 The COVID-19 virus has disrupted life around the world and caused economic uncertainty. To help with today's environment, Facebook announced they're offering $100M in cash grants and ad credits for up to 30,000 eligible small businesses. They'll begin taking applications in the coming weeks.
If you're interested, you can sign up to receive more information when it becomes available: https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/grants
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 It’s no secret that social media platforms are popular. According to the Pew Research Center, over 3 billion people use social media each month (42% of the total global population!), and all age demographics within America have a healthy presence on social networks.  The most popular networks used in America are Facebook (60.6%), Instagram (37.4%), and Snapchat (30.9%). According to the research firm Comscore, young people spend the most time on Facebook in comparison to other platforms.  Because many people spend a lot of time on social media platforms, it makes sense for businesses to “follow the eyeballs” and have a presence there to drive awareness and conversions. However, many businesses are not effective at connecting with consumers according to social analytics firms:
To avoid these issues from occurring with your business, it’s crucial to have a strong social media marketing plan. Fortunately, that can be accomplished by following six simple steps. 1. Determine Your Goal The first thing you should do is ask yourself, “What do I want my efforts to produce?”. This may sound like a no-brainer, but many marketers skip this step and focus on the how they will act ("My social media goal is to be on Facebook"). Answering this question will allow you to focus on what you want to accomplish and give you direction on how to act ("My social media goal is to generate $100 in revenue per day from these networks"). 2. Define Your Metrics Next, prioritize the social media metrics that will allow you to determine how you are performing against your goal. Here are some figures to consider:
3. Identify Your Audience Social media platforms know a lot of information about their users (they literally know what a user “likes”). While this can be creepy, it works well for businesses because there are opportunities to do hyper-targeted posts and other ads. Define the core demographics for your target audience (age, gender, location, income, education, interests, and so on) so you can place your message in front of the right people. 4. Select Your Channel Coverage Does your audience live on Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? LinkedIn? Snapchat? Identify where they are so your business can form appropriate connections. Additionally, strongly consider using paid advertising options to increase your reach with your target audience. Organic reach on its own likely will not be enough. This is particularly true on Facebook as many posts from businesses had their reach reduced in order to make the experience more appealing for the platforms users. As a result this made appearing in a consumer’s newsfeed “pay to play”.  5. Produce Engaging Content
Here are some angles to consider based on the goal determined in the first step:
Also, consider what type of content format performs best. Do people respond well to a videos? What about your posts with prominent photos? 6. Track Your Efforts Finally, make sure you have a platform that is accurately collecting your data. This can be a publisher owned & operated tool, or it could be from a third-party (however, those can come at an additional cost and can be expensive). As you collect that data, assess what is (or isn’t) performing well, and figure out why something is performing the way that it is so you can make optimizations to further improve your performance against goal. Conclusion Social media will no doubt continue to play a significant role in our lives. Regardless how big or small your business is, know there are opportunities to engage with consumers within those platforms. Contact us today for a free consultation on how you can grow your performance through social media. |
