What is a Facebook Ad?

Facebook Ads are often used by businesses to promote their pages, websites, products and services. Facebook Ads can appear anywhere on Facebook, including in News Feeds, on Pages and in between status updates. This allows you to target specific audiences depending on your marketing goals.  A key feature of Facebook ads is that they’re highly targeted and offer you a high level of creative control. You can choose specific objectives and placements, design the creative, create tailored descriptions, format carousel ads and more, even creating Lookalike audiences and overlapping audience types.

What is a Facebook Boosted Post?

A Facebook boosted post is an ad, but with fewer bells and whistles. You can choose to target using interests, age, gender, and location, but you won’t have the in-depth control you get with an Ad. However, the upside is that a Boosted Post is incredibly simple to set up; you can even Boost an existing post simply by clicking the boost button next to it and fine-tuning your options.

Which Should I Choose?

This depends entirely on your objectives. To identify which to use, you will first need to work out what you’re hoping to achieve. If you want more likes for your Page, increased audience engagement or brand awareness, a Boosted Post may be the way to go. However, if you need your audience to interact with a sales funnel, you require deeper analytics, conversion tracking, lead generation and opt-in forms, then Facebook Ads would be a better choice.

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Optimise your profile

Before you even consider sharing your content, be sure to optimise your profile with your best professional photos and a solid headline that explains who you are and what you do. Additionally, make sure that you’ve completed all sections of your profile (work experience, volunteer experience, education, and certifications, etc.) as well as included at least one quality recommendation from a trusted source.

Participate in groups

Participating in relevant LinkedIn groups lets you contribute your knowledge to like-minded people. If you become an active contributor in these groups, other people may reach out if they need services like yours. Ensure you keep your posts relevant to the group, and avoid spamming with services.

Connect with people in their niches

It’s not enough to simply sign up for a LinkedIn account and list your work history. Your profile is where you can really differentiate yourself, so pay close attention to it. Try posting a creative cover image—using an original photo of you doing your job, for example—and customise your headline with keywords that clients are likely to search for.

Post a great profile picture

A big part of what makes your profile noticeable is your profile image. Humans react to faces, so be sure to use a photo of yourself. Make sure it’s a professionally taken photo and you are wearing work attire.

Comment on industry articles

Aside from networking, another great way to attract new clients is through your writing. Commenting on industry articles with insightful questions and answers can help establish you as an authority within your niche.

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Pick relevant hashtags

You want your post to reach as many people as possible, which means you’ll need to use hashtags that people actually search—not just popular hashtags with a million posts a day. Check out a hashtag’s popularity by utilising the search functions within your chosen social media platform, only using those that are appropriate and relevant. However tempting it is, using trending hashtags when they are not relevant to your post is a bad move and may result in people unfollowing you.

Don’t forget proper spelling

One of the biggest mistakes people make when using hashtags is spelling them incorrectly. While we don’t expect you to spend hours proofreading your posts before you hit post, we do recommend double-checking your spelling throughout, including hashtags, checking to see how they alter the readability of your post. If they make it appear clunky, use them at the end or, if on Instagram, in the first comment box.

Avoid overdoing it

The old adage ‘less is more’ could have been made for hashtag use! You don’t need to max out every post with random tags—too many hashtags look messy and desperate. Stick to a handful for every 100 characters of text you write. If posting on Twitter be aware that it is unusual to have more than three hashtags on a post. On Instagram, you can get away with more, but do check their relevance.

Keep track

It’s no secret that social media has become an important driver of traffic to websites. If you want to be able to get your posts in front of potential customers, use hashtags. But not all hashtags are created equal, and overusing certain ones could harm your efforts. Avoid common pitfalls by keeping track of which hashtags get engagement (and positive engagement, at that) and which don’t; then either ditch or change up your low-performing tags.

The post Four Tips for Using Hashtags appeared first on Hatchit Design.

A lack of personal information

It’s worth checking out the bio of any new follower or commenter to make sure it’s legitimate. A lack of personal information on an account may not automatically mean it’s a fake, but it’s worth watching or delving a little deeper to ascertain its authenticity.

Generic username

Again, not a failsafe, but some things to look out for would be a generic name, followed by a random string of letters or numbers.

Quality of posts

Quality of posts is a giveaway. If the content contains multiple pictures in which there seems to be no subject other than a person’s face (such as selfies), there’s a strong possibility it’s fake.

Quality of engagement

If you get a random, generic comment or a string of emojis, it’s likely that it’s a fake account. If posts on the account itself contain undirected comments from different people, or emoji-only comments, it’s likely that it’s a fake account.

Analyse their profile

Look at the follower’s profile; if it has a lot of posts but only a few followers, they’re probably fake; or if the followers are all low-quality with similar profiles, that is also an indication of a fake account. If their profile pictures contain images of celebrities or models, alarm bells should ring!

If you’re considering bolstering your own account by purchasing fake followers, we strongly advise against it. It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers, but don’t forget that your true followers are more important than just having a high number.

