TikTok. 

Additionally, Facebook Custom Audience settings can help you target your potential clients based on where they are in the sales funnel. You can create distinct ads for top, middle, and bottom-funnel clients. Using this feature is a powerful tool that lets you customize your strategies to fit your customers’ preferences. 

Step 2: Set Goals

The next step in boosting your digital presence is setting social media goals. Set SMART objectives — specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. We suggest using similar social media goals:

• Increase Instagram followers by 1,000 per month for the year. 
• Grow monthly site traffic from social media by 20%.
• Generate 50 new leads per week. 
• Increase sales from Facebook by 10% versus last year. 

Another goal you can have is to optimize your social media pages to strengthen your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. It’s not easy to measure, but surveys reveal that half of the companies failing at their SEO attempts don’t integrate their SEO and social media efforts. 

Once you’ve set goals, you can adjust your budgets and techniques accordingly. 

Step 3: Analyze Your Competition

The third step on our list of social media tips is creating a competitive analysis of your rivals’ social media efforts. 

Employ the best practices you observe, and find their weaknesses. Through your competitive social analysis, you should observe the following:

• Preferred platforms
• Posting frequency
• Effective campaigns
• Consumer feedback

Use your research to make your social media sites stand out. 

Step 4: Practice Content Marketing

The dictionary definition of content marketing is creating and sharing online material such as videos and blogs intended to stimulate interest in products or services. Content marketing suggests using high-quality posts that don’t always explicitly promote your products or services. 

Using quality content can help you attract and retain visitors that you can eventually turn into customers. However, 60% of companies have difficulty consistently creating content, and 65% struggle to produce engaging content. 

Lego uses content marketing well. Its YouTube Channel has over 11.4 million subscribers, and they gain access to Lego creations, campaigns, fan features, and more. Lego shares the YouTube videos in its Facebook and Instagram channels, with a combined 20.7 million followers. These videos often get tens of thousands of social media views and shares. 

Of course, it takes a while to build a digital presence as relevant as Lego’s. The point is, your content should bring value to your page. Instead of always posting about your products or services, you can post about recipes, fun facts, beauty hacks, infographics, and other compelling content. 

Step 5: Create a Social Media Plan

Step number five is creating a social media plan with goals, a content plan, and a calendar. We’ve already discussed goals and ideal content, so let’s talk about your calendar. Your weekly calendar should always be a combination of functional, thematic, and valuable posts. 

Here’s a guide on how often to post on social media sites. To summarize:

• At a minimum, businesses should post on their Facebook pages three times per week. Anything more than once per day is too much for this platform. We recommend posting between 1–4 PM. 
• For Twitter, you can post anywhere between 3–30 times per day. The most popular Twitter accounts tweet around 23 times a day. 
• For Instagram, once a day is ideal. Three times per week is acceptable. Remember to choose the ideal Instagram sizes and use appropriate hashtags. Avoid posting photos or videos on your home page in quick succession.

Step 6: Measure and Analyze Your Results 

The last step in creating an effective social media plan is to measure and analyze your results and compare them to your objectives. Here are some things you can measure:

• Volume: Find out how many people are talking about your brand. You can count brand mentions, hashtags, and tags. 
• Reach: Measure how many people have seen your content. Doing so can help you determine your potential audience size. Reach has three classifications. 
  • Organic reach is the number of people who saw your post in their feed. 
  • Viral reach is the number of people who saw your post from social sharing.
  • Paid reach is the number of people who saw your post through a paid social media ad. 
• Engagement: Measure how many actions your post received. This measure includes comments, likes, and shares on Facebook. On Twitter, this translates to replies and retweets. 

Enhance Your Social Media Presence

Enhancing your social media presence is one of the most cost-effective methods you can use to boost your digital presence. Work on your social media presence to unlock your company’s full earning potential. Contact us at SEO Locale if you’re looking for an agency to help your business grow digitally.

Facebook ads are used by many companies to reach a wider audience and gain more business online. If you’re thinking about utilizing Facebook advertising for the first time, there are a few things you should know before setting up your ads.

Step 1: Determine What Your Objective Is

Facebook offers a number of different objectives that are broken down into three different categories: awareness, consideration and conversion.

The awareness category is simple: if your goal is to make more people aware of your business and services, this is a great option to choose. If you want to make an ad describing some of the services you offer and want to get more eyes on your page, you should choose an awareness objective, like brand awareness or reach.

Consideration is a step further than awareness. This objective gets people to start thinking about your business and potentially look for more information about it. There are a range of options in the consideration objective. A popular option is website traffic, which leads the user from the Facebook ad to your website so they can learn more about your business. A few other popular options are engagement, video views and lead generation.

The last objective category Facebook offers is conversion. This is taking the consideration goal and turning it into a sale. This objective works well when you’re selling a product or service online and you want the prospective customer to make a purchase or fill out some type of form.

Step 2: Find Your Audience

After you’ve selected an objective for your Facebook ad, the next step is to figure out who exactly you want your ad to reach. You can choose geographic location, age and gender to reach your desired audience.

After you select the appropriate audience, you can be even more specific with your audience through detailed targeting. Detailed targeting allows you to zero in on certain behaviors, likes, job titles and more that Facebook keeps track of to reach an even more defined audience.

Once you put in all of that information, a budget, and a start and end date for your ad, Facebook will show you how many people you’ll reach on a daily basis and the total amount of people you can reach by running your ad.

Step 3: Create the Ad

Now that all of the technical aspects are out of the way, you can create your ad. Here, you can select a photo or video as well as create a caption and headline for your ad. You want to make sure that the text you use captures the attention of your audience. Keeping things short and straight to the point is a good route to go if you’re not sure what to do for the ad.

Feel free to get creative with your ad and make sure that it captures the essence of your business. If you would like to learn more about social media marketing or digital marketing, feel free to contact our team today.

Facebook Review and Ad Results

After you’ve finished your ad, you can submit it for Facebook to review. Facebook has an advertising policy, so during the review stage, Facebook checks to make sure your ad isn’t violating any of their policies. You should read up on Facebook ad policies before creating your ad to make sure your ad will start running right after the review.

If your ad is in violation of the Facebook policies, Facebook will let you know the reason your ad wasn’t approved. You can either go back in and edit your ad to comply with the policies, or if you feel as though Facebook made a mistake, you can request for them to take a second look.

Once your ad is approved, it’ll start delivering and you’ll be able to track your results!

In 2019, social media networks have become a force to be reckoned with when it comes to communicating, building relationships and promoting your brand. What turned social media into one of the most popular digital marketing channels are their simplicity and popularity. For SMEs, finding cost-effective ways to show their