#SMX Liveblog: Paid Social Media Opportunities Including Facebook for Business #13C

SMX West’s Social Media Marketing Boot Camp continues on the topic of paid social — advertising and amplification, a critical tool in the social media marketing toolbox. Social media is a pay to play space for brands today, especially on Facebook where the News Feed algorithm can make it difficult for brand pages’ content to display even to followers without a money-backed boost. Presenter Lisa Buyer, author of “Social PR Secrets,” is this session’s boot camp instructor.

Updated March 14 to embed Lisa’s slide deck here:

Public relations and social advertising — we’re all trying to gain more visibility in the News Feed and it’s very competitive to get seen there. The lines between earned, paid and owned media are blurring.

Content is what matters — take your content and then amplify it so it gets in front of more people. Visuals are going to be an important part of any social media strategies.

• Social advertising is expected to hit $11 billion in revenues by 2017.
  Social ads work better on mobile than traditional.
• U.S. social mobile ad revenues approached $600 million in 2012, and are expected to grow to $2.2 billion by 2017.
• Start with goals of brand building (vs. direct response). Balance your expectations and figure out what you’re trying to achieve.

Why does paid social work?

• Microtargeting
• Personalization: Message can be controlled for the target audience
• Network: Each network offers different voice, audience, results, size
• Distribution
• Exposure: It’s an organic type of exposure that’s using paid to reach more
• Real time: Capitalize on current events and trends
• Speed: Jump into something immediately
• Lead generation: It’s possible on social but start by building the brand’s community
• Conversion: This has to be last on the list — and your expectations have to be realistic
• Mobile reach
• Viral aspect

Facebook for Business

This is the biggest network with the most opportunity. Flip side: it has the most opportunity to fail. It’s become harder and harder to reach your fans organically in the Facebook News Feed. Organic reach is down and it’s becoming a necessity to use ad options.

Watch the video on YouTube called “Facebook Fraud?” Then keep in mind that video addresses Facebook advertising from 2012 and a lot of ad types and features that didn’t exist before now give advertisers options.

All the listed options here did not exist in 2012.

Facebook won’t work if:

• You treat it like PPC
• Are you stuck in 2012?
• Conversions and short-term unrealistic goals
• Your ad manager is inexperienced
• You’re not testing
• You have low-quality followers
• Your content quality and quantity is off

Why Facebook Ads Work

• Custom targeting
• Remarketing
• Conversion tracking
• Branding
• High-quality traffic

Facebook Ads and Devices: She says that right-hand side ads generally perform the poorest.

• Engage with image ads. Drive awareness and engagement of your message with an image.
• Share messages with video ads.
• Social to store with Offer Ads. Drive people to your store with ads.
• Simple text-only Status Ads. This doesn’t often get as much engagement or awareness as ads including some kind of visual.
• Website Ads (Blog Content Ads) drive clicks to your website.
• Social to Mobile App Ads promote mobile apps.
• Logout Ads are an option for a slick presentation.

Try to avoid the tempting shortcuts that Facebook presents to you (like “Boost Post”). They’re very pricey and you can do better with the power editor.

Ad language to avoid includes foul language, drugs and alcohol. There’s a pretty stringent morality overview and Facebook will disapprove your ads.

Dark posts are unpublished posts on your Page but you select/target who sees it by paying for specific audiences.

As a traditional marketing tool you can workplace targeting of the media with an ad with news about your brand.

Custom Audiences let you build relationships. Advertisers find their existing audiences among people who are on Facebook. 6x return on ad spend when you create a custom audience from email addresses or phone numbers.

Lookalike Audiences are a sales dream. Lets you draw up your ideal customer and Facebook finds more people like that.

Website to News Feed Retargeting using Facebook Exchange (FBX)
1. Website visitor looks at a product on your site
2. Same user sees that product as an ad on Facebook.

Facebook Ads Manager

Managing spend, custom reports
See if you’re meeting your objectives

KPIs:

• Facebook Insights
• Referring Traffic
• Google Analytics Social Reporting
• Simply Measured

Twitter: The Real-Time Network

Faster way to reach a wider, engaged audience.

Why use Twitter Ads?

• Twitter is still the best real-time news network
• You can build audience and reach
• You can get better exposure than organic
• Lead generation option
• Media relations — journos and editors are checking out who your brand is on Twitter

Twitter Ads Overview:

• Promoted Accounts: A way to reach more followers if you’re trying to build your following target by geo or interest; only pay when someone follows you
• Promoted Trends
• Promoted Tweets: Possible use when you want people to see some piece of news or announcement; regular tweets with bonus of reaching current and potential followers you target; these tweets show up in Twitter Search
• Analytics

Pro tips for writing promoted tweets: Start organically; avoid optimizing direct response tweets with hashtags, mentions or images. Include a call to action. Include a relevant, compelling offer.

Types of targeting: usernames, similar usernames, keywords in tweets, geo, news headlines

Twitter Cards for images, photos and lead gen are an advanced Twitter ad option — don’t jump into it if you’re new but know it exists.

Best Practices for Twitter Paid

• Images are awesome and get 2x engagement but cost more
• Create a goal ahead of time
• Leave enough characters for retweets
• Monitor

LinkedIn: The Business Side of Social

Explore if you’re in the professional arena and B2B. Lead gen and brand awareness are good reasons to use LinkedIn social ads.

Ad formats: Text and Image ads (video ads or text only ads) and Sponsored Updates

Targeting: Geo, industry, groups, job title

Setup is pretty easy to figure out yourself. You’re looking at setting up your audience, message, budget and schedule.

Pro tips for creating and writing LinkedIn ads:
1. Must have a LinkedIn account.
2. Define your ideal customer.
3. Be sure to have a good landing page.
4. Keep testing and optimizing. Check out other LinkedIn ads.
5. Remember the image will be a thumbnail.

Measure results. Test headlines and ad variations.

CPCs start at around $2 and run up to $4 or $5 per click.

Up and Comers of Social Advertising

• Pinterest Promoted Pins
• Instagram paid ads: Sponsored labels
• Google+ Post Ads, similar to Facebook to hep you amplify content to News Feed

4 Metrics that Rock:
Conversation rate (i.e., comments per post)
Amplification rate (retweets/shares per post)
We’ll have to wait until Lisa chimes in or puts her slides online before this list is updated complete.

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.