Make sure you’re checking profiles and seeing how they interact with your posts before deciding if someone is genuine or not. If it seems like most of their activity consists of liking other people’s photos while never commenting on yours, then it might be best to pass them by for now. Your time is valuable so make sure you spend it wisely!

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Set up the right platforms

A crucial part of your social media presence is knowing which platforms are right for you. You don’t necessarily need to be on every social media platform—but be sure that those you do use are important to your audience. Asking customers which platforms they use is a good way of testing the water.

Find your target audience

Determining your target audience allows you to speak directly to them on social media. If you’re a restaurant, it may be people who live in your town, or foodies with disposable income. As long as you know who these people are, you can tailor your social media messaging to resonate with them.

Be consistent

As with many things in life, consistency is key when it comes to social media. If you start posting three times a week, your audience will expect you to continue doing so. Allowing your schedule to drop off a cliff can be detrimental to your following, and your business. Consistency will help you develop a presence as well as making it easier for people to find you.

Work smarter, not harder

Don’t fall into the trap of spending hours each day trying to get attention on social media. Spend 20 minutes a day working on your presence and you’ll be surprised by how many people take notice of your brand, product or service.

Build relationships

Whether you’re a small business or a one-person operation, building relationships with others on social media is key to your online success. Although some brands choose to simply push out messages, creating a dynamic relationship with your followers is far more beneficial and compelling. Try posting interesting information in your feed that will be worth sharing, remembering that reciprocity goes a long way.

The post 5 social media best practices for small businesses! appeared first on Hatchit Design.

Firstly, what is a keyword? This profoundly important string of letters is what people type into a search engine when they are looking for services or products. These words are important to you because they are the words that will lead potential customers to your website, converting them into paying customers. If your site is full of copy that doesn’t contain relevant keywords, clients will never find you. You will forever remain an anonymous website in a sea of other anonymous websites.

Using keywords in content

Sourcing and analysing keywords that are relevant to your sector is the basis of keyword research. It’s a crucial admin task that can be time-consuming, although there are tools around that can help speed up the process. A keyword is usually a search term rather than a single word — for example, ‘small business grants’ is a keyword, rather than inserting the words ‘small’ ‘business’ and ‘grants’ throughout your copy, which probably won’t get you very far at all.

High-volume keywords alone aren’t particularly useful. What you are looking for are relevant keywords that match your brand — blindly stabbing at keywords may result in some activity, but fine-tuning the exact words that your target audience is using is invaluable.

Think carefully about keyword groups

Two similar keywords, such as ‘small business grants’ and ‘small business funding’ behave very differently and without research you wouldn’t know which would work best for your business. Initially, your task is to study your niche — where do you fit in your business space? Find out what terms existing customers used to find your business. Then make a list of relevant topics, breaking down the main topic of your brand. From here, you can create focus keywords, using descriptions of your business in the most focused and simple way.

Put these keywords into your planner, such as Google Keyword Planner, studying the data that comes back. Is the competition high or low? Is it suggesting other keywords that could be more relevant. Compile a list from this research and, there you have it, your keyword list — primed and ready for action!

The post Quick guide: how to research keywords! appeared first on Hatchit Design.

Quality over quantity

Anyone can post badly thought-out posts multiple times a day, but that isn’t going to send your sales into the stratosphere, is it? Consistent, high-quality posts trump regular poor-quality posts every time.

Cross-posting

Posting exactly the same content on each platform is never going to work as they are set up so differently. Missing images, badly cropped graphics and irrelevant hashtags are just a few of the issues you can run into if you don’t consider each platform on its own merits. That’s not to say the content can’t be the same; there’s value in consistency, but do make sure the post is optimised for each platform’s algorithm.

Sharing is caring

It may seem counterproductive to send traffic to someone else’s website, but it works. If you post only your own content on a social media channel, it can quickly feel a bit spammy. By adding in third party content, you are increasing awareness and reach, as well as adding variety into your timeline.

Video killed the radio star

Video is where it’s at and has been for some time. Video is undoubtedly more engaging, resulting in more shares and interactions. It may be a little more time-consuming to post a video rather than a static post, but the time investment will pay off.

On target

Take time to get to know your audience and your engagement will go through the roof. Have a look at your posts over the past six months, making a note of which received the highest engagement. These are the posts your audience enjoy, so give them more!

Need our help?

Need help with your social media? If so, why not get in touch with us to have a chat about what we can do for you. We can manage all social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; and also run sponsored ads for Facebook and Instagram too. Get in touch and let’s have a chat today!

The post Common social media mistakes – and how to avoid them! appeared first on Hatchit Design.

Unless you are an expert, outsourcing your business’s web design is a positive move, but choosing to hand over the public perception of your business to another person or agency is always a difficult step to take — will they understand your brand? Will they portray the image and ethos that you want to demonstrate? What if they miss the mark?

There are several ways that you can help your web designer understand what you want to achieve with your project, and being precise and clear isn’t something you should shy away from. Web designers would much rather be given a strong brief from the outset than waste hours designing a site with only a vague idea of what is required.

Give examples

To start with, open conversation with your designer by offering examples of sites you like the look of. Give a clear brief and be specific with regards to the features you need on the site. As your website begins to take shape, view it with a critical eye — the little things that bug you right now will be more apparent later down the line.

