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.

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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!

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We’re afraid not — your social media presence will only be of value to your business if you figure out what’s working (and what isn’t). In terms of which metrics matter, the short answer is all of them. The metrics that are important to your business will be the ones that directly relate to your targets and what you want to achieve.

Firstly, you will need to set your goals. These will give you an idea of which metrics you need to track. For example, if you want to increase conversions, you will need to run a suitable campaign (including influencers and ads), and then check your website analytics to determine your conversion rate.

If engagement is the most important metric for your business, you need to track the number of comments, likes, shares and reactions on each post, determining which post types are scoring the highest in terms of popularity. Post engagement rate is a simple equation: the number of engagements divided by impressions or reach. The higher the rate, the more interesting your post has been deemed. Good brand awareness is determined by organic responses. For example, a tag in story without prompting, or a reaction to a post without first mentioning the account indicates that your campaigns are working and brand awareness is spreading.

Impressions and reach are both equally as important — impressions being how many times a post shows up in a timeline and reach being the potential unique viewers a particular post could ‘reach’. Looking at the metrics for impressions plus engagement will give you an idea of both brand awareness and education surrounding your brand. High impressions and low engagement indicates poor content, whereas high reach and high engagement is something to celebrate as it indicates your content has been shared multiple times.

Check your website regularly to ascertain how your customers are landing — you’ll need to be checking ‘referrals’, keeping an eye on the number of people referred by ‘social’. The next step would be to see how many of those referrals turned into conversions. If the number is disparate, it could mean that your social is not in-line with the products or services on your site as people are happily landing, then taking off when they see what is on offer.

There are many tools available to track analytics and metrics on all social media platforms. Speak to us if you need any guidance!

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From astronauts in space to Ellen Degeneres’ famous photo at the 2014 Oscars, it seems as though everyone is on the selfie wagon. Scroll through Instagram or Facebook and you will get a timeline filled with #me and #selfie — arm-length selfies in bed, mirror portraits and group selfies are everywhere we look. But just where and when did this trend begin?

It’s rumoured that the first-ever selfie was taken way back in 1839, by camera pioneer Robert Cornelius, but we can’t prove that; he may have had an assistant to help. The first cameras which incorporated delay timers were available from the 1880s, giving the photographer between five and ten seconds to adopt the right pose for their self-portrait. Around this time, cameras with a long cable release were also on the market — this allowed the taking of a photograph from a distance dictated by the length of the cable.

Vintage selfie, anyone?

Moving forward in time — the humble photo booth dates back to 1880, and is a selfie of sorts, although not in the more contemporary sense. What about Polaroids? The first instant camera was on the market in the 1970s — a handheld camera that could be held at arms’ length, although with no preview screen, you might have to take a few shots before truly perfecting the pout.

Move on to 2003, when Sony invented a phone with a front-facing camera. It was actually intended to be used for business video calls, but we didn’t let that stop us, although the 0.3mp camera offered a pretty low-quality image. Thank you though, Sony, for this accidental innovation. And here’s proof of the selfie’s rise in popularity — collectively, Android users alone take 93 million selfies a day and seasoned selfie takers shoot, on average, 450 a year. A scroll through the #selfie hashtag on Instagram is proof enough that what Robert Cornelius may or may not have started is not going away any time soon.

The selfie is here to stay.

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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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