Social Media Marketing
If you want to generate leads, create brand awareness, engage customers, distribute content, or announce new products, a strong social media presence can help. Learn how we can get your voice right and help you stand out from the competition.
How We Build an Effective Social Media Strategy
A social media strategy will keep your brand messaging compelling and consistent. Without a strategy, you are likely to end up with lackluster posting that reflects poorly on your brand. Here are the five steps to take to build a social media strategy.
1. Identify Business Objectives
Instead of reactive posting, or “winging it,” build a social media strategy based on your business objectives. Identify what you want to accomplish and then look at your current social presence. What are you doing that is getting you further toward your objectives and what is leading you farther away from them?
Business Objectives
Target Markets
Goals
Content
Measure
Content Schedule
A content schedule eases the stress of posting and helps you shift from reactive to proactive action. Plan your posts for the month and you’ll have a much easier time of it.
Whether you develop your own calendar or get assistance from a social media marketing services provider, you’ll want to schedule dynamic posts that alternate between relevant topics.
For example, 25% of your posting schedule may consist of posts that engage your audience. Another 25% may be content shared from other sources. Ten percent of your posts could promote your business, and 40% might include insights unique to your industry. Do your best to vary your posts so your audience can be delightfully surprised.
Branded Social Media Posts
Your social feeds should display your visual brand. When your audience scrolls through their feed, they will know a post is yours because it’s been custom designed with your brand colors and logo. Over time, they always recognize your posts through your unique visual branding. Your social media company can help you develop your visual brand. It’s one more way to keep your branding consistent and top of mind with your audience.
Paid Ads on Social Media
Each social site designs its algorithm so that users see content that’s on-trend and relevant to them. This means there is no guarantee that all (or even half) of your followers will see your posts. If you want to be sure that your content reaches your intended audience, you have to pay to advertise, or “boost,” your posts.
The question then becomes, how much should you pay to play? Determining a social media advertising budget can be challenging without the help of a social media marketing services provider. However, you can estimate a budget by understanding social advertising metrics and looking at your goals.
If your goal is to generate awareness, measure cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) because this metric gives insight into audience reach. Facebook considers any post that's at least 50% viewable on a device for 300 milliseconds an “impression.” According to AdStage, the median CPM on Facebook is $11.20.
If your goal is to drive traffic to your website, consider measuring cost-per-click (CPC). Different industries’ typical CPC varies greatly, most B2B companies pay $2.42 for a single click on Facebook, but the median cross-industry CPC on Facebook is 43 cents.
For example, if you wanted to drive 50 visitors to your site via Facebook, and you know the cross-industry median CPC on Facebook is $0.43, you would want to spend a little over $20.00 on the total campaign. If the campaign stretched over 14 days, you’d spend about $1.50 a day on that single campaign.
CPC and CPM vary between social platforms as well. The median CPC and CPM on Instagram are comparable to Facebook because Facebook owns both platforms, and the median cross-industry CPC on LinkedIn is $4.83, and median CPM is $7.13. Lastly, the median CPC on Pinterest is $1.50 and median CPM is $30.00.
Want help creating a paid social campaign? Contact us.
Social Media Channels
Social sites vary in purpose, posting format, and audience demographics. It’s important to understand the differences between the networks and choose the right ones for your business and tailor your content to each individual channel. As a social media marketing firm, we can bring you up to speed on the benefits of each channel and work with you to optimize your social media campaigns. Below are brief explanations of the audiences on each of the largest social networks.
According to Statista, men and women aged 25 to 34 are the largest groups of Facebook users with 12% being male and 13% female. Seventy-nine percent of social users under age 49 use Facebook and are most likely to live in urban areas.
Facebook is a versatile platform that accommodates a variety of post formats including status updates, images and video, and article links. Businesses use Facebook to post recent news coverage, images, and videos that showcase their products and share articles related to their company or industry.
Instagram is on the rise, as the number of Instagram users tripled from 2012 to 2019. Seventy-five percent of social users aged 18 and 24 use Instagram, compared to 57% of social users aged 25 and 29, and they are 12% more likely to be female than male.
The site’s strong visual focus makes Instagram a great platform to showcase your brand persona. Including posts that authentically display your company’s culture, products, and values give audience members a look inside your brand and help build strong customer relationships.
A little less than one-third of U.S. adults use LinkedIn, though that number is slightly higher for adults between ages 30 and 49, at 37%. The site is similar to Facebook in that users can post varying types of content from pictures and video to status updates, to article links, and even self-written blog articles. Unlike Facebook, however, LinkedIn is geared toward professionals seeking to network and secure new employment positions.
Companies use LinkedIn to connect with potential business customers by posting content that positions them as an authority in their field and showcases how their products or services enhance customers’ lives.
Pinterest users are almost three times more likely to be female than male. They may also have money to burn. Forty-one percent of social media users who earned $75,000 or more per year reportedly use Pinterest, regardless of gender, compared to 27% who earn between $30,000 and $74,999, and 18% who earn less than $30,000 per year.
Pinterest is also visually-oriented--posts can contain anything from exercise routines to wedding cakes. Businesses use Pinterest to link users to helpful information, ideas for their next big project, and of course, their own products.
What Happens When Social Media Takes A Back Seat
Well-executed social media requires consistency and dedication. It may seem like a quick fix to let your administrative assistant take on your social media efforts, but if they end up running extra errands instead of building your social presence, you aren’t just risking poor results. You are potentially diminishing your company’s reputation. Working with an agency that provides social media marketing services helps ensure your social presence stays consistent and focused on your target audience.
Social media requires sensitivity to your audiences’ viewpoints, fear, beliefs, and goals. An understanding of current events is also critical so that you don’t post something crass (however well-intentioned). Only an expert in social media marketing services who works in social media every day is qualified to handle your brand’s reputation.
Social Media Management Services Denver
We partner with companies to solve their problems, not just provide a service. We ask questions and listen so that we truly understand your marketing challenges. If we think we can help you, we’ll invite you to continue the conversation. If not, we will refer you to someone else.
Our culture is centered around providing value, so we only engage when we know we can deliver results. We work with companies who share our values, have a compatible culture, and with whom we can create productive collaborations. We constantly examine and reexamine if we are doing the right work for our clients and that can only happen in an environment where we know our clients are the right fit for our team. Sounds good?
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