When diving into the realm of the online world, the two types of social media businesses can utilise are paid and organic. Both present a number of opportunities for businesses and learning how to utilise both will be highly beneficial for your business. Whilst paid and organic social media varies in a number of ways, what you decide to invest more time into will depend purely on your business’s overall goals. So what exactly will work best for your business? Continue reading to learn more. WHAT IS ORGANIC SOCIAL MEDIA? Organic social media is essentially free content which is shared across the social accounts of businesses. When you create content on your social pages, it’s often viewed by a number of your followers, the followers of those who reshare your content and those who may follow any of the hashtags you utilise in your posts. Organic social media is effective for businesses as they are able to develop a deeper, personified connection with their audience. When you gain exposure organically, your followers are more likely to trust your brand as you’re providing content for the sake of adding value to their lives not just trying to make a sale. WHAT IS PAID SOCIAL MEDIA? Paid social media is promoted with payment and helps businesses reach a wider audience beyond their existing audience. The content you create will become visible in the newsfeeds of those who fall within your targeted market. You can target those who may be interested in your products or services as well as other demographics including their location, age and those with similar interests to your business. Paid social media is an ideal way to obtain new followers within a shorter period of time. By using paid social media, you are guaranteed visibility depending on the amount of money you invest and which platform you advertise on. Paid social media is highly effective for those who want to obtain greater brand exposure, reaching as many people as possible. HOW TO INCORPORATE ORGANIC & PAID INTO YOUR STRATEGY With changes in algorithms being made more and more frequently, having your content reach a wider audience organically can be a difficult task. This is where paid social media can be very effective and assist your organic posts in obtaining a greater visibility. By combining both paid and organic social media you can obtain a greater understanding of your audience, grow your online presence and have both forms of social media support one another to provide you with the best results possible. TRACK ORGANIC POSTS TO UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE By analysing the metrics from your organic posts, you can obtain a better understand as to who you should target in your paid advertising campaigns. You can also gain an insight into which forms of content will work well for a campaign and what your target market will prefer to see. If you notice you have a post which has received a significant amount of organic engagement, use the same post as an ad and you’ll be likely to receive even greater engagement and click through rates. GROW YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE When you utilise both paid and organic social media tactics, you’re maximise the potential to gain more followers. Those who see your ads are likely to search your profile on further social media accounts and become more familiar with your brand, ultimately boosting your overall online presence. Both paid and organic social media work exceptionally well in conjunction with each other. Whilst you can still maintain an online presence with just one, you simply won’t achieve as great results as when both are combined. By utilising organic social media, you can understand more about your audience and further enhance your paid social media strategy. If you want to implement the ideal social media strategy, speak to our expert team at DGreat Solutions today to find out how we can help.
One of the most effective methods of Social Media marketing local businesses can utilise is Facebook ads. With its exceptional marketing capabilities, Facebook ads are the ideal way for local businesses to attract those within the community to support your business. Local businesses are often more conscious about the amount of money they invest into advertising and want to select the best method possible which provides the best return on investment. Facebook marketing has the ability to assist local businesses to promote their content and create a strong sense of brand awareness, driving lead generation. Are you a local business owner and want to learn how Facebook ads can benefit you? Continue reading to find out more. FACEBOOK ADS ARE MORE COST EFFECTIVE Implementing a Facebook ad strategy is one of the most cost-effective forms of advertising you can utilise as a local business. Having the ability to control your daily spend limit means you can closely monitor your spending and determine what best works for your business. This means businesses are able to try Facebook ads without outlaying a significant amount of money and learn about how to best target their desired audience. For new business owners, this is a great way to have your brand exposed to locals and increase your customer or client base. If you only have a small budget to spend on advertising, Facebook ads are the way to go and will provide you with the greatest results. ACCESS TO LOCATION TARGETING OPTIONS One of the greatest advantages of Facebook ads are its targeting options. As a local business, this is exactly what you need to reach your defined target audience and showcase your products or services. You can effectively reach those within a specific radius to your shopfront including your country, state, city and even your postcode with further defined categories such as their gender, age, occupation, income and more. By using this feature effectively, you can ensure your advertising budget is spent on attracting those who are actually interested in your products or services BUILD TRUST WITHIN THE LOCAL COMMUNITY By using Facebook ads, you can promote your brand and gain the trust of those within your local community. The more frequently people are exposed to your ads, the more they will become familiar with who you are and the services or products your business provides. When creating your Facebook ads, it’s important to demonstrate your brands visions and values so your community understands they can trust you to provide them with the best service. Consumers are more inclined now than ever to support local businesses, use this to your advantage to provide them with an insight as to why they should choose you. EDUCATE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE Finally, another benefit of Facebook ads for local businesses is you have access to a platform where you can educate your target audience. All businesses want to make sales, we need to in order to continue operating however in order to make those sales it’s important to educate your audience about your business. Facebook provides you with the option to share educational videos to demonstrate what your products or services are and how they can add value to the lives of your target audience. Think about what people need within your local community and how your business can assist, this will put you ahead of your competitors and show your target audience you aren’t just trying to sell. Local businesses are always on the lookout for the best ways to attract more clients or customers. As social media has progressed to be one of the most popular forms of marketing, we all spend so much time using it, it makes sense to promote your brand across the various platforms. For local businesses, in particular, Facebook ads are the most convenient and cost-effective ways to promote your business.
