It’s important to understand the competitive landscape that’s on social media and how every brand is competing against each other. This battle can make it difficult to reach your target audience and to drive sales or brand awareness from organic marketing. Currently online, 4.59 billion people use social media like Facebook and Instagram. So, what’s one way you can advertise to your audience? By using Meta advertising. In this blog, I will tell you more about Meta advertising and the benefits that it could provide to your company.
What is Meta Advertising?
Meta advertising is a form of advertising that uses Facebook and Instagram to create and target ads to specific audiences. Companies can create campaigns where they can select the type of ad to run, their audience and the budget they want to spend. Meta then will use Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms to deliver this ad to users who would be interested in it.
Measurement and Reporting
One benefit of sponsored campaigns is the ability to monitor your ads regularly. Meta’s measurement tools allow you to check stats like reach, landing page views, click-through rates and more! By using the measurement tools, it can give you insight into what’s working on your campaigns, what you should try differently and what your customers are interested in.
Cost
Although Meta advertising isn’t free, it is the second cheapest platform (Twitter) to advertise on. One of the benefits of it is being able to set how much you’re spending on a campaign or per day. But keep in mind that you want to spend an efficient amount of money to hit the “sweet spot” of advertising. If you spend too little or too much money, then your ad won’t perform well among your audience. This cost-effective advertising can generate traffic to your website and can be just as effective as banner ads.
Brand Awareness
Meta is perfect to build brand awareness while driving direct sales for your company. By increasing your visibility and exposure you are opening your business to potential customers and having users become more familiar with your brand.
Conclusion
In today’s digital environment, it’s important to reach your target audience, increase visibility and drive more traffic to your company’s website. Using Meta advertising can be a cost-effective way to advertise online, while providing measurable results and achieving your marketing goals.
Check out our other blog post on why content marketing may work better than traditional advertising.
With the ongoing concern about our nation’s skills gap, the option for choosing an education to pursue a vocational career is certainly an attractive one. With plentiful skilled labor jobs to fill, trade jobs pay very well (sometimes better than four-year college degrees) and don’t saddle students with hefty student loans.
In an article from SJVC, a private career college, they discuss more than 20 resources for maintenance training. With a variety of resources, you can expand your knowledge about the industrial market and explore your career options.
General Resources and Publications
Sometimes the best place to learn more is by reading more about it. By reading publications that correspond with the industrial market, you can learn more about what’s happening in the industry and about tips and tricks.
Video Series
Watching videos is a great way to do online training and gives insights on the daily work a maintenance worker might be doing. You may also expand your knowledge by watching training videos that can allow you to get an overview of the job and the tools you would be using.
Podcasts
Podcasts offer crucial information from someone who works in the career firsthand. Putting on a podcast is a great way to hear day-in-the-life reporting and an easy way to listen to tips.
Social Media
Social media is a valuable place to get recommendations, learn industry news and see insight into the career you want to enter. Social media can also help you look at a specific company and show you what they do in a day.
Check out the article from SJVC to see further in depth about each of these training resources.
Following is a guest post from our friends over at Long & Short of It, masters of ideation, customer insights and market research. They like to say they “dig and find lots of data and then turn it into actionable insights.” Following is their guest post.
Your Employees Are Your Best Secret Weapon
When it comes to promoting or managing your brand, your most important asset is your employees. It doesn’t matter if you are a B2C or a B2B company – we are all in a B2P world – business to people. It’s your people who interact with every customer, prospect, donor, recruit, or media person. There are few other channels you have that can achieve the reach and personal touch as your employees.
Fundamental to marketing is knowing your audience, crafting the right message, and delivering it through the best medium. We all know that cutting through the clutter is increasingly difficult. Additionally, your target audience is also becoming increasingly wary of interacting with brands that are not authentic. Applying your brand so your employees understand it and deliver on its promise, not only alleviates both challenges, but is also your secret weapon to elevate your brand and build more loyalty. But how? Here are three things to begin with:
1. Make sure every employee understands your brand. They should be clear about your mission, vision, and values. Any employee will know how to make the ‘right’ decision when they are guided by your values. They shouldn’t have to go to an employee handbook or run to their manager every time a new situation arises to know what to do. Living your brand through your values is the foundation of your culture. If your values are just lofty words that no one pays any attention to, then it’s time to revisit them and work with your employees on how to bring them to life.
