Paid social media advertising has become a powerful tool for businesses to reach and engage their target audiences effectively. However, maximizing return on investment (ROI) requires strategic planning, execution, and optimization. This article explores best practices and real-world case studies to help businesses leverage paid social media advertising for optimal ROI.
Set Clear Goals and KPIs:Define specific goals for your paid social media campaigns, whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, or boosting sales. Align key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, cost per acquisition (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS) with your campaign objectives.
Audience Targeting and Segmentation:Utilize advanced audience targeting capabilities offered by social media platforms to reach the right audience segments. Segment your audience based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and past interactions with your brand to deliver highly relevant and personalized ad experiences.
Compelling Ad Creatives and Messaging:Create visually appealing and compelling ad creatives that resonate with your target audience. Use high-quality images, videos, and ad copy that highlight your unique value proposition, benefits, and call-to-action (CTA). A/B test different ad variations to identify the most effective messaging and visuals.
Optimize for Mobile and User Experience:Given the prevalence of mobile usage, ensure that your paid social media ads are optimized for mobile devices. Use responsive design, clear CTAs, and fast-loading landing pages to provide a seamless user experience and drive conversions across devices.
Budget Management and Bidding Strategies:Allocate your ad budget effectively based on campaign objectives, audience size, and expected reach. Test different bidding strategies such as cost per click (CPC), cost per thousand impressions (CPM), or cost per action (CPA) to find the most cost-effective approach for your campaigns. Monitor budget pacing and adjust bids to maximize results within your budget constraints.
Continuous Monitoring and Optimization:Regularly monitor the performance of your paid social media campaigns using platform analytics and third-party tools. Analyze key metrics, identify trends, and make data-driven optimizations to improve campaign performance. Optimize ad targeting, creative elements, bidding strategies, and audience segmentation based on performance insights.
Integration with Conversion Tracking and Analytics:Implement conversion tracking pixels or tags on your website to measure the impact of paid social media ads on conversions and revenue. Leverage analytics tools such as Google Analytics to track user behavior, attribution paths, and ROI metrics across channels. Use data insights to optimize campaign strategies and investment allocation.
Best Practices Case Studies:Share real-world case studies or success stories that demonstrate effective use of paid social media advertising to achieve significant ROI improvements. Highlight strategies, tactics, and results achieved by businesses in various industries, showcasing best practices in action.
Conclusion: Paid social media advertising offers immense opportunities for businesses to drive targeted traffic, conversions, and revenue. By implementing best practices such as goal setting, audience targeting, compelling creatives, budget optimization, continuous monitoring, and data-driven optimization, businesses can maximize ROI and unlock the full potential of paid social media advertising in achieving their marketing objectives and driving business growth. Leveraging insights from case studies and industry benchmarks can further guide businesses in developing effective paid social media strategies that deliver measurable results and sustainable ROI over time.
Social media has come a long way since the early days of MySpace and Friendster. Over the years, social media platforms have become a vital part of businesses’ marketing strategies, allowing them to connect with their target audience in more ways than ever before. In this blog, we will explore the evolution of social media strategies from basic posting to advanced targeting.
Phase 1: Basic Posting
In the early days of social media, businesses simply used social media platforms as a way to post updates and share news about their company. There was little focus on engagement or building relationships with customers. The goal was simply to be present on social media and have a profile that potential customers could visit.
Phase 2: Building Communities
As social media became more popular, businesses began to realise the potential for building communities on social media platforms. They started to focus on creating engaging content that would attract followers and encourage them to interact with the brand. This phase marked the beginning of the importance of building a brand’s social media presence.
Phase 3: Paid Advertising
As social media platforms became more crowded and the competition for attention increased, businesses started to invest in paid advertising. This allowed them to reach a larger audience and target specific demographics. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all introduced advertising options for businesses to promote their brand.
Phase 4: Advanced Targeting
Today, social media strategies have evolved to a level where businesses can use advanced targeting to reach specific audiences. With tools such as Facebook Ads Manager and Twitter Ads, businesses can create highly targeted campaigns that reach users based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.
Social media platforms have also introduced tools that allow businesses to retarget users who have previously interacted with their brand. This means businesses can create highly personalised campaigns that are more likely to convert.
In conclusion, the evolution of social media strategies has come a long way since the early days of basic posting. Today, businesses can use advanced targeting to reach specific audiences, build communities, and create highly personalised campaigns. As social media continues to evolve, it’s important for businesses to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and strategies to ensure they stay ahead of the competition.
When it comes to social media, the brand name of Twitter is sure to pop up in your mind as a Twitter business page. And why should it not? As of today, there are over 303 million users posting around 330,000 tweets every minute.
That’s a massive number of engaged audience posting their ideas, complaints and searching for a solution for their problems. This presents a myriad of opportunities for businesses to reach out to potential customers as well as existing customers and ensure their brand’s name stays in their thoughts whenever they need to avail their products or services.
A lot of businesses are already successfully marketing their products & services on Twitter platform and reaping the lucrative benefits. In case you have not created a brand profile for your business its high time for you to take part in the action of Twitter marketing.
However, simply creating a business profile on the platform is not enough. There are certain elements that your business profile needs to have in order to make the most impact on your targetted audience. Now the great news is that in this article we’re going to be discussing the aspects that you can optimise for a powerful business profile on the Twitter platform,
So without further adieu Let’s get started Tips to Optimize a Twitter Business or Brand Profile
1) Carefully tailor your Twitter Bio
Your Twitter bio is your one opportunity to impress Twitter’s internet searcher and the visits to your profile in 160 characters or less. Utilize overly pertinent watchwords and hashtags.
While thinking about which hashtags to utilize know that the hashtags you use in your profile will be interactive and could likewise be an interruption from your profile.
On the off chance that somebody clicks through the hashtag be careful, you are not driving them to your rivals on the off chance that you are utilizing an industry hashtag.
