Professional Social Media Management vs DIY (Do It Yourself)

To say that social media management is a new phenomenon would be a huge understatement. Consider the fact that 20 years ago, Facebook was virtually unheard of. The very concept of a "search engine" was new. And Google was still trying to decide what to call itself.  Back then, you couldn't even buy advertising on Facebook. And nobody was sure how to buy space on the Google search engine - or why.

But once it caught on, social media management has changed the entire business world. Now, if somebody wants to find out where they should buy a specific service or product, they Google it. The power that gives Google is extensive. But pair Google with various social platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn, and you have an unbeatable combination.

Reaching out to prospective customers is different than it used to be. Marketing used to be primarily a guessing game, and you didn't know if you had succeeded until after you spent your marketing budget. Now, if businesses want to reach out to their prospective customers, they use social media to build brand awareness and create a solid digital presence. While at the same time effectively gaining new clients through strong Facebook ads programs. And the best part is you can adjust these program as you go along. Long gone are the days of mailing coupons to everybody or purchasing ad space in magazines or newspapers. A lot of these newspapers don't even exist anymore.

Because of this big change in the marketing world, we have also seen a change in the personality of the marketing professionals. The marketing professionals of the past consisted of people that owned printing presses and television stations. They were producers of magazine ads, mailings, and TV/radio time. Only basic projects could be left up to do-it-yourselfers, and the bulk of advertising was left up to well-funded advertising professionals. 

But what about today? Can do-it-yourselfers effectively produce social media management while at the same time maintaining and growing brand awareness? The answer to that question is not a simple yes or no. To answer it, we need to talk about how to produce social media ads and what it takes to do social media management.

DIFFERENT ONLINE PLATFORMS

Social media management is the promotion of services and products through different online media platforms. This will include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, content on LinkedIn, Twitter advertising, and much more. Strictly speaking, Google is not a social media platform, but Google Ads is the number one advertising venue in the world. Google should always work hand-in-hand with any social media management program. Google Ads programs are not something we can ignore when we are talking about social media management.

Depending on your industry, you are usually working with the top five social media management platforms. They are Google (2 Billion users), Facebook (2.2 billion), Instagram (1 billion), LinkedIn (650 million), and Twitter (350 million). There are others, and some of them may be ideal for your industry. But for now, let's consider only these. And each one of these platforms has an entirely different type of user base and reaches out to its user base using different methods. 

GOOGLE ADS

This is the biggest- Google. And everybody knows Google from its insanely popular search engine. The Google search engine generates 94% of its revenue and is the world's most popular form of advertising. And here's an interesting fact, before Google delivers any search results, it takes into consideration 200 factors. And it does this in a fraction of a second.

For DIY advertisers, the process of buying Google ads for an ad program can be a challenge. This is because Google sells its advertising by auctioning different words or phrases. Participating in that auction takes some education and patience. As an advertiser, you will place bids on different words or phrases using online tools that Google provides. So, if I'm a chiropractor, and I wanted to appear at the top of the search page for "Chiropractors in Albany." I would need to go onto Google and place my order with a bid of, let's say, $1.00 per click. If I am the highest bidder, I will get that top position listing when someone searched for "Chiropractors in Albany," and every time someone clicked my ad, I would pay $1.00.

The actual process for purchasing Google Ads is more involved, but not extremely complex for someone bidding on a simple one-word auction. But when you add in the different options such as bidding on words vs phrases, targeting your prospect by the different targeting options, the timing of the ads, directing to a landing page, the analytics, and ROI, it then becomes very complicated to run Google Ad campaigns. It would even be much more complicated if this Google Ads purchase were part of a larger marketing program that included Facebook Ads, online reviews, and other ad spend. In this current business environment, you need a complete social media management program to compete.

FACEBOOK ADS

Facebook has a unique approach that matches the way they interact with their users. Because it uses a newsfeed for interacting with its users, the advertising method is to insert ads into different users' newsfeeds - and you get to designate the type of users. As you probably know, Facebook is free for regular users as well as for businesses. Anybody can get an account and post anything for their friends to see. And that's the catch - it's free to post as long as it's to "their friends." 

What Facebook Ads allow advertisers to do is to post on other people's newsfeed. With Facebook Ads, you are allowed to purchase space on other people's newsfeeds - and you get to decide what kind of people will see your ad. It's genius because Facebook knows everything about its users. Everything.

