Think you don’t need social media experts? Think again. Mastering social media is an art and can take years to reach expert level. And, like many things, the more you learn about the platforms, the more you realize how little you know.
But maybe you don’t have the budget to hire a team right now. We get it. However, there are ways for you to quickly and easily up your social media game with these social media tips.
1. Use this picture, not that one.
No one can truly define what “thumb-stopping” content looks like. Sure, you can probably easily tell what is more engaging when given a side-by-side, but a manual on what will garner the most engagement just doesn’t exist.
However, a rule of thumb that we have learned after running hundreds of campaigns for clients is to choose images with people looking straight through the screen.
Have a look at the images below. All were used side-by-side in real campaigns for our clients.
In the first set of images, the goal we wanted to depict in the image is clear: family. But the image with the subjects looking straight at the camera performed far better, when the only variable in the campaign was the image.
| Cost per link click | Cost per link click |
| $6.25 | $0.73 ⬇$5.52 |
Have a look at some other images from a different campaign.
| Cost per landing page view | Cost per landing page view |
| $4.17 | $3.65 ⬇$0.52 |
The results speak for themselves, and they are especially powerful for platforms like Instagram. But don’t take our word for it. Try it for yourself and see how you go. And remember that whatever your brand, whatever your product – people want to connect to other people.
2. Invite those likers
You don’t necessarily have to spend money on a page like campaign to grow your audience. Nor do you have to post content constantly with the intent of having your page following grow incrementally.
It may not work as quickly as a page like campaign, but a quick hack is to invite the users who are engaging with your content to like your page.
- Head to a piece of content that has received good engagement.
- Click the reactions number.
- Scroll down and invite the users who have an ‘Invite’ button next to their name.
Vouila! You’ve sent out page like invitations for free, and to users who you already know want to see your stuff!
3. Drill down your target audience
If you’re using Facebook Ads Manager, this is a tip for you! If you’re still running ads through ‘Ads Centre’, maybe this will convince you that you need a heavier duty program.
Facebook Ads Manager is not for the faint of heart. It’s convoluted and not very user friendly. But once you learn your way around, it’s a bit like Photoshop. The possibilities are endless.
For instance, when you’re creating an audience, you would have noticed the ‘Detailed Targeting’ section. This is where you narrow down your audience from the entire region you’re targeting to people who have specific interests. Have you also noticed the little buttons underneath – ‘Exclude People’ and ‘Narrow Audience’?
This is where things get fun, and specific!
Using exclusions
Let’s say you have an insurance business. You offer home insurance, but you don’t offer life insurance. If you just put ‘Home Insurance’ into the interest (detailed) targeting, you’ll have a broad audience and may grab peoples’ attention who are also interested in life insurance services.
How do you avoid this? Add in your initial interest (in this case Home insurance) then hit Exclude people. In the next box, type in the interest you would like to avoid targeting (in this case Life insurance).
Now, you will be able to target an audience who is interested in the product or service you provide. Check out how the audiences sizes changed when we excluded users we did not want to target.
Narrowing audience pools
Let’s check out another way to use these tools. Let’s say, for instance, you have a company that sells headphones, but they’re only available to users with iPhone 7’s. You want to make sure you’re not spending money delivering ads to users who would be unable to use your product. To do this, we will use the ‘Narrow Audience’ option.
Let’s start with targeting users who are interested in headphones. Check out the size of the audience.
Now let’s see how the pool of users reduces when we narrow our audience.
Instead of paying to reach 34,000,000 people who may or may not be interested in the product you’re selling, we can narrow down the audience to ensure our ads are only reaching the eyes that we want to.
4. Give your page some love
Have a look at your Facebook page as if you were one of your customers. Is it cohesive? Can you quickly find what you need? Does it look good? Well-branded?
Be brutally honest with yourself. If it could look better, invest the time. Remember that more and more people are turning to Facebook over websites for information on a business. As such, you want to put your best foot forward from the get-go.
Here are some quick ways to better your page’s aesthetic:
Add a new cover photo slideshow
Making videos can be time consuming. However, there is an easy way to bypass creating a cover video while achieving a similar effect: slideshows. You add a few photos and BOOM! You’ve got a showcase of your business and offering. If you don’t have any high quality photos of your own, check out sites like Unsplash or Pexels for free stock imagery.
Edit your side tabs
Did you know that those tabs on the side: ‘Home’, ‘Services’, ‘Reviews’ etc. are able to be edited? You can chop and change and add in sections that are more relevant to your business.
Go to your page > Settings > Templates and Tabs
Once there, scroll down to the bottom and hit ‘Add’.
You can also drag and drop where you would like each service to appear on the left hand sidebar. This way, your customers have easy access to everything they need.
Add in your story
Literally. There is section called ‘Our Story’ in the right hand column of your Facebook page. If you go to your Facebook page, and there is a section that looks like this:
Add to it! Put up a photo of your team, your office building or a culture event. People want to know that they are connecting to other people, and this is a great way to show them that they are.
5. Try, test, and try again
This one is for you, Facebook Ads Manager users. Think you know your target audience? Think again. Too often, business owners narrow their audience far too early. As a result, they continually run into high cost per results. To avoid this falling into this trap, split test, split test, split test.
When creating your campaign in Facebook Ads Manager, you are able to select one objective. Next, you are prompted to create an ad set. This is where you choose your placement, audience and delivery schedule. So, if you want to test a few different audiences… create a few different ad sets.
Have a look at the below campaign for one of our clients. The objective of the campaign is link clicks and the intended audience is senior citizens interested in home care. However, in order to achieve the lowest cost per result, we didn’t make too many assumptions about our audience and split tested three different audiences.
Check out which one is performing best.
Try, test, and try again. You may be surprised at who is engaging with your content.
Social media isn’t easy and managing your page and your ads takes time and expertise. However, taking the time to invest in your Facebook page will pay off. If you know what you’re doing, the possibilities are endless.