2. Pin a Tweet to Your Profile
On the off chance that your Twitter picture resembles a magazine spread, pin that tweet as your highlighted story. Pinning a Tweet on your business profile is a perfect way to showcase be able to content.
Make sure your pinned tweets include solid visuals, a reasonable source of inspiration, significant keywords, vital hashtags and links to your site or blogs in your website.
3. Add a Header Image
Your header picture should be like a magazine spread. Change it routinely and utilize the space to exhibit your image. You get 1500×1500 pixels, so there’s significantly more space to play with contrasted with your profile picture!
Here are a couple of thoughts of what you include in your header picture:
Top-selling items
Team picture
Your store or office (if it looks impressive)
Business events
Whatever photographs you pick, make certain to improve all pictures by adding the picture record name with marked catchphrases to build your chances of being found in a picture search. This applies to your profile photograph as well.
4. Enable Your Twitter Inbox for Direct Messages
Every business owner should make their brand profile more approachable on Twitter. To do that you should optimise your accessibility, Switch the privacy off your direct messages.
How to do this you might ask?
Go to the Privacy and Safety section of your Twitter settings page.
Scroll down the page, and head into the direct message option, and check “Receive Direct Messages from anyone.”
5. Add a Location to Your Business Profile
In case, you are a local business, It’s best that you fill out the location part of your Twitter profile. Check QL Tech Twitter Profile. Using your location info Twitter’s algorithm can connect your content with other locally based audience.
6. Make Sure Your Tweets Are Publically viewable
This may appear glaringly evident, however, it should be stated that all your tweets are open. In the Privacy and Safety area inside your settings, ensure that the Tweet Privacy section is unchecked.
All organizations and brands ought to have open tweets that are publicly viewable with the goal that they will get found.
7. Direct traffic to a Specific website Page
Rather than sending all your incoming traffic to the traditional homepage, you think about directing them to specific pages that meet their interests or queries.
For instance, many of the audience are bloggers or journalists so it’s best to provide them with links to your blogs or business newsrooms.
Similarly, you can also provide them with links to your ebook downloads or subscription page. It all depends upon the kind of conversion your business is looking for. So In Social media marketing remember these steps to set up Twitter Business page.
8. Add a contextual Profile Image
Add a picture to your Twitter profile that defines your business in a nutshell.
Organizations and brands should utilize a variant of their logo that is effectively unmistakable and delegate of your image.
In the event that your logo has a great deal of content or doesn’t appear well in the little square for your profile picture, consider making an optional logo that will suit Twitter and other internet-based life profile pictures.
Consider shading, picture size, and how it will look from a cell phone, too.
And lastly…
Analysing what is important in Twitter is the most ideal approach to determine if your optimisation strategies are working for you. Benchmark your endeavours utilizing Twitter Analytics, Google Analytics, or tools, for example, Buffer, Hootsuite, or SproutSocial.
In case you need more help in setting up or running your business profile on Twitter then please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’ll try our best to help you out With Our Social Media Marketing Service in Perth
If you ask any online marketer about the most trending online content, then you’ll get only one answer. The way of the future content consumption is through videos. And when it comes to video marketing then there is no better channel than Youtube.
In fact recent according to research statistics by Cisco almost all the internet traffic will be through videos. Which is why you should seriously consider using Youtube video marketing for the brand.
Having said that, Youtube marketing does come with its own challenges. As of today, there are over 50 million content creators of Youtube, producing videos on an almost daily basis. And secondly, people aren’t huge fans marketing while watching video on his channel. So if your video content becomes overly salesy then you will definitely lose quite a few subscribers.
If you are in the process of setting up your Youtube marketing channel or planning to optimise your Youtube then you are at the right place. In this article, we’re going to discuss various strategies you can apply to skyrocket your Youtube marketing and create a niche for your brand in this competitive arena.
So Here We Go with YouTube Marketing
1) Let’s Kick-Off With Your Youtube Account
While creating the youtube channel for your business it’s highly advised that you do that using a Google brand account.
Starting off with the brand account has an advantage over the normal one as multiple authorised users can log in together.
Your brand’s Youtube channel has lots of elements that require monitoring so it would be better, that more than one of your resources coordinate with each other to run the channel.
2) Find Out About Your Audience
It’s marketing 101 to find out as much as you can about the people you’re planning to market to. Now the question is how Youtube video marketing channel can help you out with this?
With the help of Youtube’s analytics tab, you can get valuable info. about your audience demographics and user behaviour. When we say user behaviour we mean data such as time spent on your channel, most visited videos, engagement rate etc.
Using this data you can determine which of your videos are resonating with the public and which are not. This is perfect for optimising your Youtube marketing channel.
You can also gain qualitative data about the user’s perspective by reading their comments and interacting with them from the comment section.
3) Do Not Forget To Check Out What Your Competitors Are Doing
As we mentioned before Youtube marketing has become extremely competitive. So if you wish you wish to pull ahead quickly then its time to roll up your sleeves and start researching your competitors are running their channel.
Browse your competition and make notes about their video that are doing great. These videos will help you greatly while formulating your own Youtube marketing strategy.
By analysing the keywords your competitors are using and implementing them in your video descriptions you can boost your Youtube video search ranking.
If your competitors are posting their video links in your video’s comment section then Youtube gives you the option to block them.
4) Try Teaming Up With Influencer
Influencers are like knowledge expert on one or more topics. And they have a huge fan following on social media channels.
Join these influencers and gradually build relations with them. So you can ask them to talk about your Youtube channel in one of their videos.
Some of the big influencers might charge you a certain amount for the mention. But your channel can gain a lot of traction from this activity.
5) Curate Your Channel
Now that you have done the necessary research now optimise your channel so that more and more audience would subscribe to your Youtube marketing channel.
Here are some of the ways you can do that.
Use compelling thumbnails for your videos to attract the user’s attention.
Make sure that you have used appropriate keywords in your video title and description so that your videos gain in Youtube’s search ranking.
