Carol Morgan

By BDX Guest Blogger, Carol Morgan, mRELEVANCE

If you haven’t visited the Facebook ads manager recently, you might be pleasantly surprised next time you take a peek. Facebook recently rolled out new updates that give businesses more control over campaign objectives and ad placements, as well as access to more accurate reporting.

The biggest change is that advertisers can now select from one of eight campaign objectives whereas previously businesses only had a choice for ad type. The new objectives include page likes, post engagement, website clicks, website conversions, app engagement, app installs, offer claims and event responses. Based on the chosen objective, Facebook will then recommend the type of ad your business should run.

The revamped ad manager also allows businesses to choose where they want their ad placed (in the news feed or in the right hand column and on desktop or mobile). However, Facebook still offers the option to let the site automatically determine where the ads will be placed based on where it believes they will perform best.

With both of these changes, making sure your business’ campaign is effective will be more important than ever. Thankfully, new ad and campaign performance statistics now display how many times a particular objective was met and what the cost per result was.

These new changes to Facebook advertising literally put businesses in the driver’s seat when it comes to social media advertising. With more ways than ever to use Facebook to grow your business, this form of advertising is definitely one of the easiest and most cost effective out there today.

 

By BDX Guest Blogger, Carol Morgan, mRELEVANCE

LinkedIn, the top social network for professionals, is looking to increase its business appeal by introducing sponsored updates for company pages.

While LinkedIn advertising has existed for a few years, the newly added sponsored updates allow businesses to specifically target updates to customers. And, with a new prominent placement in users’ news feeds, instead of in the sidebar, sponsored updates exponentially increase the potential for engagement and exposure.

When it comes to defining the audience for your sponsored update, the sky is the limit. Audience filtering options include countries, states or regions within states; specific companies, industries or company sizes; job titles or function; education; skills; group memberships; gender and age. However, audience isn’t the only thing businesses can control, as they can also determine budget, campaign length and if they want to pay every time LinkedIn shows or every time a user clicks on their update.

If LinkedIn advertising sounds like just another social media network you have to pay money to, think again. While Facebook and Twitter are great for reaching current or potential customers, LinkedIn is the go-to source for building or enhancing business relationships and for reaching professionals who are searching for their next job. LinkedIn’s core audience is already on the site because they want to learn more about you, your company and your job openings, so sponsored updates are a great way to more effectively reach an already willing audience.

 

 

By BDX Guest Blogger, Carol Morgan, mRELEVANCE

Tweet, tweet, tweet! Many home builders, real estate agents and industry suppliers have finally started tweeting their content and creating buzz with their interaction. However, Twitter users and skeptics alike still want to prove that their time and energy is worth it. Luckily, help proving the return on investment on Twitter is finally here! Recently, Twitter released a new analytics platform which provides users with a wealth of useful and insightful account information.

Among the information available when a company or user logs into the analytics portal is a timeline glimpse of your follows, unfollows and mentions over the last 60 days. Below the timeline is a chart displaying recent tweets along with retweets, favorites and replies each specific tweet received. To see which content is among your most actionable, users can sort this data to show your “best” or “good” tweets, including highlighted statistics on which tweets or actions fall within your top 15 percent for the past 30 days. Businesses can make the most of the data from this chart by noting what types of content or tweets are most successful, and applying this information to future tweets.

Switching to the followers view, users can see the growth of their followers since the account was created. A further breakdown of  followers’ location by country, state and city; gender; interests and who else they are following provides interesting insight that can help companies strategically plan tweets to appeal to their audience demographics.

Ready to start tweeting more relevant content for your Twitter followers? Be sure to bookmark this URL, which takes you directly to the Twitter analytics login page: https://analytics.twitter.com/accounts/1edxhg/timeline_activity.

By BDX Guest Blogger, Carol Morgan, mRELEVANCE

I’ve got a challenge for you: show off your new home or community in six seconds or less. Sound difficult? Even though it might be a little tricky, it does force you to get creative, which is exactly why Vine, a video sharing app from Twitter, has become so popular with users and brands alike.

Videos on Vine are limited to six seconds; however, they play in a continuous loop until the user scrolls down to watch the next video. For marketers, this makes Vine a great tool for entertaining current and potential customers, which can lead to increased brand awareness.

Here are a few ideas of how homebuilders can use Vine:

  • Share videos of a home throughout the various stages of construction.
  • Share a video with short clips from various rooms in the home.
  • Show off a community by creating a video with clips of the location, amenities and streetscapes.
  • Create a video showing the day in the life of an employee.
  • Develop how to or educational videos.
  • Promote a current incentive or contest.
  • Showcase homeowners at a community event.

While these video ideas for showcasing your specific product and brand, you should also create additional “fun” videos related to the holidays, seasons or just for pure entertainment to give your viewers a reason to keep coming back to your profile.

You can even put your followers to the test by asking them to come up with a creative video for you!

Ready to get creative with Vine video sharing ? Contact Marketing RELEVANCE.

 

 

By BDX Guest Blogger, Carol Morgan, mRELEVANCE

How many fans does your Facebook page have? 100? 500? 1,000? 10,000? Now, how many of those “fans” are actually engaging with your company? More likely than not, not as many as you’d like. While gaining new fans on any social media site these days can be done through social media advertising, actually getting them to like, comment, retweet, share, etc. is something that must be done organically. And, according to Hubspot, photos are a great way to engage fans and solve this challenge. In fact, Facebook posts that include photos receive 53 percent more likes and 104 percent more comments than the average post.

Sounds impressive? It is. However, Facebook isn’t the only place marketers are seeing picture engagement. The rise of Pinterest and Instagram over the past year has also played an important role in determining that pictures really are worth more than one thousand words.

By posting more photos on Facebook, you’re not only increasing engagement, but also increasing EdgeRank, which is Facebook’s visibility algorithm based on user interaction. The higher your EdgeRank, the more likely it is your content is showing up in your followers’ newsfeeds.

Does this mean that your page should strictly start posting photos? No. Variety is still essential. Just like no one wants to see a Facebook page filled with just text statuses, they also don’t want to see just photos. However, you can spice up your links by posting a photo from your post as the main status with the link URL in the description or comments section. In fact, by posting a photo with a link, you are increasing your odds of getting a click through by 84 percent.

So, what’s the main takeaway? Photos are important. Make sure you are taking lots of them and sharing them everywhere you can in order to get the most bang for your buck in terms of social media.

If you’re company is looking to visually engage customers in order to increase your ROI, contact Marketing RELEVANCE.