With over 690 million active monthly users, LinkedIn has grown to be the world’s largest professional social media platform. LinkedIn provides businesses with the opportunity to market their products and services and connect with other business professionals across the globe. With the introduction of the polls feature, you now have an additional way to delve deeper into your marketing insights. They can be created in either your personal or business account, group or event pages. LinkedIn polls are easy to create and are provided as an option when you start a new post. Simply add your question with up to four responses, set a time frame (between one day to two weeks) and let your audience select their answers accordingly. You can then track the responses received by your audience. LinkedIn Polls are a great tool for business owners to utilise and conduct beneficial market research. Continue reading to find out how your business can benefit from them. LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE By creating polls, you are able to learn more about your audience including their interests, hobbies or even their likes/dislikes. By asking a series of questions relating to their own tendencies, you can start to build a profile of your target audience and learn how to best capture their attention when creating promotional content. The more targeted content you can create, the better your conversion rates will be. OBTAIN FEEDBACK ON YOUR PRODUCTS OR SERVICES Polls are a quick and efficient way to receive feedback from your audience regarding your products or services. If you have recently launched something new, you are able to obtain a deeper insight into what people really think about it. Feedback is crucial for the development of your business and LinkedIn polls provide you with a simple way to obtain feedback from your audience, which isn’t time consuming or too complicated. IDENTIFY ANY PROBLEM AREAS When you are able to identify any problem areas your audience are constantly faced with, you are able to provide relevant solutions to their problems. Using polls to ask questions relating to issues your audience may face can assist your business greatly. You may identify one specific area your audience is struggling with, i.e. if you are a videographer one area your audience might struggle with is editing content. This could present you with an opportunity to educate your audience on how to edit content or promote your services to assist. UNDERSTAND THE KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR AUDIENCE If you are frequently creating content and not receiving any feedback or engagement, you could be sharing content which doesn’t necessarily appeal to your audience. LinkedIn polls can assist you in understanding where your audience stands in terms of their knowledge in your industry and to what capacity. You can ask your audience questions to cover various aspects of your services or products. By doing so, you can ensure you are creating content which actually provides value for your audience and isn’t too advanced or too basic for them to read. RESEARCH NEW PRODUCTS OR IDEAS Have you thought of a new business venture and are unsure whether or not it would appeal to your target market? Create a poll and ask your audience! By obtaining the feedback of your audience you are able to consider the opinions which matter the most – the opinions of your potential customers or clients. This could also present you with new opportunities which you may have not yet considered. Creating polls are an ideal way to plan ahead for your business and consider future endeavours. If you have a LinkedIn profile and want to learn more about your audience and how your business can benefit their needs, give the polls tool a try. By using polls frequently, you can develop your business and enhance your marketing strategy.