Create an exciting story for your brand’s description giving a clear message about your products or services as well as how your consumers will be benefited by them.
Compile similar video into sequential playlists so that users can easily find all the videos regarding the subject of their interest.
6) Schedule Your Posts
Don’t post your videos randomly rather publish them in a specific timely manner. So that your audience knows when to expect your videos.
Doing this manually can be tedious which is why it’s best practice to use scheduling tools like Buffer so that your videos would be posted automatically on the specified day and time. You can upload your YouTube videos in advance and cross-promote them on other social channels all from the same dashboard.
CONCLUSION
Videos are the future of consumption and you should start inculcating them in your business structure sooner rather than later. You can start with Youtube and then discover more channels as your video collection grows.
We hope you found our take on optimising you Youtube marketing useful and if you require any assistance in setting up or running your channel please feel free to contact us as a Youtube Marketing Agency and we would be happy to help you out.
It’s true that without marketing it becomes very hard for every entrepreneur to sell their products. It does not matter whether your business is small or big, digital marketing services like social media play a major role in every business aspect.
Have you ever thought about why marketing is so important for every service and product-based company? It is because whenever your business comes up with any new innovation, your customers are completely unaware of your latest version.
However, with the help of marketing tactics, you can spread awareness and people will come to know how your upcoming service or product will help them in improving their lives.
Usually, people connect their problems with the solutions that are available in the market. Because in today’s modern world, marketing strategies are completely different. Earlier, entrepreneurs used tactics like newspapers, pamphlets, etc for publication. But, these practices are not as effective as they used to be.
Nowadays marketing practices are implemented in accordance with the Inbound methodology which is far more effective. With the help of digital marketing, you can reach out to the audience that is living far away from your location.
The only thing required is the internet and at present, 70% of the world population spends most of their time surfing on the internet. More than half of those are always active on social media platforms.
Why social media will make you a marketing rockstar?
Well, social media is an integral part of digital marketing services especially in the awareness phase of customer’s lifecycle.
Social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc are widely used all around the world. Which is why marketing through social media platforms has become a trend.
These social platforms are completely free as they allow the audience to stay connected with the world.
Let’s go further and check out how to make your business popular on social media?
Choose social media platforms according to your business
It is necessary to choose the right social platform for your business before you get started with social media marketing. Not every social network will allow you to reach your goals. On every platform, you will find different kinds of audiences which are why choosing the right one is so important.
Facebook is the most popular and the biggest social platform with a huge user base of more than 2 billion. It is known to be the largest social network all around the world. Facebook has great marketing potential as it is accessed by every person who carries a smart device.
If your business is on a startup stage and if you have a certain budget for marketing then Facebook is the best social platform to choose for marketing. Facebook can be a perfect choice if your business foundation is based on B2C (Business to Consumer).
Instagram
Instagram is one of the most successful social platforms that follow the visual approach. According to the survey, it is been found that 60% of the audience are engaged through appealing aesthetics. This social platform is completely free to use for marketing. Free marketing involves organic marketing and it’s all about getting your customers to reach your content naturally.
Instagram can be your social network marketing platform if your ads are more visual-centric. Usually, people are more attracted to pictures and videos instead of reading long content. So, keeping these advantages in mind Instagram can help to build your brand name organically.
Twitter
Many of you may have gotten confused that “How Twitter can be used as a social marketing platform?”. To be very honest, it is the best social marketing platform for posting short and simple ads.
With the character limit of 280, you can directly provide the information that your audience requires. Twitter can easily raise awareness of your latest ones.
On Twitter, you will find the audience who likes to stay updated 24/7. This can be a better place for your ads to reach the right audience organically.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the world’s biggest career platform with a user count of more than 600 Million. With this social platform, you can directly reach your ideal customers through posting Dynamic Ads, Sponsored InMails, and LinkedIn Advertising.
You can even promote your brand name by creating your brand page using a LinkedIn business account. You can achieve high-quality leads as more than 400 Million users remain active through a day. It is a great social platform for B2B marketing.
Scheduled Posting For Consistent Results
It is a universal fact that quality always overcomes quantity. While posting on social media regularly, you will have to be careful that your content’s quality should remain consistent.
Most of the time it happens that when the quantity increases, quality decreases automatically. So, make sure your content stays informative for your audience even if you increase your content quantity.
For every audience, content quality is:
Content that connects with the audience problems
Provide a solution
It should be entertaining
Visual Impression
People are more attracted to pictures, videos and various types of visuals. These pictorial elements help them to understand things in a crystal clear manner. You can put your marketing efforts by publishing more and more visuals in your ads.
Rather than reading, your audience can define their requirements through pictures and videos. Also, they will easily understand the usage of your products and services.
Conclusion
Social media marketing has a huge potential in building your brand name bigger in the market. Being popular on social platforms will not only allow you to increase your sales ratio but will automatically build your strong customer base. Though, marketing through social media can be free as well as paid depending on the platform you choose.
For example, you can only perform paid marketing on Facebook but on other social platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc are completely free.
However, marketing through social media services does not uplift your business instantly. It requires time and a handful of marketing strategies to make your business popular on social media. But the long term benefits of steady social media engagements are immense.
Still finding yourself confused with social marketing platforms, consider connecting us @QLTechand clear out your doubts.
As you are aware that social marketing has become the most crucial part of every business to attract and engage customers. Which social platforms do you use for your business? Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or maybe LinkedIn may have brought you some lucrative benefits.
In case your business is more picturesque than the Pinterest platform will add spice to your business’s social marketing.
If you’re still not convinced then here are some key Pinterest Marketing statistics.
Pinterest has 291 million active users every month.
47% for millennials make the purchase on Pinterest.
There are more than 1.5 millions of business accounts on Pinterest and 75% of pins are saved from these business accounts.
60% of marketers believe that their leads and traffic increased by 28% through their Pinterest business account.
