5 Social Media Marketing Features You are Not Using (But Should Be)
Social media marketing is such an integral part of being a successful business these days. Luckily, social media platforms are aware of this and are doing their part to make advertising and marketing just that much easier for your company. In fact, most social media users log on at least once a day, so considering this massive online space for advertising, keeping up with the newest marketing features is an important component of a marketing plan. As a social media management company, we always try to keep on top of new features and the best strategies that people can be using in their social media marketing.
There is a lot of opportunity in social marketing if you use the right features. Used correctly, there are a lot of ways you can be reaching your target demographic because these social platforms spend a lot of money to collect demographic information and innovate the best features for brands to connect with users. The challenge is keeping up with all of these new features, which is where the five social media marketing features below come into play—you’re likely not be using them yet, but you definitely should be.
1. Lead Ads for Facebook Users to Fill out a Contact Form
In social marketing we all know how valuable leads are. Make no mistake that this feature, which was added in October of this year, is definitely one of the best social media marketing features to come out. It works on the Facebook mobile app and is open to all advertisers.
The way it works.
Once a Facebook user clicks on the ad while scrolling through mobile, a customizable lead form opens with the user’s Facebook contact information. This form allows users to sign up to the advertiser’s email list or other promotional sign up without having to visit an advertiser’s landing page. It is easy to understand the benefits of this—if the ad catches the eye of someone, you are able to get their info and get them on board with your brand immediately. You can find the setup for these ads on the official Facebook page here. Below is a screenshot example from Facebook:
2. Instagram Ads Through the Facebook Ads Platform
This feature was introduced late September this year. It works by using the Facebook Ad platform (including any information you have preference for targeting) and transfers it to build an ad for Instagram. You can also use Facebook’s new feature for detailed targeting and make the Instagram ads more specific to the platform.
Facebook owns Instagram, which partly is what makes the platforms pretty seamless to use together. The other aspect to consider is that you are likely targeting at least somewhat similar audiences on the two social platforms, so transferring over some of the demographic and targeting info do make your Instagram actually makes a lot of sense for time spent on ad development.
Here are the details:
While Facebook’s primary campaign allows for 14 different objectives, Instagram ads can only use 4 out of the 14 Campaign-level objective types: App Installs, Video Views, Website Clicks, and Website Conversion. While this may seem like a disadvantage, with the simplicity of the Instagram platform, I wouldn’t be too disappointed by this difference in features. It is also likely that more of these campaign objectives will be rolled out in the upcoming year as well.
One thing that you might want to consider is adding specific Instagram Campaigns to your advertisement account or segmenting the campaigns because of this difference in features. This will allow you to track specific details and differences in referral traffic.
Ad sizes. Instagram utilizes different ad specifications than Facebook does. For example, Instagram recommends using square ad images (which makes sense for the infinite scroll-square photo platform). Instagram also recommends that ads are 1080 by 1080 pixels for both image and carousel ad formats.
3. Twitter Polls
As of late October/early November, Twitter released a new feature that allows users to create polls and allow their audience to weigh-in on all the topics they care about. These polls are ultimately a new way to engage with Twitter’s massive audience and understand how you should be marketing your brand.
This is a great feature to use for engagement and understanding your customer base better for understanding how you can alter advertising and campaigns. Below is a screenshot example from Bufferapp:
4. Featured Videos on Facebook
Facebook recently added a “featured videos” section, which is absolutely perfect for businesses to upload an advertisement video. These videos are one of the first things that users see when they go on to a brand’s Facebook page, and can be used for an official advertisement or an explanatory video for your company. Visual features are by far the most attractive and interesting to users, so be sure that you utilize this awesome social advertising feature in the upcoming year. For many, this feature is so new you may not have thought to try it out yet.
The New York Times example is a good one. You can see that they have their profile picture set to their logo with an interesting cover photo and a featured video. Not only is this visually appealing, but it also follows the Facebook page recommendations most businesses use. Always remember your social media pages are an opportunity to advertise and market to a large audience screenshot:
5. Twitter Objective Based Campaign
Through “promoted Tweets” you are able to connect with the most receptive Twitter users at the most relevant moment. There are quite a few different options for being promoted by Twitter, but the newest and the one you’re probably not using is Objective Based Campaign. Essentially, this feature allows your ad to attract more followers or website traffic, based on your business objective. The following screenshot is from the official announcement that shows what you pay for depending on your objectives:
Your Turn
In the end, keeping up with the latest social features is time consuming and you don’t always find a winner, so it can be discouraging. However, some of the features we see are so unique and offer such great opportunity for businesses that it’s all usually worth it in the end.
We would love to hear your feedback on how any of these have worked for your brand in the past few months. Are there any features you would add to the list? Let us know in the comments section below.
About The Author
Jason Hawkins / http://www.themiamiseocompany.com
Jason Hawkins is the CEO & Co-Founder of The Miami SEO Company. He has over ten years of experience in search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization and lead generation. His core responsibilities include identifying ways to increase value of services rendered, training staff on advanced SEO topics, and A/B testing internal processes to consistently improve client return on investment.
