What is Social Media Advertising and How to Reach New Audiences with It [Easy, Follow-along Tutorial]

Right now, you may be thinking "what's the difference between normal social media posts versus social media advertising?" Well that's why I'm here to tell you all about social media advertising and why it's great to use for advertising your company's products or services to new and returning customers.

What is Social Media Advertising?

So what makes social media advertising different from normal advertising in the first place? To start off, when you make a normal post online, those posts usually only reach the audience you have that currently follow you online and it does not reach any new customers that you may be trying to reach out to. Social media advertising posts, however, are paid advertisement posts that not only reach out to the people that follow you or your company, but they also reach that part of the audience that is unaware of who or what your company is.

How Does Social Media Advertising Work?

There are five things to remember if you want to make sure your advertisement posts are successful.

1. Campaign Overview.

This includes making sure you have a campaign outline (the generic, but very important, details about your campaign: Name, purpose, goals) and your campaign's objectives (for example: "What are you trying to achieve through the campaign?").

2. Target Audience.

According to Toolbox.com, you need to be specific about your audience that you are making your advertisement posts for because each and every audience reacts differently towards the different types of content you post.

3. Campaign Creatives.

Another way of putting this is that campaign creatives are ad copies, what you would use for messaging, and visuals, which could be anything from images, gifs, and videos. Depending on which platform you decide to post your advertisements on, keep in mind that each and every platform not only has different guidelines, but also each one has a bigger, different target audience than the other. You might try and go one step further by creating a duplicate post but tweak it just a little bit to see how it will optimize its performance.

4. Social Media Platforms.

Speaking of social media platforms, each platform is designed to work differently from another. Obviously, the more popular platforms are YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, but they all serve different audience segments. Each platform will help you figure out what your budget will be for each advertisement campaign, what type of format you should choose for your ads, and it will also help you to tailor your campaign's message for every individual platform.

5. Campaign Budget and Success Metrics. 

It's good to know what you're spending your money on, especially if you'd like to know whether you should change anything. Any fees or expenses you make towards your ads should be kept separate from your actual budget (that is if you're working with an agency to do your advertisements instead of making them yourself.) The other thing to keep in mind is what your budget is for your advertisements. This number also includes any other amount of money that you have to pay the platform you're using just so they can keep on running your ad. It may take a while to figure out your budget for your ads, but Toolbox.com has made it easier for you to figure out those numbers. Here's their example:

"Let’s say you need to generate 20 leads through a lead generation campaign. Through research, you find out that the cost per lead (CPL) on Facebook is $10. So, the initial budget for the campaign would be $200. Considering the volatility of the bidding process, you can slightly increase the ad budget. As you execute the campaign, keep tweaking the bid to optimize the ad spend."

Best Practices for Social Media Advertising 

When starting out creating paid advertising like this, here are some best practices to keep in mind when putting together those ads:

1. Experiment on your Normal Content First.

Before you start making a paid post, try experimenting on your current content and see if you get any new reactions to it. If so, then I say that it'd be safe to go ahead and try it with paid advertising.

2. Getting Ultra-Specific with Audience Targeting. 

As creepy as this might sound, you can get very specific about your target audience and even target people based on their location, what type of content they watch or look at, and places they visit.

3. Create Multiple Ad Creatives. 

Don't just limit yourself to creating one advertisement layout because you couldn't choose one over the other. Go ahead and make as many as possible. That way, you can test out which ones work and which ones don't.

4. Design Attention-Grabbing Creatives. 

Make all of those creatives you just made eye-catching! Colors, icons, fonts, the list goes on! Customers will notice when something pops out and sticks out from the rest and that'll make them want to know more!

 

I hope all of this helps to teach you more about social media advertising and what the power of advertisement can do!

How to Create Strategic Social Content [Easy and Fun to Do!]

So, you want to start creating content, but you have no idea where to start or what to do. Well, you came to the right place! I will be teaching you the basics to creating a strategic social content plan and what you should and shouldn't do with your content.

What are My Goals?

You may already have your reason as to why you want to make content, but just in case, ask yourself, "What is it that you want from social media anyways?" Are you doing it because you are obligated to, or are you just doing it for fun like I do with my YouTube channel? For me, I feel like some people don't have a clear thought in mind on what they really want to make content on and they are just doing it because they feel like they have a responsibility to. Most of the time, however, I can tell that most people keep on doing what they love doing because it's fun! To reiterate again, make sure that whatever you're doing, only do it if you believe that you will have a blast doing it again and again!

Who is My Audience?

Once you figure out your goals that you came up with for your content, you need to figure out who your target audience is going to be. According to SproutSocial, only 55% of marketers, that's us, use social media data so that we can understand our target audience better. It might seem like a long and tedious thing to do, but in the long run it will definitely pay off because you will have a better idea as to what your audience pays attention to more and which types of social media platforms to use more than the others.

What are Metrics and How Do I Use Them?

Right now, you're probably wondering what I mean by metrics and what use you have for using them. It's relatively easy to figure out. Basically, you're paying attention to your content's reach, clicks, engagement, and hashtag performance. Reach is the amount of people that actually saw your content. Clicks are the number of clicks on your content itself. Engagement is the number of interactions with your content divided by the number of impressions. It's also a better way of seeing how your audience sees you and if they want to interact with your content.

Choosing My Content

There are many different types of content you can create to catch many different people's attention. There are blog posts, GIF images, photos, video clips, full videos, infographics, and many more. Currently, the most popular type of content that is out there is videos. According to HubSpot, 82% of internet video traffic currently makes up that much of the total consumer internet traffic this year. I'm not saying you can't make content with anything else other than video, but it might not get as much traffic as you would have originally liked. All in all, stick to making the type of content that you believe will work the best with your image in mind.

Timing is Everything!

The time of day and the day of the week are really important in figuring out when your target audience is online and using the internet the most. When you post your content online, you need to be ready to engage with your audience, so if you were to choose to upload content late at night, not only would that not be a very good time to post said content, but nobody would be ready to respond to anything either. The other thing you need to remember to do is if someone responds back to your online content, you need to respond back ASAP. Otherwise, they possibly won't believe that you are the best at what you do.

What's Next?

Now that you have figured out all of the previous sections I mentioned above, now is the time to look at what content is working, what content is not working, and lastly, how you will try to improve on what you can do better. This mainly wraps around your content that is performing very well and making any needed adjustments to other parts of your content that you know you could do better on or the content that didn't do so well , but you now know what you need to do to make it work and make it even better!

Thank you so much for reading this post, everyone! I hope this all helps you in figuring out what type of content you want to make and also how and where you're going to post it online.