How Can You Kickstart Your Social Media Advertising?

1.1 SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

The world of new media marketing

It’s become such a routine part of  how consumers interact with brands (as well as themselves) that there’s a legitimate danger to not using social media advertising.

Even as we speak, social advertising is growing in scope, capability, and reach, with every new person who signs up for Facebook, or likes a company’s page. And it's all for a fraction of the price compared to traditional advertising venues

What's the best way to go about starting a social media advertising campaign?  Which platforms are the best for social advertising?

Before we get to specifics, let's look at the broad strokes.

The three best places to set up social media ads are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. After the big three, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Snapchat offer some benefit to social advertising. Learn a bit more about how social media ads work:

But let’s focus on the top three social media advertising examples.

One thing to keep in mind for all three is the quality of your content. Posting relevant, exciting, and compelling videos and material is consistently the answer to how to advertise on social media.

It’s a non negotiable that your business needs social media advertising.

If you’re going to put in the time to generate and place paid ads on one of the big three platforms, it’s a doable leap to go the full monty and utilize paid social media advertising on all three.

Embracing the reach and scope of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter will, at the very least, increase brand awareness.

That increase could in turn lead to another drastic increase: Leads for sales teams. And therein lies the true benefit of social networks.

1.2 ADVERTISING ON FACEBOOK

Get your likes

There haven't been any Oscar-winning movies made about Twitter or Instagram.

Same goes for Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Myspace.

But there has been for Facebook. That's for good reason.

You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies - Congress included. But anyone looking to start a social media advertising campaign should know that Facebook has become THE social media advertising platform. 

Anyone looking to start a social media advertising campaign should know that Facebook has the most users and the most data.

And, importantly, Facebook has the highest reach.

So what does all this mean for the person looking at social media for the advertising possibilities? It means that Facebook has the most social media advertising effectiveness.

Facebook offers more advanced targeting than any other paid social media advertising platform. You can target by location, job description, interests, past activities and a wide range of others.

As far as the social media advertising costs for Facebook, the cost per click (CPC) averages about twenty-eight cents.

The cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) comes out to about $7.19.

But, by using Facebook ads to funnel consumers to a landing page, that twenty-eight cents can pay back in dividends depending on how well the clicks convert.

Which depends on how good the content is in the first place.

GOOD CONTENT → CLICKS → LANDING PAGE → CUSTOMERS

Creating great content is key to convince consumers to click. The more impressive the social media ads, the more likely a consumer will follow through on a call to action. We don't have a section on YouTube but generating content in its video platform is one of the best ways to get noticed and make money.

Whether you should hire a social media advertising agency to help create that astounding content is something we’ll discuss in a minute.

1.3  ADVERTISING ON INSTAGRAM

Tell your story

Because it was bought out by Facebook, social media advertising on Instagram tends to go hand-in-hand with its parent company.

But there’s an important difference…

Social advertising on Instagram has more engagement than Facebook and much more than Twitter.

Instagram is also younger than Facebook, popular with 18-39 year olds. This makes it a better place to connect to that highly desirable consumer demographic.

In an interesting twist in the relationship between social media and advertising, organic Instagram posts, ones that aren't paid social media, can't link to a specific page. But sponsored posts, or paid social media ads, can link to wherever you want them to go.

In this sense, paid social media advertising on Instagram actually has an advantage over organic posts because promoted posts can link to anything.

Buy tickets? Click.

Watch an extended trailer? Click.

You want to tap into Millennials? Double tap on their food pics.

This allows the users to have more direct engagement with your products by enticing them with a call-to-action (CTA) via your social network advertising.

Social network advertising will get people engaging directly with your product through a strong CTA.

As far the social media advertising costs on Instagram, you're looking at the same ballpark as Facebook.

Instagram comes out to $5 per thousand impressions compared to Facebook’s $7.19, potentially making it a better value if you can generate engagement.

While they both rely on stellar visuals to get good engagement, Instagram naturally tends to lean heavier on that than Facebook.

Consumers look for better aesthetics on Instagram — it is primarily a photo and video platform, after all. So if you're going to expect results out of your social media ads via Instagram, invest in good content. This can be generated by a social media advertising agency, if not in-house.

1.4  ADVERTISING ON TWITTER

Start a revolution

But, if you want to talk about increasing value with social advertising, you have to talk about Twitter.

How much does it cost to engage with your brand's audience on Twitter?

Nothing.

Even if you do pay for promoted Tweets or a promoted account, the social media advertising costs are still relatively low at $9 per thousand impressions. Clicks also cost about twenty-five cents each.

Still, with the amount of engagement available on Twitter it's considered a social media advertising platform with a lot more to give.

