The social landscape changes weekly. Here’s how to keep your bearings.
Social media wasn’t born in 2004 when Facebook first opened its doors. That was back in 1997, with the launch of the site Six Degrees, based on the Kevin Bacon theory of interpersonal connection, which was followed by a rising tide of blogging sites through the early 2000s. But Facebook drove the revolution.
Now, as we approach 15 years in the Social Age, brands are still finding new ways to interact and engage on various platforms. Fortunately, we have figured a few things out. But you probably already know the basics. Instead, here are four expert-level tips to elevate your brand’s social presence from 101 to the graduate level.
Tip #1: Paid social advertising is most effective when it’s hyper-targeted.
Having a Facebook page is practically mandatory these days (although Elon Musk begs to differ), but the businesses who get the biggest return on investment, or ROI, from their Facebook accounts are those who use it to send extremely targeted messages to narrow audiences. In the past, advertisers were lucky if they had any access to niche audiences—they’d have to find a small custom publication or maybe an industry newsletter to sponsor. Today, you can target by location, interest, age, gender and a seemingly endless list of other demographics. This targeting ability gives businesses the opportunity to send the exact right message to the exact right person. You can find tons of examples of how proper targeting can lead to success on Facebook’s Success Stories page.
We’ve been talking about the next three tips on POV for months.
Tip #2: The majority of Facebook users watch videos with no sound.
This might not seem groundbreaking, but if you’re spending thousands of dollars to create exceptional video and not including text in them, they’re not being heard. There are two primary ways to solve this: with closed captioning or on-screen text. Discover the difference—and when to use each one.
Tip #3: Embrace the bleeding edge … but be smart about it.
One feature of Instagram that has seen huge leaps in adoption is the Story feature.
Tip #4: Do it live.
One of the easiest ways to set your brand apart from the crowd is by going Live on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. But if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.