With the rapid rise of social media, businesses are becoming increasingly more enabled to communicate with their consumer base. Also, this new age of marketing is faster, more efficient, and more impactful than ever before. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and a slew of others have been outfitted with highly powerful marketing tools for businesses and brands of all sizes. Today’s most successful advertising campaigns are regularly hosted on these sites.
However, just because content performs well on these platforms doesn’t mean posts to these sites will magically become more intriguing or gather more attention. The number one pitfall businesses fall into is believing there is some shortcut to making successful social media ad campaigns. In reality, there is only one answer: communicating with consumers.
Consider this. A brand reserves lots of resources on some stunning visuals, a celebrity guest, visibility on multiple platforms, and maybe even some kind of giveaway. Although all of these ideas are in line with proven methods to gather attention on social media, none of this effort bears fruit if the business is churning out content that has nothing to do with their audience.
Younger consumers, especially Gen Z, currently dominate social media viewership. Anything posted to these platforms is likely to get a lot of views just from the sheer amount of active users born after 1996. Businesses need to be especially careful to address the interests of their audience, especially the large number of Gen Zers among their consumers. Here are 5 bits of advice for running successful social media ad campaigns.
1. Communication First
Although businesses and brands may struggle to pinpoint exactly where their audience’s interests lie, there is a very simple solution to this problem: asking consumers directly. With embellished social media posts serving as the main communication between brands and consumers, businesses can easily forget that communicating with their audience is a much simpler affair.
Platforms like Facebook and Twitter allow for short messages and queries that can reach multitudes of users and gather lots of responses. And if businesses still feel the need to include visuals in their messages to consumers, most social media platform support and encourage the use of photo and video.
Establishing direct contact with consumers is not only a simple and efficient method of getting feedback, but it also shows audiences that brands are actively invested in their interests and strengthens that relationship.
2. Use Data Analytics
Although speaking to consumers almost always provides businesses with the information they need to curate their content for their specific audience, some businesses seek further information to optimize their marketing strategy. Speaking with consumers can identify key interests, but it does little to reveal the hidden statistics that marketing teams can use to adapt their strategies.
Luckily, there is a broad range of third-party applications that can help in this regard. These apps that provide data analytics offer a wealth of information on the inner workings of social media marketing strategies. By analyzing a business’s social media performance, these data analytics tools can identify optimal posting times, lucrative hashtags, topics to avoid and other tidbits of obscure data.
On Instagram, in particular, where many of these features come into play, businesses can increase their social media traffic exponentially with the use of Instagram analytics applications.
3. Purposeful Posting
After determining audience interests and hidden features through data analytics, businesses have everything they need to begin creating content relevant to their consumer base. However, several new issues can arise in the content creation phase with businesses that are ill-experienced in social media marketing. One of the biggest problems businesses have is posting content lacking a greater meaning.
Sure, brands can create some visuals with a connection to key audience interests and release these on their social media platforms, but failing to balance these themes with the values of their audience can lead to missed opportunities.
Businesses need to consider their posts in the context of current events, prevailing attitudes, brand hallmarks, and other significant factors to get the most out of their marketing strategies.
4. Consistency
With social media becoming such an integral part of everyday life, businesses need to be extra diligent to provide a steady stream of content for their audience.
Younger users, especially Gen Z’ers, are always checking social media and demand more and more consistent updates on their favorite brands, both because of the connectedness offered by social media and their inherently lower attention span. Businesses can make all the right decisions with regards to content creation, but can dissolve their following solely by releasing content inconsistently.
There is nothing more off-putting to users, especially younger audience members, than unexplained gaps and overall lack of content. Businesses who want to be successful on social media must always remember to stay consistent with their content if they want their audience’s support and attention.
5. Originality Above All
After following all of these steps, there is just one more consideration for businesses trying to make it on social media—originality. With the fast speeds of social media and the billions of prying eyes tuning into the continuous stream of content, it’s pretty easy to pick out thinly-veiled reposts, and no one likes such a blatant rip-off.
Some businesses may see the successful exploits of others and think taking a little inspiration couldn’t hurt. In reality, although a little similarity isn’t wrong, nothing escapes audience members, and similarities create associations; in the end, content is being recognized more for someone else’s creations, which stifles growth altogether.
The best decision businesses can make for their success is to plan and create content that is original, individual, and as unique of other influences as possible. It may be hard to refrain from drawing from others’ successes, but, in the end, originality pays off more for the business’s image among users and its potential growth.
