Social Media Advertising…Simplified

From creating hashtags to developing an entire campaign, the world of social media can be quite confusing. As social media continues to redefine effective advertising strategy through its use of complex algorithms, it is more important than ever to stay up-to-date and in the know.

Although daunting at times, our blog aims to add simplicity to the world of social media and to your next big campaign. Below you’ll find six handy tips we use at Buzz when posting to social media.

Understand your strategy

First off, begin your planning by truly understanding your particular strategy and objective. It is important to map out your social media campaign’s primary objective before diving in head first. Understanding your objective will help you decide what platform or platforms to promote on, where you will spend your advertising dollars, and your overall prioritization of tasks. 

Choose your platform

Once you have your goals established, carefully select which social media platform you will target. When analyzing and selecting your platform, keep your target demographic in mind and particularly where you will have the best chance of reaching this audience. A great way to know which platform may work best is by simply looking at your competitors and seeing what has or has not worked for them. In addition, it is important to know which platform(s) perform well organically for you, meaning that you currently have an existing audience that engages in your posts regularly. An organically driven social media platform will help save you advertising dollars and extend your reach.

Focus on format

Next, make sure your ad format fits the social media platform you plan on utilizing. If you are promoting videos or images, YouTube or Instagram will most likely be your best bet, while the Twitter sphere is primarily based upon text.

Know your audience

If you’re looking further into depicting your audience, start by finding the middle ground of your audience.  Targeting your audience can be difficult and may take A/B testing to see results, especially while trying to make sure you maintain your brand voice and identity.   In order to define the middle group of your audience, you must know your core customers’ demographics.  Knowing these key demographics will allow you to test audience behavior within that specific group of people.  This can be based on their location, if they travel to your location, or whether they just have a general interest in your market. 

Capitalize on creative content

What do your ads look like?  Don’t jeopardize your targeted platform and demographic selection with unattractive creative content.  When posting and promoting on social platforms, it is important to ensure that your posts or images are not too wordy and have simple images.  By keeping your words nice and clean, typically in the center of your image, is what we have found to perform the best.  

Blend paid and organic

Another topic to touch on is to ensure that you blend your organic posts with your paid posts.  If a customer is browsing through Instagram and clicks on one of your paid ads that pops up, it is important that your homepage has a strong level of brand maintenance and identity throughout your other posts. 

By following our guidelines for social media advertising, you can feel confident in the social media world. For any assistance, please feel free to give Buzz Creative a call today at 563.258.7800 or email Lauren@thebuzzcompanies.com.