It’s all in the design 

Your font, colours and branding may look amazing on your packaging, but not fit well on a website; if this is the case, feed this back to your designer — they are working within your brief and so implementing the aspects of design you have provided. Suggest alternatives; discussion and brainstorming are tried and tested ways to spark creativity, and your designer will be open to discussing strategies and new ideas. A decent agency will take your vision and implement it into something that works, tweaking along the way as and when you feed back to them.

Set your emotions to one side — you may like particular colour palette, but will your target audience respond positively to it? It’s these people you need to keep in mind throughout the process, letting go of any attachment you may have to a particular colour or pattern. Don’t tell your designer you don’t like something; give positive alternatives; for example, I would like that headline to be in a larger font, or, can we draw attention to the image on the right?

With these pointers in mind, you and your web designer will be able to work together to create something that not only reflects your business but also appeals to your target audience.

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How often do you see a post on Instagram that has text missing from the top? Or a preview of a post on Twitter that cuts out important details? This is caused by using an image that hasn’t been sized correctly, and the person posting it may well have crossed their fingers hoping that nobody would notice (except we did).

If that isn’t enough, then you can separate the platforms into sub-categories. A grid post image is not the same aspect ratio as an Instagram story image, and if you post an IGTV, you won’t be wanting to add a preview to your grid, unless you’ve correctly sized the image to fit squarely in the middle of the cover image. Anything less than perfect can result in missing text (or worse, missing heads), or cause an awkwardly stretched image that will pixelate.

Sounds confusing, doesn’t it? Thankfully, we are here with our 2021 guide to perfectly sized social media images.

Instagram

• Profile: 320 x 320
• Grid: 1080 x 1080
• Stories: 1080 x 1920
• IGTV: 1080 x 1920
• IGTV cover: 420 x 654

Facebook

• Profile: 170 x 170
• Cover: 851 x 315
• Timeline (landscape): 1200 x 630
• Timeline (portrait): 630 x 1200
• Timeline (square): 1200 x 1200
• Stories: 1080 x 1920

Twitter

• Profile: 400 x 400
• Cover: 1500 x 1500
• Timeline: 1024 x 512
• Stories: 1080 x 1920

LinkedIn

• Profile: 400 x 400
• Cover: 1128 x 191
• Timeline (landscape): 1200 x 627
• Timeline (portrait): 627 x 1200
• Stories: 1080 x 1920

As you can see, there is the potential to re-use some images across platforms; stories, for example, are the same size across the board (for now); and Facebook and LinkedIn portrait and landscape posts are close enough to work. However, platforms frequently move the goalposts with regards to image sizing, and so it’s worth keeping an eye on social media publications and news sources to make sure yours are optimised for their use across the platforms.

Manually resizing images can be quite time-consuming, but there are image editors that have social media-optimised templates, meaning that you can alter your image with just a mouse click. However you decide to do it, it’s worth the time investment to portray a slick and organised brand to your potential clients or customers.

The post Size matters … how to format your graphics for Social Media appeared first on Hatchit Design.

Unless you’re a celebrity or influencer, your social media audience is unlikely to be sitting waiting for your next post, wringing their hands in anticipation, but does this mean that it doesn’t matter when you post, or how often? Read on to get some tips!

Keep it consistent!

Consistency is key when it comes to your social media content; although your followers are unlikely to be waiting for your post, your brand will be strengthened in your audience’s mind each time they see a post from your account, particularly if you use brand colours, logos, or other recognisable elements in your posts. If you usually post once a day and then suddenly reduce this to once a week, or once a month, your followers will quickly move on, leaving you without a potential customer/client when they next need a company that makes your product or offers your service.

Instagram in particular favours ‘recency’ when its algorithm sorts which posts to show to users. The chronological feed went out when the Instagram algorithm took over in 2016, but fresh, engaging content will usually be favoured over older engaging content! And that’s the first key to success – curating engaging content. No matter how often you post or which times you choose to post at, if your content is weak then you won’t receive the engagement you need to propel your stats upwards and your business forwards.

Choose your audience

Your audience may be spread all over the world and, as such, it’s difficult to ascertain an optimum time for posting, due to time differences. However, Instagram (and Facebook) has clever tools that allow you to see when the majority of your audience is online, giving you the key to optimum posting times. In addition to this, it’s worthwhile doing a little competitor digging (who doesn’t love having a nose at the competition?) to see what’s working for them, paying particular attention to which posts have the most engagement and the times at which they were posted.

Bear in mind that different times will work for different industries; for example, food and drink posts are more likely to go down well at mealtimes, both weekdays and weekends, whereas business-related posts from professional services are better served to a more work-focused audience on weekdays only, giving them the weekend to digest more casual topics.

And there’s nothing quite like experience – the more consistently you post, the more likely you are to see a pattern within those posts, pointing you to the most popular topics, and the content which is most appealing to your audience. Take all these factors and implement your new-found knowledge into your social media strategy; a sure-fire way to boost engagement and follower count across your social media platforms.

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