If your business’s social marketing is lacking behind in engaging your audience? Well, no worries as we are going to cover all the aspects to amplify your Pinterest social media marketing.
1) Let’s Start With Your Brand’s Pinterest Business Account
Now, the best part of Pinterest is that you can easily convert your personal account into a business account.
Well, creating a new Pinterest business account is quite a simple step. The integral section is your business bio that should be filled by appropriate keywords for your brand appearance.
Let’s go further and take a look at how you can get started with the Pinterest business profile?
Profile Customisation
What is a profile? A profile is a brief description of a person or an organisation that clearly portrays their characteristics to the viewers. A profile plays an important role as its a face through which a person or a business is known for publicly.
The best thing is that Pinterest is the only social platform in history that reached 10 million potential users rapidly in 2012. Any guess why?
It is because of the flexibility in Pinterest profile customisation. Still not clear then go further!
Boards Modification
First things first! The initial attraction can be your Pinterest board cover that should be visually brand-centric. Customised boards look more interactive and provide pinners something better to explore.
Try using your brand logo colours, fonts, and icons. With these elements, your audience can easily recognise your brand on other social platforms also.
Board Titles Alteration
Now the board titles! Being a marketer, we are quite aware that keywords play a huge role in marketing. Same you have to do here while customising your Pinterest board title name.
For better marketing results, you have to make SEO-friendly board titles that include product or service name of your brand. However, make sure that it remains short so that you get enough area for the board’s description to stick keywords.
You can take inspiration from our Pinterest business account that will provide you with an exact image of creating board titles.
Image optimisation
Images are the core of every Pinterest business account. That is why quality images are very important to be shown to your audience. Also, add those images which are optimal in size.
Below mentioned is the recommended image dimensions for Pinterest:
2:3 – 1:3.5 is the image aspect ratio.
600 pixels is the minimum width of the expanded pins.
Make sure to add at least one optimised image that exactly tells your audience what your blog is about.
2) It’s All About Your Website
Your business website is the primary foundation of your brand’s visibility on Search Engines. So, make sure to keep things easier for your website visitors. Optimise your website in such a way that your visitors can easily pin your content and increase its visibility.
Check out various simple ways to customise your Pinterest share button.
Rich Pins
Rich Pins provide additional information to your audience about your business services or products and help them in their buying decisions. All you need to do is simply enable them by integrating them into your website.
There are four types of Rich Pins that are mentioned below:
Recipe Pin: From the name, it’s quite understood that it is related to cooking. Yes, If your business is somewhat related to cooking recipes than Recipe Pins will provide information like cooking time, ingredients and serving sizes.’
Product Pin: It’s the best way to increase the shopping experience of your customers. Product Pin allows you to provide real-time information of the product like price, availability and a place to buy your product.
App Pin: It’s an essential pin for those business owners who have their own e-commerce or any other service app. App Pin will allow people to install your app directly from your Pinterest marketing page to their smartphones. However, there is only one drawback, for now, App Pin is only available on iOS
Article Pin: With the help of Article Pin, your audience can easily save those stories that matter to them. This pin shows information like author, story description and headline.
In case, your business is involved with eCommerce industry then you really need to know about “Shop The Look Pins”.
Shop The Look Pins
To upgrade the shopping experience, Shop The Look pins are the best for your Pinterest business account. It’s a buyable pin that allows you to integrate your eCommerce store with your brand’s Pinterest marketing page.
With this buyable pin, your customers can directly purchase your product from your Pinterest business page. All they have to do is click on “Add to bag” button and then check out on the same page.
This makes shopping easier and comfortable as your audience won’t have to leave your Pinterest page for this whole process.
3) Stay Active
Regular pinning should be scheduled at the appropriate period of time depending on when your audience is most active on social media. For more context, you can simply add descriptions as well as the hashtags to your Pinterest board pins.
For scheduling pins, you can use the following tool:
Tailwind
It is one of the best post scheduling tools for multiple social media platforms. Basically, Tailwind is the tool that a marketer requires to drive sales, traffic, and leads from their Pinterest business account. However, for Pinterest Tailwind hold an immense number of benefits.
It takes a lot of time to develop a pure content. And, for marketing, you will require bundles of content. Well, Tailwind allows you to overcome this challenge by offering a feature through which you can schedule other Pinterest user’s post for the desired time period.
Tailwind has its own analytics platform through which you can easily figure out your best performing content. Also, this way you can save your time because, with Tailwind analytics, you will know what type of content does your audience like.
Tailwind’s latest feature i.e., SmartLoop will allow you to automate your Pinterest marketing strategy. Through SmartLoop, you can automate pinning your content according to the season or any special event. It’s a unique feature that will make your Pinterest marketing easier.
There are many other essential features of Tailwind that you can explore here.
4) Work Analysis
After setting up your Pinterest business account, the only thing that is left is analysing your marketing tactics and optimising in accordance. Pinterest has its own analytic tool through which you can easily analyse your work.
Pinterest’s analytics provides information regarding the best-performing pins as well as the unique post pinned from your brand’s website. Though, it’s up to you which analytics tool you want to use, either Pinterest’s analytics or Tailwind Insights?
Conclusion
Well, now you are quite aware of the best Pinterest marketing practices to drive traffic to your content. Not only content, but Pinterest marketing is quite beneficial for your business as it can bring you a good number of leads. The more you get leads, the more can achieve sales and the more you can generate profit for your business.
Also, While marketing with Pinterest media, make sure to create a good combination of SEO tactics and Pinterest marketing strategies. Because this is how you will create effective content.
Therefore, if you need more information regarding Pinterest marketing then please feel free to contact us and we will be happy to help you out.
Social media marketing is the course of gaining website traffic or catching the attention of your target audience through social media sites. Social media is a powerful and influential place. If you follow the right tactics, you can not only earn engagement and increase followers but also generate leads and grow your revenue.
QL Tech Tip: If you devise your social media marketing strategy by keeping the social media trends in centric, you will surely come up with a winning strategy.
