Social media and advertising

Social media marketing

When we talk about social media marketing, we talk about using social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube… to connect with your audience, which in the long run results in more traffic to your website and increased sales. Of course, a good and useful presence of a company on a social network does not only mean creating a profile – the profile has to be strategically managed and active. This means constantly posting good content, connecting with your followers, analysing results, and, of course, advertising.

Seven pillars of social media marketing

1. STRATEGY
2. OVERVIEW OF TARGET AUDIENCE
3. OVERVIEW OF COMPETITION
4. CONTENT PLANNING AND PUBLISHING
5. ENGAGING WITH FOLLOWERS
6. ANALYSIS
7. ADVERTISING

1. STRATEGY

If you don’t know where to start, don’t worry. It will be easiest if you initially set achievable and reasonable goals regarding social media. Do you want to make additional profit with your presence on a platform? Excellent. Do you want to reach a specific number of followers? Reasonable. Regardless of your set goal, what matters most is that it is realistic. You can choose to increase the visibility of a brand or company, you can set the task of increasing your audience, or to get more clicks on your website. Once you set your goal, it is easier to achieve, as you know what you’re striving for.

2. OVERVIEW OF TARGET AUDIENCE

We highly recommend you never make quick conclusions on who is your potential customer and where they are located. Today, there are many analytical tools at your disposal, which you can use to determine exactly who you need to address with your posts on which social network. Instagram, for example, is mostly used by millennials, and LinkedIn by more educated individuals. The many tools also allow you to carefully study the structure of your followers and to determine how to properly address your audience, and on which platform it pays to invest the most energy and money.

3. OVERVIEW OF COMPETITION

Before you start creating content, take a good look at and analyse what your competition is doing on social media. You will find out what turned out to be a good tactic for your competition and what did not – based on what you find, you can refine your presentation. Never copy your competitors’ ideas. Think carefully about the essence of your brand, what you want it to reflect, how you differ from the competition. Be different, original and bold!

4. CONTENT PLANNING AND PUBLISHING

At this point, you probably already know which platforms you want to appear on, what strategy you will choose, and what your content will be.

After a quick look at social media, you have probably figured out yourself how important good content is to convince individuals to click that “Follow” button. But creating high-quality content can be more daunting task than you initially thought, and you can quickly run out of interesting ideas, inspiration, and even the will to have an active presence on a social network. To make it easier to maintain a high level of quality in your content, we suggest that you pre-determine the approximate days and content that you will share on that specific day. For example, on Mondays you can post inspirational thoughts, on Tuesdays you can post tips or instructions, on Wednesdays you can share content made by your followers, on Thursdays you can share behind-the-scenes content, and on Fridays you can have Q&A sessions with your customers. Of course, do not forget about actively engaging with your followers. Reply to their comments, like their posts, invite them to participate in your prize draws…

FACEBOOK has the most users by far, so it offers the best opportunities to connect with your ideal customers. As many as 900 thousand Slovenians use Facebook regularly (Statista, 2020). Considering that the average user spends about 40 minutes a day on the platform, there is a good chance that your presence on the network will result in the individual finding your Facebook page sooner or later. Here you can be very original with your posts, share blogs, photos, videos… And best of all, you can build your loyal follower base completely free of charge. Facebook also allows for highly detailed targeted advertising, making it a very popular marketing tool for advertising.

INSTAGRAM proves time and time again that a company’s presence on the platform is a great springboard for establishing ties with potential customers and increasing sales. In December 2019, Instagram already had more than half a million users in Slovenia, so you can be sure that potential customers are looking for you on the platform, and that your competition is already using this tool. You can also reach Instagram users through Facebook’s advertising platform, which means that you can precisely target your target audience with your ads.

Of course, Facebook and Instagram are not the only social networks worth your time. No matter which platform you choose to invest your energy in, make sure you stick to your chosen mode of visual communication when posting. Especially with Instagram, it is important that you stick to a certain theme, maintain a high level of photo quality, and post regularly.

When planning your posting, it is a good idea to check in advance the optimal times for posting on your social networks. There are many applications available that monitor your followers and thus provide you with accurate information. At the beginning, it will be enough to check the statistics available to you within the chosen social network.

5. ENGAGING WITH FOLLOWERS

Your followers expect you to be available to them, they want to be a part of your narrative, so it is important that you establish genuine relationships with them. As a brand, you can gain respect through social media with your presence and willingness to talk to your audience, so managing relationships on social media is important for all brands that want to increase awareness and recognition. Customers expect you to answer their questions within a maximum of four hours, so it is important that you actively use social media.

6. ANALYSIS

To find the best approach on social media for your brand, you will have to make some mistakes along the way. By tracking campaign and post metrics in real time, you can quickly figure out what works and what doesn’t. You will also know if your approach works at all, whether you reach more individuals than the previous month, or if people use your hashtag, if they tag you in posts. Every social network allows you to easily analyse your posts, followers… Of course, there are always paid tools that will give you a more accurate insight into the analytics of the selected profile.

7. ADVERTISING

Once you decide to give your social media profiles an extra push, it is a good idea to consider advertising. Aside from working with influencers and organising prize draws, this is the only real way to reach a wide audience. The social networks you want to advertise on allow you to pinpoint your target audience and to target individuals based on demographics, interests, place of residence, etc. We recommend you approach advertising systematically and consistently.

Facebook and Instagram allow you to design your advertising campaigns based on the marketing goals you want to meet. Primarily, you can choose between three goals: brand visibility, consideration users give to your brand, and increased conversions. Secondarily, Facebook allows you to choose a market target even more specifically (greater reach, video views, more clicks on your website, etc.). We highly recommend that you do not use the shortcut that Facebook calls the “PROMOTE” button, in your desire for greater visibility and higher profits. With this button, you only promote your post. It also does not allow optimisation, precise targeting of potential customers, strategic A/B tests, the choice of your ad placement, advanced ad scheduling, creating different types of ads, and doesn’t give you an accurate overview of campaigns and all metrics within campaigns. As you are probably also limited by the amount you are willing to spend on advertising, we are sure that you want to spend every euro wisely and as efficiently as possible. That is why we suggest that you create an advertising account and do all your advertising activities using that advertising account.