Social Media… Here’s what you should know about Digital Reputation Management and Advertising!
FACEBOOK ADVERTISING
Facebook has more than 1.5 billion users every single day. That is 20% of the earth’s population.
To say that the world’s most popular social media platform offers incredible opportunities for local, regional, national, and international businesses is an understatement.
But a problem exists.
How does a company reach the correct audience?
Then, How do they then win the attention of these audiences while fighting against millions of other brands?
Just like Google, Facebook runs off of a sophisticated algorithm. As a result, not a single person’s news feed looks the same. The posts people interact with, how long they linger on videos or posts, and even what they search for outside of Facebook all create a customized feed with content that Facebook believes they will value.
At GriffinWink, we know how this algorithm works and how to understand your audiences. By understanding customer intent through analytics, our strategy comes from a place of research and not guesswork. So let’s look at the aspects of how we are working to change how digital advertising does on Facebook.
Organic content refers to posts on social media where you’re not spending additional money to achieve visibility. Organic content can be videos, pictures, text, or a combination.
HOW DOES ORGANIC CONTENT WORK?
When your business page publishes a post, the Facebook algorithm makes it visible to a tiny portion of your page’s overall audience. In some cases, only .5% of the people who have liked your business page will initially see the post displayed in their news feed.
It is crucial for that initial small audience to interact with the post by sharing, commenting, or reacting to it. If they ignore the post, it will not appear on more Facebook users’ newsfeeds.
If people interact with the post, it appears on more users’ newsfeeds, allowing a wider audience of people who have liked your page and their Facebook friends to see your post.
The amount of people who see your post on their newsfeed is called organic reach. This measure, as described above, is entirely tied to interaction. Organic content creation aims to have your post seen by the most people. So what is the strategy behind making your organic content reach the most people and the right people?
STRATEGY
Each year Facebook limits organic reach more and more in hopes of driving companies to choose to advertise on the platform instead of relying on interaction alone. We have had many businesses say that it feels hopeless when publishing content to Facebook as campaigns return results that are less than desirable.
Seeing a seemingly well-thought-out post reach a dozen people is disheartening. This is why at GriffinWink, we constantly work at understanding the specifics of what the ever-changing Facebook algorithm favors.
The first step in a successful organic social media strategy is understanding the audiences involved. We review the individuals who like your business page and then work with your company to understand the audience they wish to reach.
Considering these two audiences and what they value on social media, we begin creating content that aligns with what the audiences commonly interact with on Facebook.
We don’t rely on just one type of content. We continue strategy development through A/B testing to ensure that the content we publish effectively draws the audience you and your company need. We monitor published posts with real-time analytics, making changes throughout the campaign to ensure you get the best possible results.
CONTENT CREATION
Facebook users watch videos and look at captivating images. As a result, plain text posts rarely cut it anymore. For this reason, our social management packages have design and production time built in.
We won’t simply settle for stock images or throw together a lackluster graphic on free software. Instead, our graphic designers will use their varied skill sets each month to create custom graphics or video content for your social media.
Social media might seem to be an entirely digital mindset, but without traditional graphic design or video production, the strategies commonly fall short. We take the extra steps for your business to ensure that your social media is vibrant and engaging for all who see your posts.
CREATING ENGAGEMENT
Creating engagement is crucial for the success of social media. Whether you want to increase the number of likes a page has or drive traffic to your website through social posts, campaigns fall flat without user engagement.
So how do you get your public involved?
There are several ways to ensure that your public is doing more than scrolling past your Facebook content. We discussed the importance of including media assets in your post, but what else?
While we cannot reveal all our tricks up our sleeve, we work daily to find the most effective methods of posting content that drives user engagement.
Some of the methods we use to create organic engagement include:
- Dynamic calls to action
- Running exclusive giveaways or discount offers
- Featuring useful content links to your website
- Tagging and partnering with influencers
- Including rich media assets
FACEBOOK MARKETING
Facebook marketing is very similar to general social media management. The main difference is with social marketing, an additional budget used for advertising spend is utilized to help increase the visibility of your company’s social media content.
While our organic management is structured in strategy, times exist where Facebook marketing is necessary. This is especially true for companies with a small number of page likes. It is also quite helpful for short, aggressive campaigns where A/B testing would take too long to complete.
Overall, an additional ad-spend budget benefits all our social media clients. It can be the push posts need to get outside of your page’s existing audience and start to get picked up by the general public.
Facebook marketing also opens doors for options such as Facebook retargeting. Retargeting occurs when someone has visited your site, and they are then shown ads on Facebook for your company’s website or page.
This ensures that visitors keep your name in the front of their minds, so when they are ready to take action, they know who to turn to.
FACEBOOK STRATEGY
Facebook marketing offers a wide range of new possibilities for targeting specific audiences. Instead of working to create content that will appeal to the audience your company is trying to reach, marketing allows you to specifically target individuals based on their interests, location, age, and more.
Discovering what audiences your company needs to reach and then targeting them directly while simultaneously retargeting those who have already visited your website builds your audience while creating conversions.
FACEBOOK ANALYTICS
We want to ensure you understand all the data from our Facebook marketing efforts. For this reason, we utilize several different analytics dashboards directly on social media platforms and third-party software.
From these data sources, we can determine how your money is being spent, and the ways users interact with your posts. For clients who desire an even deeper look into analytics, we offer some of the most powerful software created for social media analytics. We’ll cover that more in a few moments.
Instagram is an ever increasingly popular social media platform. In 2019, the platform saw nearly 100 million posts a day. Most notably, the under 25 demographic spends an average of 32 minutes daily on Instagram. Overall, Instagram has 1 billion active users and continues taking up more social market share each year.
Instagram is owned by Facebook, making the two quite similar in many ways. The strategy between the two platforms is vastly different. As we explained in our section describing why we do not use HootSuite, it is essential to understand the differences in social strategy from platform to platform.
PAID CAMPAIGNS
Just like Facebook, Instagram allows businesses to pay for an increased reach. The key to a successful Instagram marketing campaign is content created to look natural within the users’ feeds.
The Instagram news feed operates in a long scroll format and is optimized for vertical views on mobile devices. Creating visually captivating advertisements with solid calls to action that look organic can catch your audience’s attention and create conversions incredibly fast.
When Instagram marketing is paired with UX/UI web design and website content creation, leads can be generated at an impressive rate. At GriffinWink, we never stop trying to innovate and find new strategies for you. That is why we have recently taken a deep dive into one of the newest trends on Facebook and Instagram, stories for businesses.
SOCIAL MEDIA STORIES FOR BUSINESSES
Facebook and Instagram now allow for business accounts to utilize the story feature. This feature is less formal than a post and has demonstrated some incredibly effective results for businesses.
Stories are the future of social media. Instagram sees more than half a billion stories posted every single day. That is over a 50% increase from last year. Stories also allow your company to show a more personable side to your audience.
Clients, customers, and even employees can tag your business in stories that allow you to repost them on your business’s page. This creates a relationship with your social audience that is fun and interactive.
Stories also create unique promotional opportunities and generate web traffic. If you want to learn more about why your business should start using social media stories, you can read our full blog post here.