The big difference between social media and other online advertising is sharing. Users’ love of divulging details about their personal and business lives sets it apart from email marketing and traditional display advertising. And leveraging what people share about themselves on social media can be very profitable.

In short, social media advertising helps you find new customers by using users’ own shared information to identify interest. Its tools let you target the right people before they even begin their online search for products or services – giving you advanced options for targeting and conversion tracking, plus the reach offered by social media’s presence on mobile devices.

Three key reasons for making social media part of your advertising strategy:

1. Targeting

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter enable you to target your advertising to potential customers using a remarkable level of demographic and psychographic data. From sign-up processes to users’ interactions on social networks, user-provided data gives you precise coordinates for targeting consumers and businesses.

Target what they do, not just who they are.

Social media is also about a users’ interaction with his or her community. This dynamic allows you to better understand who they are and what their trigger points might be – giving you powerful leverage when it comes to arousing interest in your brand or product.

The perfect application of one-to-one marketing science.

Based on the model of one-to-one peer relationships, social media platforms provide you the ultimate in opt-in advertising. You can target users with goods and services matching the needs and preferences they’ve shared. Even better, your ad campaigns can reflect sensitivity to users’ opt-out choices.

2. Reach

Social media is the most popular online activity and offers the potential to vastly extend the reach of your advertising. Three out of five Web requests go through social media, meaning 60% percent of all web traffic is social media based.

Perfect for the big swing to mobile advertising.

Marketing via smartphones is the single biggest wave in digital media advertising. It’s also a perfect native option, since mobile users check Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn multiple times a day.

Mobile ads claim the lion’s share of time spent on social media.

3. Cost Effectiveness

The targeting and tracking tools available can help you achieve very low Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) – the cost of actually obtaining a new customer. This means your pricing in terms of Cost Per Conversion, Cost Per Click and Cost Per Thousand Placement can be much more affordable if a lower CPA is factored into their costs.

Next up, 10 Best Practices. But first there’s one big thing to avoid:

Inappropriate Messaging
If your messaging is off, users will opt out of your ads, lowering your display ranking and hurting future campaigns. Worse, offend one user, and they’ll tell the whole community – killing your campaign and damaging your brand. And be aware that some communities are sensitive to what advertisers know about them. Ads that they feel violate their privacy will a raise red flag with your name on it.

10 Best practices across all platforms.

1. Set Goals and Metrics

First, define your campaign’s goal and then the action you want people to take in support of it. Are you looking for direct sales or leads? Do you want signups for your newsletter, or requests for a free sample? Think it through. Then decide the action most likely to support your goal.

Make use of the guidance provided by social media platforms for optimizing your ads to accomplish specific goals.

Metrics: Decide the level of response required to judge your campaign’s success. For example, if you’re going to tie revenue to workshop attendance, decide the dollar value of each signup and the total number of signups needed to be profitable. Also assign metrics to actions that have no near term monetary value, like website visits. Put a percentage on the boost in website traffic you want.

2. Create Lifetime and Daily Budgets

A Lifetime Budget lets you select an amount to spend over the entire span of a campaign. Once set, you can’t go over budget. If you forget, you can end up in a deep hole very fast as your ads cycle and recycle. A Daily Budget controls your spend per day. You stipulate how much you will spend on a daily basis and your ads will cease showing once you hit your daily budget cap.

3. Do Your Research

Regardless of what seems to be the best platform for your campaign, take the time to explore the relationships between the demographic and psychographic patterns of your audience. Don’t just assume Facebook is better for B2C or LinkedIn for B2B.

Example: If you are advertising shared business plane leases, research shows that people who are interested in private flight also tend to be interested in performance cars. So advertising to Facebook users who are into sports cars may be worth considering – instead of solely focusing on LinkedIn lists.

Always explore the relationships between the demographic and psychographic patterns of your audience. For example, people who are into flying tend also to be high performance car enthusiasts.

4. Be Consistent

Be sure that your social media campaigns align with your other advertising initiatives. Don’t bring up question marks in people’s minds by making your ads inconsistent with what you’re using for paid search, display advertising, billboards, etc.

5. Pop!

Social media advertising is much different from paid search – where people are actively looking for a solution like yours. So do whatever you can to give your ads some bite, some pop.

6. Align Targeting Options to Objectives

A big benefit of social media advertising comes from the wide range of targeting options the platforms can support. But be sure you’re matching your available targeting options with your advertising objectives.

7. Test and Retest

Constantly swap out ad versions showing different treatments of the same content. Use the better-performing versions to keep adding refinements and test them over the course of your campaign. It’s an ongoing cycle where you continually apply the lessons learned.

8. Schedule To Your Advantage

Schedule ads to match users’ schedules. Look at your target audience, what you’re promoting, and determine the times they’re likely to be on social media. Consider week-part targeting, too – that is, running your ads on particular weekdays, over weekends, etc.

9. Automate

Whenever you can, use your platform to automatically make optimization decisions based on ad performance. For instance, in Facebook you can set up a campaign stating a daily budget of $150 and it will automatically bid for you on either an impression or per-click basis to garner as many clicks as possible for your $150.

10. Repeat!

Gather data and set regular meetings to analyze results, go over the metrics, plan changes and decide how to implement them as your campaign moves forward. Repeat over and over to ensure the best bang for your social advertising buck.