As much as we all love to utilise free advertising on social media, it can be challenging to obtain visibility. Your competition is much greater with organic advertising and essentially you need to work much harder to have your posts seen. Facebook ads are an ideal way to learn more about your target market and attract more leads to your business page. Businesses thrive from using Facebook due to its exceptional reach and targeting capabilities. We list below 5 ways of generating more leads using Facebook advertising. Targeted ads Facebook provides users with an extraordinary level of targeted marketing. Facebook Ads Manager enables businesses to create ad campaigns which target a variety of audiences based upon their marketing objectives. With the ability to target users based upon demographics such as their location, career, income, gender, age, and interests. This assists businesses to target a variety of audiences, test them, measure the results and determine which audience group generates the most leads. You also have the option to create a reach campaign, where you have the ability to target the maximum amount of people possible. Free promotions We all love receiving things for free, creating an ad which promotes a free item or service is an effective way to capture Facebook user’s attention and obtain more leads. When deciding what to offer your prospects for free, think about what your target audience would find useful. Think outside the box and be unique with your free promotion. Whether it be an e-book, consultation or free product to try, you want to use the free offer as an introduction to your products or services and prompt them to seek your assistance further. The aim is to demonstrate your expertise in your industry and how you differ from your competitors. Include a CTA (call to action) in your free promotion which prompts users to include their contact details. This will allow you to add them to your client database or email marketing platform to follow up with them in future. Video ads Facebook videos are highly effective, especially when used in ad campaigns. Video ads provide businesses with the opportunity to create informative and engaging content which encourages users to use your services or buy your products. It’s important to create high quality videos, including a CTA such as ‘call us today’ or ‘book a free consultation’. Mobile friendly videos generate higher engagement, so always remember to ensure your videos are optimised for mobile. Visual content is crucial when creating Facebook ads, 85% of videos watched by users, are viewed without sound. Consider having subtitles throughout your video ads to cater to this. Also keep your videos short and sweet, video ads under 60 seconds are ideal. Anything longer than this and it becomes harder to keep the attention of your viewers. SMS & Messenger Another tip for generating more leads is by incorporating SMS and Facebook Messenger into your ad strategy. Facebook provides businesses with the ability to have an auto responder. This improves your response rates overall and assists businesses to convert leads more frequently. Messenger and SMS have significantly high open rates as opposed to email. Messenger has 70% open rates and SMS even higher with 98%. You have a greater chance of conveying your indented message by utilising this technique. Once you have obtained the contact details of your prospects via your ads, you can use these details to alert users of special promotions or important updates via SMS and Messenger. Advertise on Instagram In case you are unaware, Facebook actually owns Instagram. This means you have the ability to use the same ads created in Facebook ads manager, to target those who fall within your target audience on Instagram. This provides you with another window of opportunity to target those who may be interested in your products or services who actually may not use Facebook, however, use Instagram. Instagram is a highly effective platform for social media marketing and one you should incorporate into your ads strategy in order to obtain more leads. Facebook advertising is a powerful way for businesses to promote their products or services and gain a significant amount of leads. Facebook’s targeting capabilities provide business owners with the potential to reach a significant number of prospects who would actually be interested in their business. Facebook has the highest number of active monthly users, compared with other social media platforms. This is why DGreat Solution recommends Facebook for businesses and marketers to invest in advertising campaigns.
Instagram now has over 800 million active users. It is unarguably one the most far reaching social media platforms you can get your hands on. Instagram has proven itself to be a great advertising platform for businesses and shows no signs of slowing down. eMarketer estimated the worldwide ad revenues to exceed $10 billion dollars by this year. This is quite an increase from just under $2 billion in 2016.If you’re not already using Instagram to increase the reach and build brand awareness, you’re missing out. Thankfully, its relatively easy to get your business up and running, you just need enough time and effort to implement a well thought out strategy. STUDY Your first step should be going out and finding other business similar to yours and studying what they are currently posting. Look at the colours, the type of imagery, the people in the photos, the location etc. Think about how it makes you feel when you see their content, what kind of emotion are they pulling from you, does it make you want to be a part of their culture?If yes, then model what they are doing. We aren’t saying to copying what they’re doing, but for now, write down things that you like and things that you don’t like. WHAT TO POST Now that you have some idea on what your competitors are posting and the angle they’re going for, it’s time to decide on what you want to start posting! This changes entirely on industry to industry and obviously I don’t know what kind of legal obligations you may have within yours. But, you want to be posting content that is; 1) Relative to your industry. 