Social Media

It’s the most wonderful (and stressful) time of the year! As businesses of all sizes gear up for the 2018 holiday season, it’s time to review your company’s social media strategy for the holiday season. What? Your business doesn’t have a plan? Don’t worry! It’s okay and it’s not too late to implement a social media plan. The social media elves at Efferent Media are here to deliver social strategies designed to bring in customers and grow your brand.

[Read more…] about It’s Not Too Late! 5 Social Media Strategies for the 2018 Holiday Season

Facebook marketing campaigns are more complicated than advertised. The plug-and-play interface in Facebook ads manager, which is designed to work without user intervention, makes running ads a quick and simple task, but understanding why or why not your ads are performing well is what makes or breaks a campaign. When it comes to running a successful marketing campaign, there are a few key metrics that you need to keep a close eye on. One of those metrics is relevance score.

Your first question may be, what is a relevance score? It’s a good question, as relevance score is not as common a metric as reach or cost-per-click. Relevance score is a rating from 1 to 10 that estimates how well your target audience is responding to your ad. These scores are calculated based on the positive or negative feedback your ads receive from the audience you are targeting in your campaign. The more positive feedback, the higher the relevance score. Seems simple enough right? Wrong! Relevance score is easily defined, but not very easily fixed if your score is low. Fixing a low relevance score is another issue which we will revisit a bit later.

Your next question may now be, why does my relevance score matter? Understanding relevance score can actually help advertisers in a number of ways such as:

• It can lower the cost of reaching your target audience. The higher your relevance score, the less it will cost to be delivered. Facebook’s ad delivery system is designed to show the right content to the right people, so ads with a high relevance score are recognized by the Facebook as a positive signal.
• It can help advertisers when A/B testing ads. When setting up A/B testing for your ads. which is a comparison of two different ads, the relevance score will allow you to tell which version of the ad is responding best with the audience. Testing different combinations of image and copy with different audiences will give you different relevance scores. The ad with the best score is the one you should be moving forward with.
• It can also be an indicator of when an ad should be optimized. When you start to notice a dip in your relevance score, you may want to start optimizing your campaign as the decline of your score is a good indicator that the creative, or the target audience needs to be tweaked.

This leads us back to the most important issue, how do you fix a low relevance score? The good news is, fixing a low score is not a lengthy process, and improvements can be seen in just a few days. Some actions you can take to improve your score are:

• Testing new creative and copy. It is possible that the supporting copy or headlines you are using are not resonating with the target audience. Try using different calls-to-action or more engaging supporting copy to try and raise your relevance score. If that does not work, you should check on the ad creative, which is the ad campaign as a whole. Do your images stand out? Do they invoke a thought or feeling in your audience? Evaluate your creative strategy and try something to new to help try and boost your relevance score.
• Tweak your target audience. If you make changes to your copy and creative with no luck in boosting your score, you may need to revert back to the roots of the campaign and tweak your audience. Make sure the audience you are targeting is not too specific or too broad. You may be reaching people who fit a similar demographic of who you wish to target but are not at all interested in the product or service you are targeting at them. This will result in negative feedback to your ad and a low relevance score.

Now that relevance score has been defined and understood, you can see why it has become such an important metric when measuring the success of a Facebook marketing campaign. If you are seeing low relevance scores, try and make the necessary changes mentioned to help boost those scores. If you are having any other troubles with your social media advertising efforts, don’t hesitate turning to the professionals for help. Efferent Media would love to take a look at your campaigns and help take your business to the next level.

Community Management has quickly become an integral part of fostering successful, long-term relationships with your customers and a wonderful marketing strategy. According to Forbes, a study done by Bain & Company, hows that increasing customer retention rates by just 5% through community management increases profit by 25% to 95%. In order for business growth to occur, you first need to establish a community through which your customers feel both heard and appreciated. Businesses are always looking for new customers, but should also be seeking to retain their current customers as well. The best way to achieve both of these goals is to develop engaged communities.

Building and Maintaining a Community

1. Discover Your Origins.

Why was this community formed? It is important to first discover what is bringing your customers together. It is crucial ftothe success of your business to understand what your members are looking to gain from your community. The best way to do this is through interaction. The foundation of a community manager’s job is social listening. It is important to ask your customers questions such as how they first heard of the community, what made them join, how they’re liking current dynamics, and what things would they like to learn or benefit from by being a member.

It is important to listen to the community members who have a lot to say. The most prominent opinions can point you in the direction of those who can be influencers and advocate for your brand. Other important voices are the ones that have been in the community the longest. These are the community members from whom you’ll gather the most insight in regard to how your business used to be, versus how it is now. This is important in order to retain your customers.

2. Find Your Tone and Voice.

The next important step is placing yourself within your community. It is the role of a community manager to direct the tone and voice of your community. The tone should certainly reflect your company’s goals and values, but does not necessarily need to hold the tone of a corporate website. It is ok to let loose and have fun. You want your community to feel like they have a personal relationship with you and that they’re talking to a real person who understands their needs and concerns, not a robot. Relating to your community on a personal level will ensure long term success.

3. Find The Right Platforms.

There are many different social media platforms to choose from, all of which have different capabilities, so it is all about figuring out which platforms are the best for the goals of your company. Once you understand the needs of your community, it will be easier to choose the platforms which you should integrate. Facebook is great for one on one, personal conversations. Instagram is practical for graphic heavy posts to display visual content to your customers. Twitter is ideal for sharing information quickly and encouraging back and forth conversation. At the end of the day, whichever platforms you choose for your business, it is very important to track your metrics which will show which platforms are working best and which content resonates most with your community!