While content is always king on the internet, Twitter allows personality, and what the medical community calls a "bedside manner," to shine.

How well you handle engaging with consumers on a daily basis is, itself, a form of social advertising.

Does it help to have stellar images and great videos? Yes.

On Twitter, just like Facebook and Instagram, content is key. But on Twitter, the personality and quality of your consumer engagement — the words you use, your authentic human presence, your responsiveness to questions — holds even more sway.

The success of accounts such Wendy’s and Moonpie shows that having a personality worth following makes a difference.

Rather than playing by the same rules as everyone else on the internet, these two brands decided to create a social media voice that embraces the weirdness of the world wide web.

The companies’ social media advertising campaign isn’t afraid to stray from the fact that there’s a real human writing the Tweets. They actually embrace it.

That’s why social media advertising on Twitter can be slightly more nuanced than advertising on Facebook and Instagram.

Brands need to engage in order to increase followers, but they also need to pump out great content to justify the follow.

Creating successful branded content is not as easy as it seems.  Successful digital agencies must pitch to clients, putting together creative briefs with tools such as mood boards, shot list and budgets for the campaigns.  Take a look:

Even if you are a small business owner or a social media influencer looking to mount a successful campaign is important that you have everything you need to create and track your campaign and its’ effectiveness. StudioBinder production management software is a modern, all-in-one solution to ensuring that every support tool in your arsenal is in one place.  

You can create A/V scripts, shot lists and production calendars to track your campaigns from start to finish.

2.1 THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEnT

Learn the most important factor

Social network advertising is hugely valuable to any brand, and offers a number of avenues to pursue such a campaign.

But all of them require the same thing: Content.

And, even more importantly, that content needs to be good.

By using a three-pronged approach and taking the same social media ads and applying it to all platforms, you can ensure that your brand at least has a consistent voice and tone.

Additionally, it will create a standard of quality across all platforms with your social media ads.

However, you’ll need to make sure to tailor and tweak your ads to be most effective on each platform.

2.2   SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING AGENCY

Let professionals create the content

Not everyone knows how to write a script, work a camera, light a shoot, edit hours of footage, and compress the file into a format that can be easily uploaded to these platforms.

Furthermore, not everyone will be able to optimize and specify different forms of content for each social media ad.

That brings up the question we asked earlier:  

Should I hire a social media advertising agency?

If you have the budget, the answer is yes.

It may, in fact, pay for itself to invest in one of these agencies.

There are several key reasons to use a social media advertising agency rather than go it alone:

SKILL SET

The reason that most businesses go with a social media marketing agency is to get a team of professionals working on their brand.

EXPERTISE

There is a great wealth of skill sets at any agency and a larger number of individuals with vast experience.

PRODUCTIVITY

When you choose a social media marketing team, all of the resources you invest goes into the creation of our content. There is no learning curve to creating winning content.

NETWORK

Because digital marketing agencies have many more than one client usually, they have built up a network that could prove beneficial to your company or brand.

TOOLS

Agencies have tools and resources that are for industry veterans rather than upstarts.  In fact, when looking for new clients, these agencies often advertise using product or brand example which may include your company.

There are more reasons to give the social media advertising agency a try, but sometimes there are many more reasons for the small business to get their feet wet in the social media advertising arena first.

2.3 DO-IT-YOURSELF SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING

Create your own campaign

Sometimes a social media advertising agency may not be the best option when a company already has a number of capable creatives on staff.

With a little time, effort, and creativity, you can become your own social media advertising agency.

Rather than simple scheduling software, more and more brands are using a production management software like StudioBinder to take on their own social network advertising campaigns.

Actually, StudioBinder is used by a number of full-fledged social media advertising companies, as well as a lot of companies looking to handle social media themselves.

By owning your entire social media and advertising workflow, you not only keep it all in the family, so to speak, but you also have more direct control over your social media advertising costs.

It’s one thing to have the content, but to own it and create it puts more control in your hands with your own social media advertising campaign.

When it comes to social media advertising, there will always be the question of whether to use a social media advertising agency or leave the content creation in-house.

Every brand is different, and each project requires a different amount of resources.

But whether you're a small mom and pop shop or a Fortune 500 conglomerate, using a production management software will only streamline and make the process easier.

As far as the moral to this story, we’ll take the Field of Dreams of approach to social advertising and content:  If you create it, the leads will come.

UP NEXT

Digital advertising trends for 2019

Whether you’re going it alone or hiring a social media advertising agency, it is important to know what is catching eyes online . The landscape of the social media marketing is changing at a rapid pace and you need to keep up.  Find out what will be hot and not in our next article.

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