I wanted to do a quick post to answer one of the most frequently-asked questions at Bigar Creative. Our short answer: 3-5 times a week but there’s a lot more to consider! It’s always important to find the perfect balance of engaging with your audience without overwhelming them.
Let’s face it — the digital world is a visual world. Stop wasting your time on social media with posts that contain too much text and say it with a graphic! Some studies show that pictures get almost 50% more engagement than an all-text post alone. Best of all, you don’t need to be a graphic designer to create a visually-appealing post. Our top picks for user-friendly design applications/programs are Ripl & Canva. See some of our creations below:
Bigar Creative™ via Ripl App
Bigar Creative™ via Canva
Bigar Creative™ via Canva
Bigar Creative™ via Canva
You’ve probably already heard the news that Facebook has decreased the organic reach for pages (boo). For those of you who are unfamiliar with Facebook reach, in a nutshell, it is simply the number of unique people who have seen your content. Check out our post The Facebook ‘Free Lunch’ and we’ll explain it all. Keep in mind that Facebook considers your “reach” by determining your content’s appearance on news feeds- there is no guarantee that people saw or read your content. So, what does this mean for marketers? Simply put, you have to pay money to reach your audience. Fortunately, there are two easy and low-cost ways to reach more people on Facebook. You can create an advertisement or boost a current post on your news feed. Now, the big question remains, which should I choose? The general consensus is to review your goals before spending your ad dollars.
A post that has been boosted will appear higher up on news feeds, therefore, the fee you pay depends on how many people you want to reach with these posts. The best time to boost a post is when it helps promote a product or service offered by your business and when it encourages visits to your businesses website. Boosted posts are also a good option if the post spreads awareness of a time-sensitive campaign. Review your Facebook Insights information and boost a post that has been gaining a lot of popularity organically. You can boost a post for as low as $1.00 making this type of marketing/advertising VERY budget friendly.
If you choose to use Facebook Ads manager, you will have more options when it comes to targeting, pricing and bidding. Translation, you will have more control over who sees your ad as well as how you pay for it which stretches your ad dollar and creates a better ROI. It also means that creating successful Facebook ads can be more time consuming. Gather all of your marketing research about your target demographic and create a customized audience list for the ad.
Stay tuned for our next blog post, where we will dive deeper into the different features that are offered by both boosted posts and the Facebook Ads Manager.
In our last blog post we talked about the qualities that define good content. Now that we’re past the hard part, we want to ‘share’ some ways to find relevant content for your business. Pun intended
One of the objectives in managing a social media account is to consistently be a valuable resource to your followers. Always seek out the very best content for your audience, business and industry to help increase your brand awareness and visibility. Don’t always stress about creating your own content. There are plenty of ways to share quality content even if you’re not the author (just be sure to give proper credit).
Not sure where to start? Start big! Check out USA Today, CNN, or even The Huffington Post for some fun. Remember to leave your personal opinion(s) at home and don’t mix politics, religion, sex (insert any hot-button issue here) with your business posts. Unless these topics are part of your company’s mission statement and advocacy, don’t risk turning people away from your business by offending them with your opinion- that’s what your personal accounts are for!
Another helpful tip is to pay attention to things that are trending on social media outlets. Remember that Twitter and Instagram are much better sources for hash tag searches. Take the opportunity to incorporate a trending hashtag into your content to help gain brand visibility.
There are also useful tools called news aggregators that do a lot of the work for you! They sort through the latest news and divide it up based on the industry or niche you may be looking for. One of these sites is Alltop.com, with customizable results that are alphabetically organized by topic. Check out these similar sites that each have their own perks like SmartBrief.com, Inbound.org and stufftotweet.com.
Although we’re just skimming the surface, these resources are a great jumping off point to finding shareable content that is actually worthy of your page. Don’t forget to keep a healthy mix of content, some through resources and some that you’ve created. Remember that digital marketing is tricky because it can change by the minute. Don’t wait to share timely content because you might miss your only opportunity.
It’s 10:00 PM on a Monday night and you lie awake in bed scrolling through Facebook. You watch videos, like photos and comment on a friend’s status (we all have our routines). Before long your Facebook fun is interrupted by a targeted advertisement and, before you know it, you are redirected to an external website contemplating that sweater you didn’t buy last week…is it fate? As you can imagine, there’s a lot of time and money spent by large companies trying to better understand consumer habits. For those of us with less than a million dollar research budget, there are some great tools out there that can help you understand your audience behavior(s) and maximize your organic reach.
So, in a world where no one disconnects, use these tools and features to your advantage and maximize your organic reach. Have questions? Feel free to email us at nicole@bigarcreative.com.