2) Speaks how you want your ideal customer to speak. And 3) Keeps existing and potential customers engaged with your brand. So hopefully you already know your ideal customer, or at least have some idea of who they are, what they do, where they hang out and what other kind of things they spend their money on. We have found that it is best to actually give this “ideal customer” a name, give them an outfit, hair style and friends. It might seem a bit odd, but it will help you think and realise who your target market it. And hey, doesn’t hurt to try. WHEN TO POST Instagram has changed its algorithms a lot in the recent years, to the point that it almost doesn’t matter ‘when’ you post, but more so ‘how often’ you post. Instagram favours regular, high quality and high engaged content. It is a general recommendation that you post at least once per day, twice if you feel the need to. And that’s just for the standard Instagram ‘feed’ post, Instagram stories is a whole other mind field. Now, I’m sure we all follow someone who feels the need to put every waking minute of their lives on the instagram stories, we are saying to do this. But, I believe business owners could take a leaf out of their book. Instagram stories are a great way to drive existing followers to your page and keep them in the loop! It won’t necessarily get your page discovered by new people (that’s what your Instagram Feed posts are for), but when they do land on your page and you have a story that’s been posted in the last 24 hours, they are liking to look. It helps keep your profile looking lively and active, and is just another great way to keep engagement up on your profile. Instagram the amazing platform Instagram is an amazing platform for building your brands image and communicating with your existing and potential customers. Try not to overthink your content, keep it lighthearted, keep up with current trends and keep your audience engaged.If you are struggling to come up with ideas or are just feeling overwhelmed with the road ahead for your business and instagram, get in contact with us today! We over free consultation calls, so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
If you or your business owner are still on the fence about social media advertising, here are some figures for you. More than two billion people use social media every day. The average person spends 135 minutes per day on social networks. Also, the number of small businesses advertising on Facebook has doubled to 50 million in recent months.So if you aren’t using social media to advertise your products or services, you are at risk of falling behind the competition. Paid social media is quite different from traditional outbound advertising. Big data and machine learning allows you to target, reach and ultimately find your audience with ease. Each platform has been designed to bring results for different aspects of your business, such as branding, lead generation, website traffic, etc.These platforms even give you native analytics for insights into how they recommend increasing the performance of your advertising campaign. Whether you’re looking for reach, engagement, or sales – the case for advertising on social media marketing has never been stronger.Here are seven benefits to using paid social media advertising for your small business:• Magnify your reach• Laser targeting• Branding• Content marketing push• On the fly reach• Crazy market insights 1. Advertising on social media gives your brand instant visibility. Posts from friends and family now receive priority, so organic reach for brands on social media is declining steadily – especially on Facebook. The sheer volume of posts makes connecting with your audience a statistical improbability.Due to Facebook’s change in their algorithms, posts from family and friends now receive priority over brands and pages. We aren’t saying posting on social media is pointless, but if you are expecting big results from it, you need to be able to put money behind it. Paid ads are guaranteed a place in the user’s feed, this is what we mean by “putting money behind it”. Despite the sheer volume of posts and ads being ran on social media platforms, everyone gets to be seen.To reach the most amount of people, you need to find out where your audience spends their time online. Refer to the image below from Sproutsocial.com, this graphic depicts the platforms that each different age group use the most. 2. Laser Targeting If you take anything away from this, its that Paid social media advertising allows you to reach the exact people you want! Each platform offers a ridiculous amount of targeting options. This goes beyond just basic demographics, some targeting options include; interests, hobbies, personality types, and many, many more.Look Alike Audience targeting is one of the most powerful options you can use, it allows you to take a list of people. Let’s say, your customer purchase list. You can upload this file to Facebook and tell it to find people that are most like these people, the people that have already purchased from you. You can create retargeting campaigns by simply installing the Facebook Pixel onto your website. This will track users that have visited, added to cart, purchased etc. It can even track the exact product they looked at, so you can do things like create dynamic product ads that feature the specific products that each individual customers looked at. 3. Branding Social media is one of the most cost effective ways to create exposure and buzz around your brand. If you business is appearing on social platforms regularly, people will start to recognise you. Once you become a familiar name with your audience you will start to increase credibility, drive engagement, and eventually purchasing behaviour.Statistics show that 80% of users follow at least one brand on Instagram, of that at least 30% of users have purchased a product they found on the Instagram platform. So, when you are trying to create awareness, create ads that are both informative and memorable. One of the many companies that has used social media branding to their advantage is Sydney recording studio. 4. Content Marketing Push Social media is an ideal way to distribute your best content.Social media has become the best way to get your best content out there. According to Sprout Social, nearly 75% of users follow a brand because they’re interested in its product or service. Keep your followers engaged with educational content that will transform them into ready to go buyers!Social media based ads will help drive website traffic, boost your social media engagement and, if done correctly, improve your ROI for content marketing. 5. On The Fly Reach The dispersion of social media advertising isunrivaled, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that 80% of time spent on social media is spent on a mobile device.When people want to know, find, or purchase something, the first thing we do is pull out our phones. Social media advertising campaigns will help you either get that persons attention in that moment, or hopefully, you will already have made an impression on them with a previous campaign and you will be the first business they come to. 6. Crazy Market Insights Facebook analytics platform is insane, you can find out just about every detail you could ever want or need. How did your audience react to your ad? Which platform worked best? Which ad graphic performed best? Did an image or video convert better? You can set up customised on the fly analytics that will give you live reports such as clicks, comments, website visits, conversion, any many, many more.The optimisation you can do with your ads is unparalleled with Facebook insights. Once you know your exact perfect performing audience, nothing can stop your growth. Why Pay for Social Media Advertising? Like we mentioned earlier, organic reach on social platforms is continuing to fall. Paid social advertising is what keeps your pages alive. As a result of this, businesses, small and large are having to change their social media strategies.You may have noticed some of the big fortune 500 companies showing up in your newsfeed this past couple year. The time is NOW if you want to even be able to afford using these platforms. As more and more companies with larger and larger budgets continue