How Social Media Ads Will Get Your Content Seen
For as much as we advocate content marketing as a contemporary and effective way to expand your presence online, the stats regarding how most content is shared on social media is more than a bit discouraging. Essentially, half of all posted content receives zero shares and less than .01% will be shared more than 1,000 times. Factor into this the fact that the average marketing conversion rate is less that 1% and you’d be forgiven for wondering what all the time you spend developing content is really going towards.
After all, content marketing is much more than creating content, sharing that content, and those shares resulting in sales on your website. Especially when you consider that a consumer’s journey is almost never that lineal, you need to consider the role that social media ads can play in getting your content in front of the right eyes. Because in between the create and conversion steps of the above consumer process is where you can amplify your top content through a well-targeted remarketing campaign.
But first, you need to improve your Google quality score, which is determined via how much your content is shared. To do that, focus on the top 1-3% of your content that you know will do well over the other 97% that is either untested or generates less than desirable results. To determine which of your content is your best content, share similar content on social media and see what gets shared the most; it is that content that will help to elevate your quality score so that your ads appear with more frequency in front of the people that matter.
Another crucial thing to keep in mind is how pointless it is to target all of your customers. After all, one message does not fit all so you want to tailor each ad toward a certain sector of your audience, perhaps identifying them via a hashtag and being fans of a certain FB page for you to determine.
Now, on most platforms you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. However, on Twitter you only pay when you was earns you a follower, something that can happen long after they have clicked on your ad. So test out your different ads first on Twitter and see which ones get clicks that count so you can roll them out with confidence on the other social platforms.
Finally, let’s talk about the other social media platforms like Medium, Hacker News, Reddit, Digg, and LinkedIn Pulse. Is your audience using these services? If the answer is yes, start experimenting with them to see how you can leverage new platforms to increase your overall shares. At the end of the day, it’s all about trying the things you haven’t yet and really understanding your audience so as to better communicate with and reach them.