Social media marketing provides strong support to your advanced SEO efforts in increasing website traffic and boosting brand awareness.
In this blog, we will take you through the most anticipated FIVE social media marketing trends for the year 2018. In addition, this blog also comprehensively covers social media marketing tips and tricks on how to succeed in your digital marketing campaigns.
Social Media Marketing Trends and Tips
Peep into the upcoming trends that will be your secret sauce to social media marketing success
1. More preference to personalization
Social media is a crowded place. A lot many users post their content on lot many social media advertising platforms. It is, hence, a challenge for marketers to get noticed prominently. Here, personalization acts as a saviour.
Personalization helps to reach the correct audience and track their buying behaviour based on their search preferences. You can use social media marketing tools which allow you to incorporate personalized targeting feature. Post your content on social media in front of your high potential customers.
2. More attention to visual marketing
By 2019, global consumer Internet video traffic will account for 79% of all consumer Internet traffic
Approximately 80% of the consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. Video content is on its peak and it is not going anywhere soon. It emphasizes the need and upcoming trend of visual marketing.
On the other hand, live streaming versions are on spree. Be it Twitter Periscope, Facebook Live, Instagram Story, video sharing features of DubSmash and others, live feeds are getting way popular. Such videos can engage with your audience very well.
All you need here is powerful graphics which can fascinate your viewers.
If you rely on a traditional way of social media advertising, your brand will hardly survive in the highly intensified competition. Audience nowadays is more intelligent and aware of what they want, and probably from where.
Based on research, native ads are expected to reach more than $21 billion by 2018.
Native advertising is a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed. Along with the growing importance of native ads, native content will also grow.
Brands want their native advertising to look as similar as possible to the third-party site’s content.
4. More admiration of brand sponsorship by marketers
Brands are looking for various alternate means to reach their target markets. This is because traditional advertisements have reached their saturation level. This will shift the focus of marketers towards brand sponsorship, also known as advocate marketing.
QL Tech Tip: Popular brand advocacy tools are LinkedIn elevate, Klout, Ambassador, and Influitive.Most B2B marketers (89%) agree that customer testimonials are among the most effective content marketing tactics, and 88% cite case studies as well. www.marketingprofs.com
Brands will make efforts to activate micro-influencers such as employees, customers, partners, and others.
5. More focus on Marketing Automation
If you are in digital marketing, to sustain the intense competition, marketing automation is a must for you. The future of social media marketing in 2018 is hyper-focused on the context. To create these contextual experiences for users, social media marketers must realize the need for automation tools, especially marketing automation tools.
According to Marketo, 91% of users believe that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing across channels.
Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. Nucleus Research
Marketing automation will see an upward trend in the year 2018. Automation tools can help you in lead management, conversions, retention and feedback as well as provide insights for evaluation and future planning. The main purpose of using automation tools is to automate tasks that are monotonous and don’t require personal attention.
You need to formulate your social media marketing strategy by keeping these anticipated trends in the notice. If you are wondering how to do social media marketing, we have come up with social media tips and tricks.
Adhere to these top 10 social media marketing tips and tricks and maximize your ROI on social media
1. Formulate social media marketing policy
For being an active and influential social media marketer, you need to formulate your social media marketing policy.
QL Tech Tip: Create a plan strategy document (PSD) for all possible media, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus, and others.
Your PSD should precisely sketch the way of how to accomplish your goals. You can incorporate your content plan, scheduling of posts, target audience, etc under this document. Further, your policy should also include action points for the plan. All your efforts should be in line with your buyer persona.
2. Follow the action plan and monitor your activities
Only PSD will not help to boost your social media marketing, all you need is discipline and consistency. Whether you use one social media channel or multiple, you should use a social media management system. This will help you schedule your posts, know your analytics, and manage your repetitive tasks in a timely manner.
Once you know your best time to post, you can then use a tool like Buffer, Post Planner or Sprout Social – all these are excellent social media management tools. Usage of these tools can help you plan or schedule your posts at specific intervals. Such tools also help in spreading scheduled posts out to publish throughout the day and engagement time. Moreover, its analytics also provide a social media audit report. This report provides you with enough insights on the likes, shares, impression and engagement of your posts.
Most of the digital marketers make a mistake here. Once they share their blog or any business update, they keep waiting for someone to “like”, “comment”, “share”, or “retweet”.
Let’s be practical and accept that every person in the industry would be following a lot many people. Even after a refreshing feed for every five minutes, there are chances that your content gets lost and may not appear in the top of the feed. That’s why repost your posts. Schedule your posts wisely.QL Tech Tip: You can try out varied versions of your titles and images/ GIFs for the same blog post. It really helps!
4. Try A/B Testing for Ads
Among all social media networks, Facebook advertisements are the most popular. And this popularity is going to remain as is in the year 2018 too.
Now the question is how to ensure that your Facebook campaigns are up to the mark? Well, Facebook Ads A/B testing is the most effective way to successful campaigns. Its targeting options are robust.
Facebook will display your ad to the right audience only. A perfect ad can magically boost your ROI and radically increase the reach of your posts. To increase the likelihoods of your social media success, analyze the performance of your ads.
Pay special attention to your social media content. It is the online face of your brand. Keep it authentic, non-plagiarized, relevant and updated. Your images, links, and titles should be fresh, engaging, and intriguing for your readers.
A tool we found to be very nifty when it comes to posting evergreen content is Tailwind.
Use visual content as much as possible. Approximately 64% of the consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. As mentioned above, video content is at its peak and it is not going anywhere soon.
6. User-generated content
User-generated content (UGC) is the most trusted content by the users. It has more weight age than brand content. Your social media marketing activities should encourage your fans and followers to create such content.
The best example of UGC campaign was embarked by Coca-Cola on Instagram. They had used hashtag #ShareACoke and it has generated tons of UGC. All you need to do is create a buzz for your brand through various quizzes, contests, chats, puzzles or other tactics. Leverage the power of hashtags. Create unique hashtag for your brand.