2. Give your employees the tools to be great brand ambassadors. One of the best ways to start is through social media. The combined reach of your employee’s social media presence probably surpasses that of your company social media channels; leverage that. Begin with developing a social media policy. Provide them with information on how to properly represent your company when they decide to do so through their various social media platforms. Give them examples of what is appropriate and what is not, and where to go if they have questions. If you are not comfortable enough to open this up for all your employees, then select a group as your dedicated social media brand ambassadors. Make sure they come from a wide variety of areas within your organization and represent a diversity of positions and tenure. Customers love to hear employee stories and see what goes on behind the scenes and it also adds an incredible amount of authenticity that no amount of advertising is going to get you.
3. Encourage employees to find ways to bring your brand to life. Although your brand platform is not something that changes often, how its expressed and activated can constantly evolve. Your employees will have the best ideas on how to do that. It can range from potential new products to how to provide better customer service or how to improve the recruiting process. As an added benefit, it’s also a way to increase employee engagement because it demonstrates that the company genuinely values employees’ opinions and contributions.
It doesn’t matter what type or what size organization you have; your brand is one of your most important assets, and your employees are your secret weapon. By empowering them, they can elevate and promote your brand. We know this from experience. Telling our stories and being present on social media has been a key to our growth over the years – it’s a good as time as any to help make it one of yours as well.
The prominence of social media and the presence of a cellphone in everyone’s pockets means many things, two of which being that nothing is private, and your company needs a strong social media policy.
There are eight components to a firm social media policy:
Purpose
Your company needs to understand why the policy is being created to govern social media, and what it will means for your company’s social media going forward.
Definition
Clearly define what your company will classify as social media, the specific platforms, and how the company will use the platforms. Your HR department will also include a clearly defined cellphone use policy, as many companies prohibit the personal use of social media during company time.
Users
Establish who in the company will be authorized to contribute, engage with and respond to social media, and who will be monitoring their activities. Appoint a company photographer to oversee taking photos to post.
Ownership
Decide who is in charge of creating and selecting content with guidelines and schedules for posting. This person, or people, will handle any photo or video release forms.
Content
Plainly define the type of information that can and cannot be shared.
Employee Conduct
Create a code of conduct for employees to adhere to in order to prevent them from accidentally commenting about the company or a situation without the company’s knowledge, control and explicit consent.
Communication Risks
Establish guidelines, both general and specific, and best practices for the use of different social media platforms. Make sure to touch on copyright material, any trademarks, imagery guidelines and a list of topics that should never be posted.
Negative Comments Protocol
Make sure there is a well-defined protocol on how to handle a customer’s negative posts or comments, such as when to acknowledge them, when to delete them and how to handle potential threatening posts or comments. Marketing and human resources both must be involved and have a plan of action to minimize the impact of negative posts and comments. The more likes, shares, tags and attention the post gets, the more the narrative spins out of control.
Strong social media policies set expectations and parameters for potential situations that could harm a company’s reputation. Company success relies on the right social media engagement, so make it easy with a good social media policy.
Originally thought to be a flight of fancy during the COVID-19 pandemic, podcasts have shocked the world by becoming a major part of content creation. Their ability to offer entertainment, information and education without distracting listeners from everyday tasks has skyrocketed their popularity. 64% of podcasters believe podcasts will be even more popular in two years.
67% of Americans between the ages of 18 to 30 listened to a podcast in the last year, and PR pros have pitched podcasts 20% more in Q1 of 2023 than in Q4 of 2022 and have gotten over five times the response rate.
A Closer Look at Podcasts Almost 50% of podcasters look to current events for inspiration for podcast content, meaning that podcasts are an easy way to stay up to date with the world around you. Podcasts have become increasingly popular due to the mobile lifestyles of listeners and the convenience of listening.
On average, a podcast episode will last from 20 to 40 minutes, and more than half of all podcasters release new episodes once a week or more. More than half of podcasters will also record videos of the show, offering a visual experience as well as the default auditory one.
In a drastic up tick from last year, 81% of podcasts feature guests. It has been found that the opmal podcast has one guest and one host, and podcasters will prioritize organic guests over paid ones. More and more podcasters offer premium content so their subscribers can access extra content that is exclusive to them.
70% of podcasters rely on social media to promote their podcasts, meaning that cross-posting clips across their platforms have become increasingly common. Most podcasters use three or more channels to cross-post on, the top four being Facebook, Instagram, their blog or website and Twitter. It is also the best practice for guests appearing on the show to promote it on their channels as well. Twitter is the best place to promote the show, as almost 30% of podcasts hosts have the largest following there.
More than half of podcasters believe there are too many podcasts, but the audience for them continues to grow. Find your niche because there are listeners waiting for you!
