We take our risks on social media so you don’t have to! Welcome to another thrilling installment of 5 Things One Twelfth Learned This Week!
Yes, you absolutely have a reason to celebrate!
1. Engage with your Audience
The point of social media is right there in the name: Being social! Outlets like Facebook and Twitter act as a one-way access point for businesses to immediately and easily answer the questions, comments, and concerns of their customers. Before social media, all we had to speak directly with a company was a disembodied voice at the end of a phone line that usually didn’t care if your problems were met with an answer.
With social media, companies don’t have that option. They have to answer a customer’s problem, otherwise they run the risk of having that customer spam them with a poor review or comment that reflects negatively on the company’s identity. It is always necessary for a company to address the comments of their customer. Whether they’re positive, neutral, or negative, engage just to show you care.
Oh, and another note on that topic, please do not post the same generic comment. Your audience will see that you are treating them as just another customer, rather than they individual they are, and they will call you out on it.
As far as creating engaging posts, however, this is easy because social media serves as a central point for millions of people to socialize and speak on a particular subject. On weekdays especially, when they’re either trapped at work or school, they want to socialize with the world outside the four walls they’re constrained in and let their opinions be heard.
This is a perfect opportunity to unleash a ‘#CaptionThis’ post:
or a ‘Fill-in-the-Blank’ post:
Both types of posts are easy comment on and they usually illicit a light response devoid of any controversy.
2. You don’t need a studio to create an effective ad
Our company, unfortunately, doesn’t have a studio to hold photo or video-shoots in to make any ads we want to run. Obviously this makes it tough for the creative director to effectively get their message across, since they don’t have the luxury that major advertising firms have of being able to hire actors and have them play out the creative director’s artistic vision.
Although we don’t have a studio, we do have our–Excuse my triteness–imagination. With our imagination, we can still create an effective ad with three little things we like to call Photoshop, Shutterstock and great, impactful copy.
One of the campaigns we’ve been running for our accounts, Hipoglos, a diaper rash cream, is the ‘Where will you be when diaper rash strikes’ campaign. Basically, the ads are meant to feature a kid, possibly accompanied with a parent if there is a picture out there, with the copy ‘Where will you be when diaper rash strikes’.
Since we don’t have the luxury of paying baby actors, cameramen, lighting, sound people, and having a full-fledged studio, we went to Shutterstock to aid us. Once we were finished there, we went over to Photoshop to add our identity and logo, and then posted it to all social media channels.
Even without the studio, our attempts, thus far, have played out nicely:
Considering the relatively low reach of these posts and the lack of spending invested into either, including none at all in the second post, 12 likes out of 340 people, and 4 likes and a comment out of 57 people, are solid numbers.
3. Appeal to your audience’s emotions and problems
You know what seems like an extremely difficult profession? Parenting. It’s several different jobs in one, without the satisfaction of getting paid and being appreciated, other than a quick and half-hearted “Thanks” from their kids.
Hipoglos obviously appeals to parents, mainly young parents which we know because of the resources Facebook provides us with. We appeal to these young parents, listed between the ages of 25 and 34 and are likely the parents of kids in their developmental stage, by posting articles and pictures that they can relate to as parents.
Because we want to relate to our audience, we use a little thing called–Say it with me—PERSPECTIVE. If you’re a 25-34-year-old parent, you’re likely dealing with the struggle of balancing work and home life (possibly even school life), effectively raising a kid, and figuring it out as you go along. You need all the help you can get.
Knowing this, we’ll post informative articles designed to help parents that are new to the whole How-do-I-Raise-My-Kids-Into-Not-Becoming-A-Serial-Killer thing.
Seeing as how they’re also stressed out, what with the whole raising kids thing I previously mentioned, we’ll also use humor as an escape from the real world. We’ll do this by using engaging posts like ‘CaptionThis’ with a funny picture, a ‘Fill-in-the-Blank’ with an engaging topic, or just a funny picture in the form of a meme.
NOTE: Memes can be funny, but please be sparing with them. It can get really tired, repetitive, and uninspired if you keep using them from an observer’s perspective. I’d limit them to once every two or three weeks.
4. Be inspirational!
It’s Monday and you probably don’t want to be at work. You know who else doesn’t want to be at work or school? Just about every other adult in the country.
Sunday and Monday mornings are your time to appeal to the tired weary masses. Sunday is a day synonymous with relaxation and kicking back, enjoying the fruits of your labor, and taking the time to do something you’ve been wanting to do all week but never had the time. Monday, however, is a day synonymous with drudgery, heavy eyelids, and longing for hazy memories from the previous weekend’s debauchery.
These are the days to inspire your audience. Users on Sunday want something to inspire them to appreciate the day, while users on Monday want something to inspire as motivation to drag themselves out of a heavy sleep. If you’ve ever woken up Monday morning with a surly disposition, I guarantee you the thought, “Why do I even bother?” has crossed your mind.
Serve as the reason why people do bother going into work and provide them with that reminder that what they begrudgingly do every Monday morning comes with a significant reason.
5. Stats are your Friend
Don’t simply rely on trial and error, and on-the-surface stats, to dictate what posts you should or shouldn’t be making.
If you’re investing money into targeting, take the time to create a report to find out which targets are worth investing in and which targets need to be excluded from future posts.
We’ll use a page we run as an example. After 20 posts, which is about less than two weeks worth because of the high frequency of posts that are created, we are already beginning to see a trend of targeting that is successful and targeting that yields little response.
From targeting ‘NBA’ twice, we received a combined 2,115 impressions, 123 engagements, a CPC (Cost per Click) between $0.01 and $0.02, 131 clicks, and an average CTR (Click-Through Rate) of 6.4%.
From targeting ‘Weird News’ four times, however, we only received a combined 904 impressions, 20 engagements, an average CPC of $0.21, 29 clicks, and an average CTR of 3.3%.
Side note: We also targeted ‘MLB’ and ‘NASCAR’ in two separate posts. The ‘MLB’ targeted post received 586 impressions, 59 engagements, a CPC of $0.02, 60 clicks, and a ridiculously high CTR of 10.3%, while the ‘NASCAR’ targeted post received 495 impressions, 15 engagements, a CPC of $0.07, 24 clicks, and a CTR of 4.9%.
Just from those six posts alone, we now recognize we need to target sports in general more, with possibly an emphasis on the NBA, and need to stray away from posts that would have us targeting ‘Weird News’.
Having a detailed, thorough report is significant in the success of your social media page. Without it, you are lost in wondering what works, which is both a waste of time and money, if you’re working for a client which you likely are.
Instead of wondering and continually using trial-and-error, create a report, use $1 to target each post, and record your results when the spending has run dry. Once all is said and done, Facebook will provide you with a thorough rundown of the stats you need to move forward.