This is how you place a Facebook Ad. First, you create an ad that has video or pictures in the size that will fit on Facebook. Then, inside the Facebook Ads Manager, you target the type of customer you would like to see your ad. There are thousands of different options. For instance, if you wanted to show your ad to married couples that are between 50 and 60 years old, that live in Albany, NY, you can do that within the Facebook Ad Manager. Do you want to show your ad to horse lovers in New Hampshire? Not a problem. The Facebook Ads Manager can accommodate. In fact, when using Facebook Ads, there are many thousands of different specifications and characteristics you can choose from to finely tune who gets to see your ad. 

Another thing where Facebook Ads excels is allowing you to create different types of ad programs for different purposes or objectives. For example, there is an ad program that Facebook offers that is designed to bring visitors to your Facebook page. It's simple and effective. Then there are programs inside of Facebook Ad Manager, which are designed to collect information from the customer with a form for them to fill out. Instagram (owned by Facebook) has a similar approach, but the user base is very different, so some of the required formats of the ads are different. But basically, if you create the ad and if it falls within Facebook's ads guidelines, you can post it. And if your goal is very simple, so is the process. 

And the same goes for ads placed on LinkedIn. Used correctly, LinkedIn is incredibly effective for business-to-business marketing. However, if you want to run an effective business-to-business ad campaign on LinkedIn, it will probably include videos on YouTube and paid ads on Google. In today's market, running ads on a single platform just won't do it. 

So, what is the answer to our earlier question - can you do this yourself? The simple answer is yes, you can if your goals are very simple, and the ad program is very basic. Problems will arise if the ad program is complex or includes different social media platforms. 

When we run ad programs here at The Click Depot, we design the entire ad program with all the social platforms in mind before we place a single ad.  And because our ad programs include a combination of different social platforms as well as split-testing different ads creatives, the ROI is higher. We know that this is the only effective approach because it is the only one that covers the entire buying process. We have been very involved in social media management for years, and we are experts at it. Social media management is one of our specialties.

If you have decided that it is time for you to jump into the powerful world of social media management and you don't want to waste your time and money with false starts and ineffective campaigns, call one of our professionals at The Click Depot.

Social Media Engage - How To

Ten years ago, if you were to say the words "social media," people would look at you like you were talking another language. Since then, we have seen one of the most revolutionary changes in the history of marketing. So, what exactly is social media marketing, and how can businesses use it to grow their companies?

Everyone is familiar with the big platforms on social media. Those platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest.  Every one of these platforms has customers for your company, and every one of these platforms has a different form of engagement. And every one of them is a very powerful platform for marketing in today's economy. These social media platforms supply a marketing opportunity, the likes of which the world has never seen.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING vs. TRADITIONAL MARKETING

At the very foundation, social media marketing requires the same basic components as traditional marketing. We need to identify our prospects and bring them through the primary phases of their sales journey. With social media marketing, it's common to hear people talk about a sales funnel as the "new method" of bringing a total stranger into your company and making them a loyal customer. While the phrase "sales funnel" might be new, the concept is as old as business itself. It describes the process of making your prospect aware of your company, and then leading them through the stages of interest and research and finally to the buying phase. Do all these things correctly, and you have a loyal customer who will use the power of social media to be an advocate for your company.

The most significant change that has happened in marketing is because of social media. It has given the customers the ability to join and even control the conversation and communication. With traditional marketing, companies controlled the narrative. As marketers, we got to decide when to talk, and we decided what to say. If we wanted to tell the marketplace that our product is the best product "since sliced bread," that's what the customers heard. They could listen to our advertisements, or they could turn off the television.

Because of the structure of social media, this is no longer the case. Our market has tremendous power because they can now enter and even control the narrative. This newfound power changes everything for marketers of companies, both large and small. As marketers, we must engage with our customers in a two-way conversation. This new requirement doesn't mean that we give up on marketing. It just means that we need to learn new ways of engaging our market to tell them why they should become our customers.

EARNING LEADS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Companies have been using marketing for years to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to their brand, and realize higher sales and revenues. The biggest change in marketing now that we are working through social media is that we now can engage with our customers in a meaningful way. Now we can interact with our customers with a "non-salesy" approach without having to resort to the "hard sell." To effectively join in this type of sales through social media, here are a few things we need to get in order. 