Don’t just create content when it is time to post. Instead, prepare your social media content bank. Based on the recent trends and updates, you can make quality amendments in your content bank.QL Tech Tip: Create your content bank now, if you haven’t yet.
It should include blogs, articles, info graphs, tutorials, webinars, videos, eBooks, cheat sheets, templates, reports, case studies and others.
8. Make the most use of visual content
Did you know 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual? It taps into the intuitive psyche of your audience and motivates them to discover more about your brand.
Visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than the text.
3M Corporation
Visual content has the ability to present complex information in a quick and clear manner. Images, info graphs, videos, memes, presentations, and screenshots are some of the types of visual content. Visual content is easy to understand and handy to share. Your visual content will get more shares as compared to your textual content.
9. Explore the benefits of contests and promotions
People on social media love to interact. They enjoy participating in quizzes, contests and polls. Social media is a beautiful place for engagement. Try to get the attention by vote contest, photo contest, caption contest, and others to promote your brand.
If you promote any special offer, include discounts for your audience. It is an exceptional way to offer value through your social media channels and award people an incentive to keep on following you.
10. Keep an eye on your competitors
Sarcastic but true, competitors are real motivators. You should keep an eye on what and how they are doing on social media platforms. Notice their way of engagement, what they post, when they post, what is unique about them, etc. This will help you frame your marketing strategy in a much better and healthier way.
QL Tech Tip: Following your competitors does not mean that copy what they are doing. But it means to understand what is right and follow the best industry practices.
11. Stay updated with the industry trends
Last but not least; stay updated with what’s going on in the industry you serve. Industry trends can significantly impact your business and marketing strategy. If you identify the market trends early enough then it is easier to plan for changes. You can grow your business successfully. The best way is to subscribe to social media blogs to keep you aware of recent news, amendments, and advancements.
Conclusion
Social media is gaining huge traction for digital marketing. All you need to know about powerful and effective social media marketing is wrapped up in this blog, including trends, tips, tricks and strategies for social media agencies. Keep the latest and upcoming social media trends into notice and accordingly devise your social media marketing strategy.
Get started now with social media marketing that results in success to reach and engage your target market.
Social Media Marketing is the course of gaining website traffic or catching the attention of your target audience through social media sites. Social media is a powerful and influential place. If you follow the right tactics, you can not only earn engagement and increase followers but also generate leads and grow your revenue. If you devise your social media marketing strategy by keeping the social media trends in centric, you will surely come up with a winning strategy.
In this blog, we will take you through the most anticipated FIVE trends. Not only social media marketing trends but this blog also comprehensively covers social media marketing tips and tricks on how to succeed in your digital marketing campaigns. Social Media Marketing Trends and Tips
Lets us peep into the upcoming social media trends
More preference to personalization
Social media is a crowded place. A lot many users post their ads on a lot many social media advertising platforms. It is, hence, a challenge for marketers to get noticed prominently. Here, personalization acts as a saviour. Personalization helps to reach the correct audience and track their buying behaviour based on their search preferences.
You can use social media marketing tools which allow you to incorporate personalized targeting feature. Post your content on social media in front of your high potential customers. More attention to visual marketing
Approximately 64% of the consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. Video content is on its peak and it is not going anywhere soon. It emphasizes the need and upcoming trend of visual marketing. On the other hand, live streaming versions are on spree. Be it Twitter Periscope, Facebook Live, Instagram Story, video sharing features of DubSmash and others, live feeds are getting way popular. Such videos can engage with your audience very well. All you need here is powerful graphics which can fascinate your viewers. More expansion of native Content Promotion
If you rely on a traditional way of social media advertising, your brand will hardly survive in the highly intensified competition. Audience nowadays is more intelligent and aware of what they want, and probably from where. Based on research, native ads are expected to reach more than $20 billion by 2018. Native advertising is a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed. Along with the growing importance of native ads, native content will also grow
More admiration of brand sponsorship by marketers
Brands are looking for various alternate means to reach their target markets. This is because traditional advertisements have reached their saturation level. This will shift the focus of marketers towards brand sponsorship, also known as advocate marketing. Popular brand advocacy tools are LinkedIn elevate, Klout, and Influitive.
Most B2B marketers (89%) agree that customer testimonials are among the most effective content marketing tactics, and 88% cite case studies as well.
Brands will make efforts to activate micro-influencers such as employees, customers, partners, and others. More focus on Marketing Automation
If you are in digital marketing, to sustain the intense competition, marketing automation is a must for you. According to Marketo, 91% of users believe that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing across channels.
Marketing automation will see an upward trend in the year 2017. Automation tools can help you in lead management, conversions, retention and feedback as well as provide insights for evaluation and future planning. The main purpose of using these tools is to automate tasks that don’t require personal attention.
You need to formulate your social media marketing strategy by keeping these anticipated trends in the notice. If you are wondering how to do social media marketing, we have come up with social media tips and tricks. Adhere to these top 10 social media tips and tricks and maximize your success on social media
Formulate social media marketing policy
For being an active and influential social media marketer, you need to formulate your social media marketing policy. Create a plan strategy document (PSD) for all possible media, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus, and others. Your PSD should precisely sketch the way of how to accomplish your goals. You can incorporate your content plan, scheduling of posts, target audience, etc under this document. Utilize social media advertising system
Only PSD will not help to boost your social media marketing, all you need is discipline. Whether you use one social media channel or multiple, you should use a social media management system. This will help you schedule your posts, know your analytics, and manage your repetitive tasks in a timely manner.
Once you know your best time to post, you can then use a tool like Buffer, Post Planner or Sprout Social – both are excellent social media management tools. Usage of these tools can help you plan or schedule your posts at specific intervals. Such tools also help in spreading scheduled posts out to publish throughout the day and engagement time. Repost your posts
Most of the marketers make a mistake here.
