social media
advertising
What is Social Media Advertising?
Social media advertising is when a company uses social media platforms to connect with an audience to build brand awareness, increase sales, and drive website traffic. Your company will get the most out of social media marketing and advertising with content marketing strategies from AMG.
By publishing valuable and relevant content, it is easier to listen and engage with your followers and customers. This feedback, coupled with analyzing results of ad campaigns, will allow your company to continuously refine and optimize your strategies to acquire new customers at cheaper costs.
The 5 Pillars of Social Media Marketing
There are plenty of social media platforms across the internet. As with any good strategy, you'll want to do some research and find out which social media platforms your customers and potential customers are using to make sure you get in front of them.
There are also a handful of major social media platforms that are very important for search engine optimization. We suggest creating business profiles on facebook, instagram, twitter, linked in, pinterest, youtube, snapchat, and TikTok, even if you don't regularly use these platforms, as it will greatly increase your companies online visibility.
- Social Media Strategy
- Social Media Planning and Publishing
- Listening and Engagement
- Analytics and Reporting
- Advertising
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Our Offerings
Social Media Strategy
The overall objective of social media is to get the right content in front of the right people at the right time. A good strategy should be centered around clearly defined goals with benchmarks and a specific audience. Your strategy will enable your business to create valuable and relevant content, drive engagement, and increase conversions and sales. And as with any good strategy, it will require evaluating the data and results to determine what can be done to improve the results
Before you start posting on social media, there are a few things to consider
What are your goals? How is Social Media Advertising and Marketing going to help you achieve these goals? The most common objectives include increasing website traffic, increasing leads, increasing sales and revenue, and increasing brand awareness. Your social media strategy needs to stay consistent with the brand and values of your company.
Which social media platforms will you use? As mentioned earlier, the main social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok. There are also social messaging platforms, such as Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat, which can be incorporated into you contact page and give your customers another means to connect. If you already know your audience, you probably know which platforms to use. But if you don't, that's why we are here.
What type of content will you post and share? Will it be educational? Will it be humorous and entertaining? Pictures? Videos? Links to valuable and relevant content? At AMG, we are excellent Content Creators and can help with both creative and strategic elements of social media advertising.
At the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, one of our clients was printing textbooks for schools in the area to help with remote learning. Their goal with social media advertising was to create a video to let the community know they were still open for business and they wanted to help the local community in any way possible. You can check out that video here
Social Media Planning and Publishing
If you designed a fantastic marketing campaign with 20 amazing Facebook posts, would you post them all at the same time on the same day? We hope not! An action plan and publishing schedule is a little bit different from general strategy. At this point in the process, you should know your audience well enough to know the best days and times to post to social media platforms. You should also be posting quality content that is valuable and relevant as we discussed with content marketing. The only thing left to tie everything together is a regular publishing schedule for your social media platforms, while being cognizant to stay in line with your core brand values.
How many people use social media? Last we checked, it was over 4.6 billion people. Chances are your customers are using social media. By being active and engaged in social media, you have a much better chance of them finding your company and purchasing goods and services.
Publishing to social media is basically just sharing an image, video, or URL to one or all of your social media platforms. The planning side isn't quite so simple. You need to know the best days and times to get in front of your audience AND you need to know the type of content that will attract and engage your audience. This will increase online visibility and maximize your reach on social media.
Did you know that the slogan "Don't Mess with Texas" was originally a marketing campaign by the Texas Department of Transportation to reduce littering on roadways? A good plan goes a long way!
Listening and Engagement
A lot of small businesses and entrepreneurs utilize social media management platforms to schedule their posts ahead of time. This can be great for saving time by planning ahead, but you want to make sure to stay active and engaged on social media. As your online visibility grows, you will gain more followers and get more interaction on your social media posts. Social media platforms have enabled users to leave reviews, send direct messages, and comment on posts, which gives great opportunity to get feedback directly from customers. Sometimes the feedback is not positive, but if you value customer service, the opportunities are there to listen and learn from your customers. Often times business owners use this feedback to improve business processes and customer service. Another very important aspect is that potential customers can look back to see how negative reviews were responded to. By staying active and engaged in your social media pages, you can respond quickly and professionally to any negative feedback.
The other side of the coin is positive feedback. This is also very valuable in evaluating company processes and customer service. When customers send positive messages, leave positive reviews, and comment in positive ways on social media posts, it is still very important to engage with them. Thank your followers for their kind words and remind them that you appreciate their business and that you appreciate them following your social media pages.
If you are looking for some ideas social media posts, check out what is hot and trending. Sharing a viral video or meme can be great for getting more engagement and interaction with your social media followers. Just make sure the content you are sharing is on brand with your business.
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Analytics and Reporting
To measure the performance of any marketing campaign, you need to analyze the data that comes back. Most social media platforms are equipped with dashboards that report a variety of analytics. This information will help you determine which posts perform the best, which platforms perform the best, as well as the best days and times to post. From there you will have a better understanding of user behavior and you can refine your strategy for future social media marketing campaigns. For example, if your educational posts get a lot of engagement and conversions to sales, you should modify your strategy accordingly. Consequently, if certain types of social media posts get no likes, comments, or shares, you should avoid posting similar content and pivoting towards something that will get more interaction from your audience.
There are a variety of analytics tools on the market if you are looking to dive deeper into your social media marketing campaign data. Make sure your website is connected with google analytics, or some other analytics program, to ensure you have accurate data outside of social media platforms. At Astoria Media Group, we use cutting-edge technology and tools to refine your social media campaigns for optimal performance.
Advertising
No matter what type of marketing you are doing, one of the first steps in creating a marketing plan is to determine your audience. With almost 3 billion users, Facebook is always a good starting point, both for finding an audience and testing how content performs. Facebook also gives you the opportunity to reach customers with the three main types of social media advertising.
Organic Content - This content is seen naturally and organically by your followers and is free to the user to post
Paid Content (PPC) - This content is paid for by a business or organization to be seen by a target audience. Typically these types of posts have the aim of increasing brand awareness or driving leads and sales. Google AdWords and Facebook Ads are two of the biggest names in the paid content world, but most social media platforms offer a paid model to get your content in front of your target audience.
Earned Content - This content has been given for free by other social media users in the form of sharing, liking, and commenting. Typically this friends and family re-sharing your content, but as your online visibility increases you will get more engagement and interaction from social media users, increasing earned content.
To make the most of your social media advertising, follow the 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rules says, “spend 20% of your time creating content and the rest (80%) promoting it”.
Content creation can be a time-consuming process for business owners. A lot of businesses don't spend enough time researching useful and relevant content for their audience, and they end up posting what amounts to spam. Low quality content posts get no likes, shares, or comments. They are as much of a waste of time for your audience as they are for you for making them. When it comes to advertising, make sure you keep optimizing your strategy for posts that are getting engagement and interaction. This will make sure your posts get in front of as many people as possible. Creating different versions of advertisements with different messaging will help you get engagement from a variety of different users that follow your social media posts. This technique will also allow you to use analytics and data to determine the best content and language for your audience.
Connect With Us!
As we mentioned earlier, social media management platforms can be a great supplement for small businesses and entrepreneurs trying to do a lot with a little. We might breakdown some of these platforms and offer reviews down the line, but for right now, here are some prices of the leading social media management platforms.
Whether you are new to social media or a bonified Facebook wizard, the experts at Astoria Media Group can help with all of your social media advertising needs.
