Social media marketing is the dominant marketing force in the complex, fast-paced and constantly evolving world of digital marketing. It makes total sense when you stop to think about it. Marketing is aimed at people, so where people are, that’s where the marketing should be. Ever wondered what it costs to advertise in Times Square? The answer is, a lot. The reason for that is that Times Square is a heavily populated part of the world, with millions of people streaming through it all the time. Well social media gives you that volume of people who are going to be exposed to the marketing but at a tiny fraction of the cost of one of those billboards. It’s just the marketing going where the people are.
So, as a social media marketer you have a few things to consider. The first is a platform, the second is strategy and the third is feedback. Platform refers to what social media path you will take. This is a very important one because, depending on what you choose, your whole approach will need to be different. It’s important that you remember that social media networks are distinct from one another, often in extremely noticeable ways. The strategy you adopt means how you are going to go about optimizing your user engagement metrics. Engagement metrics will be the thing that will indicate to you the success of your strategy, which is our third point, the feedback. Because, in social media marketing, it’s vital that you don’t simply put together a strategy and then leave it to run indefinitely. Things change, plans fail, you have to be on your toes ready to change direction at any given moment.
So, having said all this, let’s get down to the details. In terms of maximizing the Times Square effect, Facebook is a bit of a no brainer. Simply put, it’s the most used social network. It has excellent compatibility with a whole range of other programs and applications, as well as with all the hardware that you could possibly need to use. Engagement metrics for Facebook are what you want to be monitoring to see how effective your strategies are on the site, since user engagement is the name of the game. But what are some strategies for boosting user engagement? Without further ado, let’s get into the ins and outs of Facebook social media marketing.
Video Is King
There are only a few remaining social media platforms, like Pinterest for example, where this statement isn’t true. Moving image almost always trumps still image, and absolutely crushes text posts when it comes to user engagement metrics. The advancement of technology has meant that the act of uploading, sharing and viewing video is now as easy as it’s ever been, giving you a whole load of options. The actual content of the videos is entirely up to you, although it’s a good idea to avoid simply uploading advertisements. Play into the eye-catching factor of video as a medium and create a video filled with the sort of attention-receiving key concepts: faces, people, colors.
When uploading a video to Facebook it’s easy to miss things out. One thing you absolutely shouldn’t miss out are the subtitles, which should be in place on any video posted on social media. The point of this is to ensure that users can engage with the content even if they can’t listen to it at present, since that isn’t always an option for people. Whatever you end up producing, just make sure that when you think of Facebook content, you’re always considering video as a primary medium.
Show The World Some Personality
Facebook is an excellent marketing tool, with a whole range of possible functionality and a direct line into the personal feeds of many of your most high value targets in terms of potential sales. However, sometimes you have to just stop for a moment and think about where you are. You see, social media as a platform, also fosters a good deal of cynicism in regard to companies who have taken up residence on these sites. The reason is that there can be a sense of encroachment on sites which, ostensibly, are for real people to engage with one another, chat, discuss topics and sometimes share pictures of their cats. This isn’t an ostensibly corporate arena and it needs to be given the delicate respect that won’t scare people into thinking that you are there simply to harvest sales. You’ve got to convince the users that you are as at home on the site as they are.
The first step for that is to make sure that your Facebook behavior is administered by real people. There are more and more bots out there these days which can automate just about everything. Skip them on this one. Find a good social media manager who will know that posting on Facebook means garnering user engagement through friendly, personable behavior rather than through strict marketing schemes. If you toe this line, you should find that your user engagement metrics will show a great increase.
Analyze And Then Analyze Some More
Facebook social media marketing is an ongoing process. It’s not something where you can ever simply draw a line under it and consider it achieved. Part of that is to do with the fact that it runs on a posting system, so it’s impossible to stop anyway, since a stale Facebook page might as well not exist at all. But it’s similarly not acceptable to develop a formula which, even if it boosts your user engagement metrics for a while, you then leave in place non-stop. There are two reasons why you should always be keeping things fresh. The first reason is that users can spot these tactics. Facebook users are almost all there every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Corporate trends are easy to spot, even the most smartly optimized ones. When people start to get that sense that you are just repeating a process, they tune out and that cynicism I spoke about earlier comes back with a vengeance. The second reason is that you need to be constantly monitoring and adapting according to your results.
This is where the user engagement metric will be your leader. Even if the difference between a few posts is the smallest fluctuation in views and engagement it’s always worth testing it out to see if there is something that you could have done differently and trying to chisel away until you unlock the true potential of your Facebook posts. This sort of analysis can’t always be achieved by humans alone. Some of it will be obvious, but some of it will be greatly helped by the use of a third-party program that specializes in social media analytics.
Facebook Advertising Options
The great thing about Facebook as a social media marketing tool is that it has dual functionality from a company’s perspective. On the one hand you can have your page, with your wall allowing for regular posts, user engagement and all the other good stuff that we have already discussed. On the other hand, Facebook has its own explicit advertising system available for any company, even those without public Facebook pages and groups, to use to advertise to the
Facebook user populace.
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And, as you might imagine, Facebook have put together an amazing system for advertising, with so much flexibility and an incredible targeted marketing system. You can do a tiny amount of advertising to a very specific demographic and get results from it that are far, far more specific than your other options. But, by that same token you can do an expensive, expansive campaign targeting anyone anywhere. Facebook’s ability to create an advertising service that is as optimized as it is has really contributed to keeping its seat at the top of the marketing game. Companies of any size will be able to find any level of advertising that they could possibly want, in an intuitive, inexpensive way. Using the built-in advertising system is an amazing way to boost your profile, draw clicks and ultimately raise those user engagement metrics in the way that you most want.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Facebook is a really valuable tool for a digital marketing team. It has to be treated carefully because, as a social media platform, you can mess up badly. But in general you should find it very easy to get yourself in a position to begin to really boost your user engagement metrics.
trict marketing schemes. If you toe this line, you should find that your user engagement metrics will show a great increase.