4. Encourage Relationships Between Members.

This is all about getting the conversations flowing between your community members. To be effective at this, you need to model the behavior you want others in your community to display. The main goal is to have your community members feel like they’re being acknowledged. This means always making sure you are available not only when they have positive things to say, but also responding to the negative. It is important when you see your community members helping each other out to acknowledge this as well. Even something as simple as “We love seeing our community sticking together” goes a long way. This reinforces the sense of community and will further assist in establishing connections.

5. Watch Your Competition.

By always keeping a close eye on your competition, you’ll be better able to provide more resources to your community. To ensure you’re offering services that are unique, be sure to look at what you offer compared to what your competitors are offering. Watching your competitor’s communities can also be very beneficial in regard to finding new ideas for your own business. By paying attention to the things a competitor’s community says is not working for them, you will be able to stay a step ahead and implement a stronger community on your end.

A community will flourish when community managers are engaged. Following these steps will help build a strong foundation for your business to succeed. By not only listening to, but responding to and appreciating what your community has to say, you will foster long term relationships and loyalty with your customers.

Learn more about Efferent Media’s Community Management and how we can help build a community and foster long-term relationships with you and your customers.

Are you not seeing the engagement numbers you’d hoped for after putting your business on Facebook? If you’re aiming to catapult your brand awareness and increase the likes, comments and shares on your page, attracting the attention of your target audiences can be difficult.

Facebook algorithms are constantly changing, but the good news is there are always numerous strategies that are proven to work. We’ve listed five ways to increase engagement on your Facebook Business page:

1. Ask Questions

One of the main goals of Facebook ads and content is to attract customers by getting the conversation started. Facebook is a platform where people go to be entertained, educated, and interact. By using thought-provoking questions that are current and industry relevant, your fans are going to want to chime in.

For example, let’s say you’re a fitness based business. You should be asking questions about your Facebook community. What types of workouts do they like? When do they exercise? (Morning, afternoon or night?) Which nutritional supplements do they recommend? Do they have a “go to” cardio machine? Don’t be afraid to get personal. Your page should be an open portal for communication and your community should see tips not only from you, but from your fans as well.

2. Post About Relevant Current Events

3. Valuable Content

No matter what business you’re in, you have the knowledge and expertise to be an informational resource to your fans. Be transparent with your content and give your audience bundles of useful information. By doing this, you will become a trustworthy, authoritative source.

If you went to the Facebook page of Beauty Company X and you didn’t see any posts about the benefits of their products or questions for their fans, would you really be inclined to like their page or engage? You boost engagement by posting informative content. Start featuring how-to videos, product tutorial videos, DIY videos, and useful tips that hold high value in your sphere.

Videos have shown to be some of the most successful posts in the last 3 years. It’s no wonder “92% of mobile video consumers share videos with others” and ”after watching a video, 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online” according to a report found on hubspot.com. In fact, social videos generate about 1,200% more shares than pictures and image combined, according to Slideshare!

4. Share

5. Organization and Time Optimization

Creating a monthly or weekly content calendar of posts and ad content will help save time and make sure your posts are going out at the optimal time for engagement. Through Facebook Insights, you can find the most popular days and times your community is browsing the social media site. By using this data as a baseline for scheduling your posts, you should see an increase in activity on your page.

After this, perform A/B testing with some of the other popular times and adjust appropriately. Within a couple of months, you should be able to find an ideal time. Although, this is always subject to change as you gain more fans. It is best practice to keep track of your insights and adjust throughout the year.

Need help boosting your engagement on social media? Efferent Media’s social media staff are experts and can help your community and customer base grow. Contact us today.

You’ve spent years building your email list, but the open rate just isn’t as high as it used to be. What happened? The quick answer is over saturation.

Over time, consumers have grown and shared their email address with more businesses. As a result, users are being sent dozens of promotional newsletters every single day. Emails with sales pitch after sales pitch, after sales pitch. It’s easy to understand why consumers have stepped back and decided to stop opening these emails as frequently. [Read more…] about How to Use Your Newsletter Email List for Facebook Ads

Last week Snapchat announced on-demand geofilters. This is huge news for marketers, especially those with smaller budgets that can’t afford to shell out five or six figures on a 24-hour campaign. [Read more…] about What You Need to Know Before Making Your Snapchat On-Demand Geofilters

Snapchat has gone from that “inappropriate sexting app” to one of the most engaging apps of 2016. It is fair to say you’ve heard about Snapchat, but probably aren’t doing anything about it at this time for your business.

There’s a lot of talk happening around the app, but many of us are failing to understand what it is all about. In fact, the Snapchat secret I am about to tell you about is only a secret because nobody is taking action once they hear it.

The secret is simple: Snapchat can bring your business the largest amount of engagement for zero dollars. Seriously – $0.00. [Read more…] about The Snapchat “Secret” You Need to Understand

A common objective for all businesses on Facebook is to grow their Community. That doesn’t mean businesses should try to get as many random Like’s as possible. You still want to be strategic when building your Community. One of the best ways to still be strategic and gain Like’s is to run a Facebook Like Campaign. As with any other marketing initiative, there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way. We’ll go over the most effective way to run a Like Campaign. So, your businesses page can build a strong foundation while gaining fans. [Read more…] about How to Build an Effective Like Campaign