John Thyfault

Laurie B. Beasley

The post Social Media Advertising: Driving Response from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.

Social media has quickly grown to become a major part of online marketing. In fact, 84% of B2B marketers report using social media in some form during their campaigns. Currently, Facebook remains the most popular site among social media users according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. LinkedIn is reported as the second most used social media site. Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter following behind. Developing an effective social media posting strategy is essential to your campaign’s success.

(http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/09/social-media-update-2014/)

With all these different social media sites competing for your potential client’s attention, it can be hard to plan an effective social media posting strategy. You, as a social media marketer should ask the following questions. When is the best time to post on each of the social media sites? Is there a ‘compromise time’ where one can optimally post on all the sites? If each site has a different optimal posting time, then how can a social media manager manage effectively manage their social media campaigns?

Your Social Media Posting Strategy: Optimal Posting Times

Facebook

Facebook is the largest social media site with over 936 million daily users worldwide. Surprisingly though, the number of user visits decrease significantly during the work week. Facebook get the largest amount of its user traffic during the weekend, with Sunday receiving the highest number of user visits. Facebook traffic is at its highest each day between 8 a.m.-9 a.m. and 5 p.m.-1 a.m. Posting on Facebook should be avoided between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. when user traffic is at its lowest. Timing is an important part of your social media posting strategy for Facebook and other social sites.

LinkedIn

Unlike most other social media sites, LinkedIn is geared toward the working professional rather than a personal profile. Because of this, most users log into the site and view content during business hours. The best days to post on LinkedIn are Tuesday through Thursday during the work hours of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Tuesday between 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. is the absolute best time to post out of the entire week, with the highest level of clicks and shares. Posting on LinkedIn should be avoided between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.. That is when the lowest amount of users are logged in.

Pinterest

From recipes and crafts to home décor and health tips, Pinterest is every millennial mother’s best friend. In fact, 65% of Pinterest users are women who have at least one child. Unsurprisingly, the best times to pin new content on Pinterest are either between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. or 8 p.m. and 1 a.m. during the week. This is when a majority of Pinterest users are more likely to not be preoccupied with work or with taking care of their family. During the weekends, however, this changes with Saturday morning having the highest level of traffic. This is most likely due to users having more time to browse and try out ideas found on the site.

(https://www.business2community.com/pinterest/best-time-days-pin-pinterest-01152667)

It is important to note that Pinterest users have a different viewing trend than found on other sites. According to user statistics, 52% of Pinterest users visit the site less than once per week. So it is most important that social media managers post often during prime viewing times throughout the week to better their chances of catching their audience while they are logged in.

Instagram

Instagram focuses more on image and video sharing than on worded posts, as Facebook and Twitter do. Businesses can post pictures of their products or snapshots of company events,and followers can leave comments under the images. According to a survey run by Latergramme, the best times to post on Instagram is 2 a.m. and 5 p.m. The 2 a.m. slot catches the late night teen and young adult crowd who may be up late with school assignments, while the 5 p.m. slot grabs the working users who may be finishing up or done with their work day.

(https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/25/get-instagram-likes_n_6751614.html)

Most Instagram users view content pretty regularly throughout the week with Wednesday being the most popular day, and Monday being the least popular day, by a small margin.

Twitter

Most Twitter users visit the site and engage with content before and during work or school hours. Usage drops off after the school and work day are over, at about 6pm. The best time to post and increase the likelihood of receiving retweets is between 12 p.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, with 5 p.m. having the highest number of active users and retweets.

(https://neilpatel.com/blog/science-of-social-timing/)

It is important to remember that a Tweet has an average shelf life of eight hours. Therefore it would be wise to plan to post more than one tweet, the recommend amount would be at least four, and stagger them throughout the day’s optimal posting times.

Google+

Google+ has been rapidly growing as a social media platform for the past few years. With the addition of communities and interactive posts, Google+ has become a site that is greatly focused on people who wish to communicate with like minded groups. Most of the users who visit Google+ log on during the work week between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. Posts made on Wednesdays at 9 a.m. are found to receive the largest amount of traffic out of the entire week.

Effective Social Media Management

As demonstrated by the above data, there is no one perfect ‘compromise time’ to post on all social media sites. Each site caters to a different demographic who will log on at different times depending on the content these sites offer. So how is an online marketer supposed to manage an effective social media posting strategy calendar? There are several tools available that do just that.

Some social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, have features built into the site that allow you to schedule your post. When you post from your profile page on Facebook, a small clock icon can be found on the bottom of your post window. This opens up tabs that allow you to set a date and time for your content to post. Twitter, on the other hand, allows marketers using their Twitter’s Ad Products to schedule their organic and promoted tweets from the blue tweet button.

Another option available to online marketers is to use online social media management programs. Such as Hootsuite, Latergramme, Followerwonk, or any others to manage and schedule all of their social media content. These programs can greatly complement your social media posting strategy.

* * The Author * *

This post was authored by Elizabeth A. Beasley, Account Manager, Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc.

Elizabeth Beasley serves as a social media manager at Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc www.BeasleyDirect.com.  Elizabeth manages new client on-boarding and accounts, social media, corporate presentations, corporate website, and database maintenance. She also serves as an account manager for the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California www.DMAnc.org, managing event logistics, registration and promotion. She holds a B.A. in Communications from National University.

The post How to Optimize Your Social Media Posting Strategy appeared first on Beasley Direct and Online Marketing.