Once they share their blog or update, they keep waiting for someone to “like”, “comment”, “share”, or “retweet”. Let’s be practical and accept that every person in the industry would be following a lot many people. Even after a refreshing feed for every five minutes, there are chances that your content gets lost and may not appear in the top of the feed. That’s why repost your posts. Schedule your posts wisely. You can try out varied versions of your titles for the same post. It really helps! Try A/B Testing for Ads
Facebook Ads A/B testing is the most effective way to successful campaigns. Its targeting options are robust. Facebook will display your ad to the right audience only. A perfect ad can magically boost your ROI and radically increase the reach of your posts. To increase the likelihoods of your social media success, analyze the performance of your ads. Concentrate on your social media content
Pay special attention to your social media content. It is the online face of your brand. Keep it authentic, non-plagiarized, relevant and updated. Your images, links, and titles should be fresh, engaging, and intriguing for your readers. A tool we found to be very nifty when it comes to posting evergreen content is Tailwind. Use visual content as much as possible. Approximately 64% of the consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. Video content is at its peak and it is not going anywhere soon. Make your content bank
Creative content creation
Don’t just create content when it is time to post. Instead, prepare your social media content bank. Based on the recent trends and updates, you can make quality amendments in your content bank. Create your content bank now, if you haven’t yet. It should include blogs, articles, info graphs, tutorials, webinars, videos, eBooks, cheat sheets, templates, reports, case studies and others. Make the most use of visual content
Did you know 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual? It taps into the intuitive psyche of your audience and motivates them to discover more about your brand.
Visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than the text.
3M Corporation
Visual content
Visual content has the ability to present complex information in a quick and clear manner. Images, info graphs, videos, memes, presentations, and screenshots are some of the types of visual content. Visual content is easy to understand and handy to share. Your visual content will get more shares as compared to your textual content. Explore the benefits of contests and promotions
People on social media love to interact. They enjoy participating in quizzes, contests and polls. Social media is a beautiful place for engagement. Try to get the attention by vote contest, photo contest, caption contest, and others to promote your brand. If you promote any special offer, include discounts for your audience. It is an exceptional way to offer value through your social media channels and award people an incentive to keep on following you. Keep an eye on your competitors
Sarcastic but true, competitors are real motivators. You should keep an eye on what and how they are doing on social media platforms. Notice their way of engagement, what they post, when they post, what is unique about them, etc. This will help you frame your marketing strategy in a much better and healthier way. Stay updated with the industry trends
Last but not the least;
stay updated with what’s going on in the industry you serve. Industry trends can significantly impact your business and marketing strategy. If you identify the market trends early enough then it is easier to plan for changes. You can grow your business successfully. The best way is to subscribe to social media blogs to keep you aware of recent news, amendments, and advancements.
Conclusion
Social media is gaining huge traction for digital marketing. All you need to know about powerful and effective social media marketing is wrapped up in this blog, including trends, tips, tricks and strategies for social media agencies. Keep the latest and upcoming social media trends into notice and accordingly devise your social media marketing strategy. Get started now to succeed at reaching and engaging your target market
Undoubtedly, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are the most receptive social media platforms for B2B. However, other platforms are also making their space in the field of digital marketing. They are, to name a few, Instagram, Pinterest, Evernote, Tumblr, Viber, YouTube, WeChat, Reddit, WhatsApp, and many others. All these are preferred for various marketing activities. Dig further to get handy tips on Instagram marketing.
Instagram Marketing Tips – a booming social media platform
Instagram (Instant Photo + Telegram) is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. Instagram is a great social media platform for online marketing since it is more popular on mobile. On the other hand, mobile is gaining huge toehold day by day by both users and search engines.
Instagram has a dedicated base of users and it provides better engagement as compared to other platforms. Also, put together a guide you the Instagram algorithm for the most possible followers and post engagement.
Audit term is not just restricted to the finance and accounting domain. It applies in each those sectors where functions have been carried out with the help of strategic decision and dedicated investments. Digital marketing is also not an exception here. As a digital marketer, with the help of social media audit, you need to evaluate each of the digital marketing activities to judge its performance and handle its areas of improvements.
Based on the results, corrective actions need to be taken from time to time to enhance performance and sustain competition. Along with search engine optimisation and pay-per-click, social media marketing is equally important to spread brand awareness and boost online presence. A social media audit evaluates the effectiveness and ROI of social media marketing activities.
What is a Social Media Audit?
Social media audit is a key ingredient of a social media marketing plan. It evaluates how well your current social media performance is, how it works for you, and how better you can explore it for business benefits.
Why you need Social Media Audit?
For any business that has a social media presence on one or multiple networks needs to conduct personal social media audit from time to time.
The fundamental purpose is:
to ensure that each of your social media profiles is on brand and functioning correctly
to make sure that you’re using the right channels for your brand
to identify and eliminate any inactive or abandoned accounts
to analyse how relevant your social media activities are on your marketing goals
A social media audit reflects a complete picture of your activities in the form of metrics such as engagement, impressions, likes, retweets, shares, etc. The contemporary approach also focuses on interactions, sentiments from engaged users, response rates, and response times.
How to Conduct a Social Media Audit?
Have you ever wondered why you are a member of various LinkedIn groups but not getting any engagement? You do share your blogs and posts in different Facebook groups but unable to churn likes on it? You have made your pinned post both aesthetic and valuable in the context of content but failed to earn impressions? Are you consistent with your posts and posts mix across all channels? Well, you can unpack all such answers if you conduct a social media audit with a correct approach.
You need to have analytics in place for all platforms. Make a discipline to maintain monthly post schedule. At the end of the month, when you pull your monthly data from analytics, you will get a list of each of the post along with the posted date, time, permalink, reach, engagement, likes, retweet/repost, share, mention, impression, etc.
