It is already a known fact that Facebook is one of the most popular social media websites in the world. Collectively, there are over two billion users on the platform and hundreds of millions of users who are active every month. Through the platform, users can do everything from posting their own pictures to even learning more about current news.
However, as more users continue to age out of Facebook and look for the next hottest thing, they ultimately find themselves over at Instagram. As time went on, people realized how they can use it to their advantage to grow their reach, site traffic, brand and business.
Instagram is starting to become known as one of the most popular social media platforms that people continually log into and use on a daily basis. With mobile usage on the rise, so is the demand for social networking applications like Instagram. It’s also not just users who are getting in on the action, it’s also a huge opportunity for businesses and brands of all sizes as well.
With all of this in mind, if you want to find success with both Facebook or Instagram, you will need to invest some time and effort into learning about what works best on each platform.
Facebook and Instagram Best Practices for Small Businesses
With so much attention on FB and IG, it’s easy to find yourself quickly lost in the crowd. This is something that will take a lot of time and effort to get out of, and not necessarily something you can throw money at. Instead, be sure to implement each of these recommended tips and best practices.
- Visual media is considered by a lot of people as more interesting and engaging as compared to getting texts. Just take a look at the visual below to show how the mind absorbs both types of content. This means that if you could show people what you can offer through pictures or videos, they will become more interested. Those paid advertisements should contain visual media to make people look more than once.
- Remarketing is one of the most powerful ways to connect and re-engage with users on social media. Since Instagram is owned by Facebook and they both run off the same powerful self-serve advertising platform, they have amazing remarketing ad campaign tracking in place. For example, you can create ads for users that visit your site and don’t purchase, or for users they receive your email, or any other data sub-set you might have. If you haven’t tried remarketing yet, this is a definite must to add to your list.
- The use of both Facebook and Instagram can be a very smart move for businesses because you can do multi-layer audience targeting. It is a known fact that there are different people who may become interested in different social media platforms as compared to the others. For example, through the demographic chart below we can see younger people may prefer Instagram while those who are older may prefer Facebook. Advertising through both platforms will allow you to reach more people. This can surely be good for your business.
- Always do enough research before you release any paid advertisements. Having paid advertisements is not a guarantee that people will actually check out what you can offer. They need to be interested in what you are offering first before you can get their interest. How are you going to do that? You need to do a bit of researching first. The more that you know about what people want, the more that you can formulate ads that they will like.
- Through the use of hashtags, any IG account can quickly reach their target audience and get immediate engagement from other accounts. A perfect example of this would be if you were to launch a legal directory, and then start using hashtags like #legal, #attorney, #laws and #arrests, you would soon have your content and profile ranking for relevant terms and status updates that others are searching for or writing about.
- Remember that a lot of people may be viewing the advertisements through their chosen gadget. Most people would use their smartphone to view your ads. The ads need to be easy to click and should not hinder people from what they are doing. If you cover the content of what they are reading, they will find it easier to reject what you are trying to offer.
- When using any type of social platform, you are always going to come across a lot of bots and automation. It’s great to have thousands of followers, but only if they are real. This is also a huge factor if you are using paid advertising to reach your followers (and hopefully not fake ones). A great way to get a quick status update on your account, is to run a profile audit. It’s free to try and will give you a quick idea on just how many of your followers are real. If you end up finding that a good majority of your followers are fake, it might be time for you to reconsider your social media marketing plan and to also run a process to remove your fake followers as well.
- Create advertisements that will not make people feel that they will be obliged to purchase. You can just show the beauty of using your products or how your offers can help solve their problems. When you provide a solution to what people are going through, this will be enough to make people interested for sure.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Social Media Marketing Efforts
The attraction for social media marketing is massive. With over three billion users spread across all of the major social platforms, how could you know be tempted to grow your audience and improve your reach.
As always, be sure to keep an eye on your competition. This will allow you to get some new ideas, while also staying up to date on their latest promotions and marketing efforts.
All of this sounds great, but you also need to make sure that you have a proper plan of action in place. Be sure to run through each of the recommendations and tips laid out above, and then see what type of content creation, marketing and paid social media ad campaigns might work best for you.