What are all the Facebook Ad Targeting Options?

Facebook users spend so much time and take so many actions online that the platform acquires hundreds of touch points and builds incredibly robust profiles that can be highly targeted.

While paid search marketing is mostly accomplished by targeting specific keywords that users are searching on, Facebook advertising is based on finding the audiences that are most likely to become your fan or your customer. These targeting options focus directly on users and profiling potential customers in order to get clicks and grow your business. Mary Lister, WordStream

The Sensible Social Media Checklist

Some businesses just need a nice checklist to work from when executing their social media strategy… so here’s a great one (updated for 2017!) developed by the whole brain group. It’s a great, balanced approach to publishing and participating in social media to help build your audience and community.

Social media platforms are constantly innovating, so they have updated their checklist to reflect all the latest and greatest features of the most popular social media channels. And we’ve added new social media platforms that are fresh on the scene.

I Believe B2B Social Media Marketing Success is Exaggerated

Let’s start this conversation by saying all of my evidence is anecdotal. I haven’t done any widespread research to prove my instincts; I just continue to have more and more people whispering to me that they don’t use social media to drive results. And they’re not suffering at all; their companies are doing great.

“Wait!”, you declare, “They could be doing so much better!”

YouTube Marketing: Why It’s Still a Must!

We hosted a regional meeting of podcasters at our office to discuss the proliferation of video in podcasting. It was an incredible discussion – from new technology, technological challenges, to real-time social video strategies. In none of the conversations was the question asked, should we be doing video? Rather, it was all about how we can execute video to accompany the podcasting efforts the most efficient way possible.

As one podcaster, Chris Spangle, an audio and video content expert responded: YouTube is where the searches are. It continues to be the #2 most searched site aside from Google itself. Not everyone wishes to read a blog post or listen to a podcast – they want video.

YouTube is the world’s largest video-sharing community. With billions of users and new content uploaded every second, it’s an online entertainment powerhouse with 10 times the usership of Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu combined. WebpageFX

YouTube boasts over one billion users, with over half of them logging in from a mobile device  Tweet This! Over four billion videos are watched daily with the average user session clocked out at 40 minutes  Tweet This!

YouTube also has live-streaming options and social tools, which its expanding as it works to keep in line with evolving consumer trends – while they also recently added the ability to target users based on their Google search behavior, another key benefit. Andrew Hutchinson

Is Social Media Forcing Marketers Away from Mass Media?

This is a pretty telling infographic from Sprout Social that has some deeper consequences than marketers might be willing to accept. The infographic is called 6 Social Media Trends That Will Take Over 2017 and walks through each social media channel, how consumer behavior is changing, and the advancement of technologies like artificial intelligence.

Combined with on-demand video, ad blocking technologies, and the growth of 1:1 channels like Snapchat and marketers need to reconsider their batch and blast advertising that’s getting engaged with each year. The buyer has the power now to find what they need, when they need it, where they need it, at a price they want it at. The narrowing options for companies point to investing in their customers’ experience and building relationships directly.

Even in business-to-business relationships, account-based marketing is driving results. While broad advertising isn’t dead, it’s targeted, personalized strategies that are beginning to drive the customer journey – not the ads plastered everywhere they’re not looking.

2017 Social Media Marketing Statistics You Can’t Miss!

At some point many decades ago, we just began taking for granted that the average household had a radio, then a telephone, and finally a television. I believe we’re reached that saturation with social media… do we really need to quantify the impact or try to convince a business that social media is here to stay? Yeesh, I hope not.

That doesn’t mean that it’s time for marketers to drop everything and bet it all on Snapchat, though. There are still traditional industries that use pen and paper, still companies that drive revenue with direct mail, still an ROI for many companies doing traditional media. In fact, traditional marketing is growing in its ability to segment and target members of the population. I digress… let’s get back to social media marketing. It’s big.

Are you considering using social media to promote your business in 2017? Need some facts and figures to help you form and execute your strategy? Wordstream shared some fantastic social media marketing stats in this recent post, and we gave it the infographic treatment below. Mark Walker-Ford, Founder and Managing Director of Red Website Design

An Open Letter to @Jack About Twitter

Dear Jack,

For a year now, I’ve joked that Twitter is like the girl I had a crush on in school that wouldn’t give me the time of day. One time we played spin the bottle in the basement, and she nudged the bottle to kiss the guy next to me that was a jerk. She broke my heart. And he eventually broke hers. We both lost. Twitter is losing, too.

You wrote in your earnings call:

We’re thrilled to report that daily active usage accelerated for the 3rd quarter in a row, and we see that strong growth continuing.

I’m not sure who We is, but when I heard the term daily active usage accelerated, I shed a tear. You’re kissing the jerk. And it sucks because I was the one that loved you.

You added:

You don’t go a day without hearing about Twitter.

While that’s true, let’s be honest with one another. That’s basically because the term tweeted has been preceded by the name Donald Trump for over a year now.

That guy you don’t care too much about is really the only reason why the majority of people heard about Twitter at all last year. And it appears that’s going to continue this year. Hardly the gift that will bring Twitter to its prior glory.

How Much Does Outsourcing Social Media Cost?

These last few weeks, we’ve been analyzing the products and services that we offer our clients. As an agency, we do have some economies of scale in working with tools and expertise that we can share among clients – but those advantages must still provide the additional value necessary to accommodate agency pricing. We have little doubt that an internal staff could match the results we achieve with an equivalent expense to our clients.

Still, our pricing wasn’t in line with industry averages. For some of our services, we charged more and felt comfortable given the quality of our work. For other services, we charged far less and honestly avoided those kinds of engagements with clients. One of those services was social media. Social media isn’t an automated process. Social media requires monitoring, support, growth, outreach, promotion, engagement, analysis, integration, possibly contests and even paid promotion.

An effective social media strategy requires a constant effort and manpower to achieve momentum and superior results. That requires a talented staff that’s continuously looking for opportunities.

Why User-Generated Content Reigns Supreme In The Age of Social Media

It’s pretty amazing to see how technology has evolved in such a short period of time. Long gone are the days of Napster, MySpace, and AOL dial-up dominating the online market.

Today, social media platforms reign supreme in the digital universe. From Facebook to Instagram to Pinterest, these social mediums have become integral components of our everyday lives. Look no further than how much time we spend on social media each day. According to Stastista, the average person spends 118 minutes per day browsing social media networks. It has become how we communicate, express emotion, and even sell products to customers around the world.

Let’s take a closer look into how businesses are leveraging social media to grow their brand, turning passive browsers into loyal customers.

How LinkedIn Uses LinkedIn for Marketing

When it comes to business, I use LinkedIn much more than other social media platforms. Most of my time is spent working my network, but as we continue to grow our audience and sponsorships, I know that I need to leverage other tools within LinkedIn. This infographic from LinkedIn reveals three strategies for marketing on LinkedIn as well as a breakdown of how.

LinkedIn Sponsored Content

LinkedIn sponsored content with a statistic saw a 37% higher click-through rate and 162% more impressions  Tweet This!. Short updates and visuals drove a lot more engagement, but LinkedIn recommends you test different headlines, post lengths, images, and content mixes. As an example, LinkedIn A/B tested the term “eBook” versus “guide” and guide saw a 100% increase in click-through rate.