Tag Archive | "facebook"

5 Facebook Marketing Tips to Know


While other social media sites are popular today, Facebook is still a key site to utilize when it comes to marketing to millennials. So how can you be sure you are maximizing the reach your Facebook marketing has? Read these tips and implement them into your Facebook marketing strategy!

Post with Purpose. Don’t just post for the sake of keeping your feed or page updated with fresh content. Every post you make is a reflection of your business and brand and should be made with that in mind. Be aware of how you are communicating with your target demographic and consider boosting posts if needed to expand your reach. Facebook Insights can help you figure out when and what you should be posting to make the most of your marketing efforts on the site.

Create a Calendar. Part of posting with purpose means planning ahead — and an easy way to stay on top of that is by creating a content calendar to track your posts and marketing campaigns. Websites like Buffer or Hootsuite can be wonderful tools if you are trying to schedule posts on multiple social media sites and allow you to conveniently track all your marketing in one place. However, you’ll still need to monitor your posts and make sure you are engaging with your audience, something not always as easily done when you’re not on Facebook itself.

Update Your Facebook Story. With the recent introduction of Stories to Facebook, a new method of interacting with your audience and keeping them up to date on your business has emerged. Facebook Stories has made posting more casual, as what is posted there doesn’t necessarily have to be as on-brand or company-specific as regular posts. Instead, interesting links, funny memes, cool photos, etc., can be posted to your Story and keep your target demographic engaged, possibly leading to more clicks and views of your company’s profile or page.

Boost Some Posts. Boosted posts allow you to expand the audience of your posts and target a specific demographic at a small cost. All you have to do to boost a post is set your target audience and your budget — and you’ll see a good number more clicks and overall increase your business and brand’s visibility on Facebook. For larger campaigns, you’ll want to go through Facebook Ads Manager and put a bit more thought into your campaign and strategy.

Optimize Your Page. Make sure your Facebook business page is well organized, updated, and easy to navigate and find information. You want millennials to have an effortless and enjoyable experience on your page, which will encourage them to come back and utilize your Facebook profile to interact with your company. For inspiration, look at other business pages on Facebook and see how they organize their pages — then pick and choose your favorite features to roll out on your own organization’s page.

Facebook marketing can be a great way to reach and interact with your millennial audience — so follow these tips for success in your marketing efforts on Facebook!

(via Pixabay)

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Using Real Time Marketing to Reach College Students


Ever since Oreo’s epic real time marketing win during the 2013 Super Bowl, PR and marketing professionals have been ga-ga for real time marketing. That said, there have been plenty of really terrible attempts since, so I think it’s worth exploring the best practices for real time marketing to college students. First, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page here:

What is Real Time Marketing?

The internet has allowed us to communicate more quickly to more people more cheaply than any other medium before, and for marketing professionals, that’s really exciting. In an ideal scenario, real time marketing means offering unique and engaging content to interested consumers at the perfect moment in time. For example, Oreo tweeted this the moment the lights went out during the 2013 Super Bowl:

It’s perfect. People were already madly tweeting about the game and then the outage, so the tweet went massively viral and had all the marketing bloggers talking about it for the next week.

And Then There’s the Bad…

Unfortunately, real time marketing is rarely done in such a seamless way. For example, American Apparel sent an email blast to its subscribers during Hurricane Sandy to advertise a “Hurricane Sandy Sale.” People were understandably outraged:

Let’s be honest here, everybody loves a sale, but when your marketing attempt seems to make light of a serious tragedy that killed 125 people and buried a metro area under water, there’s going to be some negative feedback. I think American Apparel could have approached this event more successfully though. For example, maybe instead of giving patrons 20% off, they donate 20% of their sales to victims of the storm? That’s the kind of real time marketing that wins you fans.

The Best Time for Real Time

College students have the opportunity to attend hundreds of events on or around their campus every year. Between basketball games, football games, concerts, parties, guest speakers, conferences, and television shows there is no shortage of opportunity for real time marketing attempts. That said, not every event is the best place for real time marketing, and it doesn’t always pay to be the first person to open his/her mouth:

“Good timing is equally critical in the world of real-time marketing. But having good timing is not the same as doing things quickly. Where speed is fast and arbitrary, timing is about being patient and discriminating. It can mean acting quickly, but only if you’re thoughtful enough to wait until you identify the right moment—so you’re reacting because it makes sense, not just because you can. Social savvy, whether at a cocktail party or on Twitter, requires a basic understanding of intrinsic social graces, including attentiveness and restraint. When brands rush breathlessly…they often run into trouble.” – Cheryl Metzger

real-time-marketing-college-studentsSo What are the Best Events to Reach Students?

If you’re not in college any more, you may not keep up with the trends. If you don’t, I’d recommend following some college blogs or accounts on Twitter. Still, there are some events that are pretty much guaranteed to hold students’ attention:

  • Sporting events (especially football and basketball)
  • Awards shows
  • Concerts
  • TV shows

Once you figure out which ones your customers are watching, it’s pretty easy to get in on the real time marketing train on Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr.

As Always, Content is Key

By now, you should be putting together a list of a few events that you’d like to try doing some real time marketing during. Good. Now the big question is, “what do you say?”

No matter when or how you do your marketing, high-quality content is the key to a successful campaign. Whether it’s infographics, videos, blog posts, Tweets, or Pins, if it’s not very good, your audience isn’t going to be impressed. This doesn’t mean you have to be an expert at video production or a master of photoshop, but if you’re not, don’t try to use them.

College students – more than other demographics – can smell through your crappy content. No matter how timely your marketing is, any real time efforts will fall short if they’re not well executed.

Has your company or employer started using real time marketing? What tips do you have for using it? Let me hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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