CLAIM YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA BASE

Before you get started interacting with your potential customers on social media, you need to establish your social media base. By this, I mean your company's Facebook page, LinkedIn page, Instagram account, Twitter account, Google My Business account, as well as your local turf in any other social media platform in which you choose to participate.

While these platforms are free to use, you will need to invest resources into creating a well-thought-out profile and social presence. For example, a Facebook company page can be an excellent place to hold informative conversations about your products and services. A vibrant and lively Facebook company page will include interesting pictures and videos of your products, your staff, your office, and anything else that your viewers will find engaging and enjoyable. Facebook is a platform where people go to be entertained and to relax. Providing interesting and likable content will cause people to visit your page frequently. If you provide content that people will like and share with their friends, you will have created the base for a very productive marketing platform. 

You have this opportunity for all of the different social media platforms. But each of the social media platforms requires a different type of interaction, and they have a different type of customer. The users of the different social media platforms belong to that platform for different reasons. As I mentioned above, Facebook is a place where people go to be entertained and socialize. They want to go there to hang out and see what's new.

LinkedIn has a different structure entirely. The user base on the LinkedIn platform is there to do business. They are not on LinkedIn to be entertained or to socialize. To do effective marketing on the LinkedIn platform, an advertiser must provide useful content that pertains to getting business, doing your job well, or for getting a job. Facebook is a platform where you should create content that is funny or cute but placing content like that on LinkedIn would be disastrous. On the LinkedIn platform, you would do best by placing how-to content. Another type of content that does very well on LinkedIn is longer instructional or informational articles. Studies have shown that articles of 2,000+ words perform better on LinkedIn and get more "shares" than shorter articles.

While it takes some experience and know-how to engage the different platforms, with the right kind of content, the payoff is tremendous. What these social platforms have given to today's marketer, is a concentrated collection of easily targeted prospects. It has gathered them all in one place and has provided a way to access them. And these platforms are continually cataloging all of their users' activities. They also know their users' associates as well as their interests and buying habits. Never in the history of humanity has such a wealth of marketing information been available. 

HOW TO REACH OUT

As I mentioned before, one way to engage with your customers is to provide a venue for interesting conversation and interaction. But there is a much more proactive method of reaching your prospects. Each of these platforms offers paid advertising campaigns. Because they know so much about their users, we now can easily target the exact type of candidate that would be interested in our product. We can now run ad campaigns that will put our paid ads in front of our ideal customers on our customers' news feed. Let's say you are a marketer for a fishing equipment company on the coast of North Carolina.  On Facebook, you have the option of presenting your product to a very specific subset. For instance, you could target unmarried men between the ages of 25 and 50 years old, who live in specific zip codes around your company. You can even specify that they have particular hobbies or interests - such as fishing.

TESTING IS CHEAP

Another huge advantage that we have with social media marketing campaigns is that we get to test our advertising campaigns for almost nothing. For as little as $5 a day We can run a split-test marketing campaign. To do such a test, we would run a similar ad to the two different audiences and see which group responded best. Once we got a clear winner, we would scale up that ad to a larger winning audience with confidence because we had already tested the ad placement. Never in the history of marketing have we had so much power at our disposal. This type of market testing was not even remotely feasible with older, conventional marketing.

MOVING TARGET

The biggest challenge with social media marketing is that it creates a constantly changing landscape. A marketing program that performed very well only two years ago might completely fail today. For instance, video is extremely effective in advertisements today, but this is a relatively new development. Just two or three years ago, pictures in the ads were all the rage. And the ROI on those ads was very good. The Click Depot has been fully immersed in web development and social media marketing since Google was beginning to develop. When you are ready to test the very lucrative waters of social media marketing, contact the professionals at The Click Depot. We will design and run a full marketing campaign specifically designed for your company and your market.

Social Media and Your Business

Social media marketing is like traditional marketing, except on steroids. With social media marketing, all of your prospective customers are concentrated in a few social media platforms. A social media strategy will help you effectively engage these potential customers and turn them into real paying customers - and even future advocates for your business.

