The Rise of Social Advertising Beyond Facebook

Facebook will be a major player in the social media advertising scene for a while due to its incredible potential reach and scale, everyone is on Facebook. However, due to the Facebook algorithm that dictates visibility for free brand pages, less than two percent of posts get seen anymore. This means either paying to use Facebook for more visibility or jumping focus of social media marketing to other platforms. The rise of platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ is really eye opening in 2015.

These other platforms are rolling out features and ad products that bring brands to the forefront of consumers. More and more, content is the way to tell if your social ad will be a winner. Along with great content, image-centric content is driving engagement and conversions on social media. This used to be only true for Facebook but even with Twitter, tweets that have an image are seeing 54 percent more favorites and retweets and 84 percent more clicks.

Pinterest, created back in 2009, reaches more than 70 million users
. Pinterest now has Promoted Pins for brands who want to advertise and bring more visibility to their boards and products. Brands are given free impressions and are only charged when their pins are clicked, which then goes against the brand's weekly or monthly budget.

Other platforms like Tumblr or Google+ are also gaining traction from brands. What are your thoughts for your business regarding which social media platforms are best? Let us know in the comments! As a Chicago PR agency, we are excited about social media and how businesses use it.

9 Ways to Up Your Business Social Media Game

When you are running a business, it is pertinent that you are on social media. It is a great franchise PR tool that is pretty easy to do and can help you gain some popularity. Now, your social media may not bring in a lot of sales, if any; however, social media can help with your customer service and build brand loyalty because you can instantly converse with people in minutes.

So, you have your business listed on the major social media platforms… now what? Merely posting at random times, posting random things, doing random everything will not garner the followers you deserve nor get you anywhere good. Be intentional on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, etc. Have a strategy.

Here are 9 tips for creating a good social media plan:

1. Have a voice and personality on social media that people want to be around. It's better for people to see that the brand is human and that your brand social media is not run by an automated robot. It is much more authentic and people love connecting with brands. If people can enjoy seeing your brand's social media posts and want to share them with others, that's awesome. 
2. Make your team visible. You probably don't have anyone in your company named "admin" or "Rep" so why list them as that on social media? Part of making your brand human on social media is to feature the humans behind the brand! It's good to occasionally post photos that are "behind the scenes" and say the names of your team (maybe just do first names). As a franchise PR agency, we often share photos of the team on our Facebook page and will mention the name(s) of those in the photo. 
3. Know your customers/followers. Know what makes them tick, what interests them, etc. You want to post content that they find interesting. If your followers are mostly stay-at-home moms, then posting content about plumbing or how to write a perfect expense report will probably not interest them too much. 
4. Listen. Invest in learning and listening about industry and what your followers have to say. Do that a lot. 
5. Avoid constantly promoting yourself like a press release. While promoting your business on social media is great, constantly doing so will get tiresome with your followers. Instead, try to post things that are meaningful and will tell a story, people love connecting with stories. Give information that people can use, like tips. Oh, look what we're doing! 
6. Be conversational. You don't sit down with another human and just say things randomly and don't actually engage in conversation, do you? Like sit in Starbucks and randomly say, "We're having a sale! Then they reply, "A sale for what?" *silence* 5 minutes later, "Don't forget to come to the sale!" "A sale for what???" *silence*…. No, you converse, so do that on social media too. Don't spam either. 
7. Give credit. If you find something awesome online that you know your followers will like and want to share it, awesome. Just remember to mention who created that work. 
8. Be careful with the hashtags. This is a biggie since so many social media platforms allow hashtags now. You don't want #every #single #word #to #be #hashtagged. That was annoying, right? Well, the optimal hashtag per post is 2 or 3 so don't do more than that. 
9. Look at the real metrics. You might have a lot of followers and likes but if you don't get engagement, follow-up, or lead generation, is your social media actually working? You might need to change strategy. 

Social media can be difficult if you don't know what you're doing. If you need help with that, then contact All Points PR, we are a Chicago PR agency.