As a social media marketer, you should focus on engagement and impression of your tweets. Then analyse top 10 or 20 posts based on the highest reach, engagement, and impression. Once you have your list of top posts ready, it will be easy for you to interpret what type of content is working well for you. You will also come to know the best time to post. Also, it will pave the smooth way to strengthen your A/B testing regarding timing, content, and images.
Focus points while conducting Social Media Audit
1. Analyse the quality of your engagements
How great is it to see so many unread notifications daily morning in each of your social networks? Yes, it gives immense satisfaction to realise that your profile and social presence have come into notice of others and they have preferred to interact with you.
However, have you ever verified those accounts that have liked, shared or ping you in one or other way? If they are from similar industry and have similar interest, keep them engaged and build online rapport with them. Vice-versa, if they have by chance come across your feed and do not relate to your industry, you no need to invest a dedicated time in keeping them active. Because one or other day they will either discontinue following you or stop posting on your feed. The reason is the difference between theirs and your areas of interest and goals of social media.
2. Identify and eliminate branding gaps
Whatever social media audit results you get based on the analysis, divide it into two areas from your social media marketing goals perspective, strong areas and areas of improvements. Have a consistent focus on your strengths and convert your weak points into manageable areas.
Your social media presence should spread your brand awareness. Each of your social profile should speak about your brand and if required, keep making improvements as and when required.
Try to grab the attention of your target audience with the help of posting curated content, tagging them, mentioning them, sharing relevant posts, and keeping the important post as a pinned post.
3. Keep a note of personal messages
Not everyone will post on your feed directly. Some may tag you, or some may send you a private message. Remember not all direct messages are auto-generated. Most of the social media marketers are aware of the annoyance that DM creates.
It is very likely that your DM is knocking the door of opportunities for you. Never ignore them. If found irrelevant, you may delay replying but do read them! Similarly, keep sending personalised messages to thank, congratulate or acknowledge the things which matter to you.
4. Review your posts
This though sounds pretty obvious is of utmost importance. Your social media profile is the face of your business. Neither you can fake anything there, nor can you post anything on your feed that can harm your brand image.
Study your audience and their tastes; accordingly, tailor your content to post. If they like visual content, have a more focus on videos, podcasts, infographics and images with little text.
Keep a note of your most engaged posts and analyse them to figure out what was the high point in it that has benefited you well. Similarly, have a look at all those posts that were right from your point of view but somehow failed to perform well on social networks. Compare the results and draw conclusions.
Social media is a very handy place for communication and brand promotion. So, carefully and enthusiastically keep walking ahead in your journey.
Here are some tips for social media audit for the TWO most popular platforms which we believe: Twitter and Facebook.QL Tech Tip: Make the use of social media automation tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, Post Planner, and others to schedule your posts so that you can reach the maximum audience when they are online. It will give you good results in your analytics.
Twitter Audit
Twitter is the most loved platform for users. It’s 140 character limit makes it more interesting. Furthermore, you can add images, links and Infographics to make it more interactive. Consequently, these attempts increase your post reach and network.According to Internet Live Stats, there are some 6,000 tweets sent per second on average, which translates to over 350,000 tweets per minute or about 500 million tweets per day.
Your social media audit for the Twitter platform should focus on:
Likes on your posts
Shares of your posts that can drive traffic to your website
Comments and interactions on your posts
Clicks and opens of your links and images
Video views
Number of followers
are they increasing, decreasing, or fluctuating consistency
are they relevant or fake
are they active on their feed
Number of followings – how many relevant people are you following
are you following the people that belong to your industry
are you following your dedicated followers
how many of your following falls under fake identities
what is the social authority of your following
what is the engagement level with and from following
Post reach
Number of mentions
Social authority
Twitteraudit.com tool is a handy tool that finds out your fake followers on Twitter
Twitter Analytics is the very first place to get an analysis of your monthly performance. You can also make use of various FREE and paid tools available. To name a few, they are:
Sprout social
Twitonomy
Twitter Counter
Moz Followerwonk
Tweepi
Fanpage Karma will analyse your and your competitors’ accounts across Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest.
Facebook Audit
According to the recent article of dreamgrow.com, Facebook has retained its dominant position among all social networking sites.
Considering the traffic Facebook can bring to your website, one should make the most use of it as a social media marketing platform. However, it is a crowded place, so you need to be active with your marketing skills. Paid advertisements work very well in case of Facebook. The Facebook audit will reveal how good your posts and ads are performing and what content suits best in front of what demography.
Facebook page audit is aimed to ensure that you are optimising your marketing efforts on Facebook. Like Twitter, Facebook also provides analytics on the same lines i.e. engagement, reach, impression, and others. Your social media audit for the Facebook Page should focus on:
Audience
are we posting in front of the right audience
are we posting the content which our audience wants
are we replying to each of our message and comments on our posts
Content
are we enough flexible in posting our content with respect to taste and timings of our target audience
what type of content is working well and why
what is the content mix we are posting and is it suffice based on competition and industry standards
Brand promotion
does our Facebook page, profile picture, and cover image provides all information which a user needs to know
are you reviewing your thumbnails which are in display for your audience
are we presenting our brand consistently
are we confusing our readers and users with brand identity since we have multiple Facebook pages for multiple goals
Facebook Analytics is the very first place to get an analysis of your monthly performance. Furthermore, there are various FREE and paid tools available, like:
QL Tech Tip: To boost engagement on Facebook, maximise the use of tab apps.
Closing thoughts
Here, we have tried to facilitate our readers by providing the most popular tools for Twitter Audit and Facebook Audit which every social media marketer wants. The importance of Social Media is undeniable, and so as social media marketing. And what’s the use of such marketing activities which we don’t measure to analyse the importance and effectiveness. Hence, social media audit is crucial. The topic of social media audit has very broad coverage. One blog is not enough to conclude on any results. Keep checking our resources section, there are many FREE resources lined up for you which will aid you in conducting your social media audit in line with your marketing goals.