In order to do this effectively, you will need to do more than post a few things on Facebook or Instagram. You are going to need an effective social media strategy that combines different tried-and-true social media tactics. These tactics include strategies such as local SEO for your website. Facebook Ads with videos or slide shows, or LinkedIn how-to articles with specific targeted keywords. It might even include a Pinterest marketing program using effective pictures of your product or an Instagram advertising campaign with funny or silly posts that use "influencers" to pump up your product. Simply posting occasionally on Facebook or LinkedIn won't hurt your business, but it probably won't bring new customers either.

POWERFUL TOOLS AND STRATEGIES

To turn these unknown and unidentified people into enthusiastic customers and later, you must have an effective, well planned social media strategy. Fortunately, the tools that are available to help identify and reach your ideal customers are extremely powerful and provided by these platforms themselves. In fact, when you understand these tools and tactics fully, you will see that they are simply mind-blowing. And, over the last couple of decades of social media evolution, there have been certain marketing approaches that have risen above the others for different types of industries and marketing goals. 

DIFFERENT PLATFORMS, DIFFERENT STRATEGIES

The strategies for Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn all radically differ from each other. For instance, with Facebook, the marketing approach needs to be leaning toward the entertainment side of things with videos, slide shows, and engaging personal stories. People who are on Facebook are there during their free time, and they are looking to be entertained. Creative social campaigns such as an entertaining approach with videos, funny or touching stories, or pictures is the key to success on Facebook. However, on LinkedIn, this approach would be disastrous.

People are on LinkedIn for a different reason than Facebook. They are there to do business. LinkedIn is a place to meet other like-minded business people or learn things about how to operate your business. Using pictures and videos of kittens and puppies on LinkedIn could hurt your brand and drive away customers. This is true even though you may be talking to the exact same person as you did on Facebook. It is the same thing the other way around. On LinkedIn, instructional "How to" posts can be highly effective, and the length of the article needs to be longer, not shorter. Statistics show that LinkedIn articles of 1,500 - 2,000 words are the most shared by a 2-1 margin. But posting an article of that length on Facebook would be a total failure. With a long article like that on Facebook, you would not get a second glance.

Because these different platforms cater to people that have different goals, the marketing strategies and approaches need to be appropriate for each platform. Fortunately, we can use the characteristics of the various platforms in coordination with each other. There are very effective strategies for using multiple platforms simultaneously in a digital marketing program. For example, we can identify your ideal customer on Facebook, and then "remarket" to them on LinkedIn. Or the other way around. Using approaches like this, we can leverage the strengths of each different platform for different parts of our campaign.

TAILORED-MADE PROGRAMS

We know that there are no two businesses that are the same. Even businesses that offer the same products have different goals at different times. And so, it follows that no two social media marketing campaigns can be exactly the same. Fortunately, the variety and strength of the options that are available to us when using Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter are incredible in their reach and mind-boggling in the detailed knowledge of their user base.

Here at The Click Depot, we begin the process by consulting with your company to discover things such as - what marketing you have done in the past, who is your ideal customer, what is your current advertising ROI, as well as learn all about your products and services. We will also look at your current website and social media presence to understand your existing client base.

With this information, we will sit down with you to discuss what your strategy should be moving forward.  As previously stated, we have several strong social media platforms from which we can launch a great variety of campaigns. Some of these platforms could be of great benefit to your company, while others would simply be a waste of time and money. Armed with this information, we can create a digital marketing program that will increase your customer base with an excellent return on investment (ROI).

SOPHISTICATED PROGRAMS AND TECHNOLOGIES

If you were going to start running social media advertising programs ten years ago, it was a simple matter of placing ads and seeing results. Because the industry was new, most people in business didn't recognize the power that was available to them through these platforms. Also, the customers were new to social media as well. Fast forward to today, and we can see how very influential these platforms have become. They also have become very sophisticated, and the customers have become more sophisticated as well. And not only have the platforms developed over time, but there are new platforms that have joined the game. These platforms include names such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram.  Each of these platforms are important but using all these platforms together can be a game changer for your business.

At The Click Depot, we have years of experience designing and implementing social media marketing campaigns. We understand the strength of each platform, how to use them together, and which ones to avoid for certain industries.  Call us today and set up an appointment with one of our social media specialists to talk about our affordable social media marketing packages. We will design a program that is tailored to your industry and your situation.