Best practices for Increasing Engagements in Paid Social Media

It’s true that organic social media is a cost-effective marketing strategy, but it’s difficult to reach a large audience exclusively through organic means. Because of this, it’s imperative that you incorporate paid social media into your marketing campaign. Paid social costs money, but you can boost posts to engage a higher percentage of your followers. This will enable you to meet new potential customers who you would otherwise be unable to reach through organic social media.

Social media paid marketing can be a bit scary when you are just starting out. It is a significant amount of money to spend without knowing what will work and what won’t. The good news is that there are dozens of different social media platforms, which means there are many different ways to promote your business and see what works best for your audience.

Paid social media can be very successful when used correctly. Here are some tips for increasing engagements in paid social media campaigns.

Understanding Paid Media

While utilizing organic social media means engaging in social media without spending money on paid advertisement, paid social media on the other hand refers to anything on social media that’s paid for, using advertising dollars to help reach your targeted audience. Basically, these are advertisements or sponsored posts that brands purchase on social media channels to display to their target audiences in addition to their followers. Instagram’s sponsored stories, Facebook’s carousel advertisements, and Snapchat’s brand filters are all examples of paid social media. Through paid media for social channels, brands and businesses have the freedom to customize their advertisements and boost them based on their advertising budget and goals. 

Now that we know what paid social media is, let’s look at the benefits of incorporating these channels within your marketing strategy:

• Gain extended reach with new members for your target audiences.
• Engage a higher percentage of your audience along with ease of customization using Boosting capabilities.
• Receive a variety of reports and insights based on tracking capabilities.
  

The importance of tracking engagement in paid social media

Understanding what engagement is on social media is imperative when planning to use paid social media. How do you know if what you share is being liked in the social media world? This is where engagement metrics come into play and give you insight into what content is working best for your audience. As a business, even if you have thousands of followers, if there is no engagement on your social media page, it indicates a failure to create an impact on the audiences’ minds. Likes, shares, and comments are all indicators of engagement and are vital for the analysis of your current content strategy and planning future paid social media campaigns. 

Why are social media engagements important?

Engagement may be the buzzword of the moment–almost every business wants to increase engagement on social media channels. But why? Let’s explore the reasons that engagement is critical for a business.

Social media proof: 

Engagement on social media provides social proof. If your audience likes, shares, comments, or follows you on your social media handles, it means that your page is socially relevant and offers content that people like and want to learn more about. Consider it the stardom of your business. As you grow in popularity, people will want to follow your business, sometimes converting followers into potential customers. 

Increased brand loyalty: 

Assume you are interested in purchasing a television set. You visited the social media pages of television brands. If one brand has more followers and likes, it will have an edge as a more credible brand. You are likely to choose the brand that has more likes and followers if you are a customer. This is how loyalty develops over time. The next time you need to buy a gadget, you’ll look for the same brand. The more likes, shares, and comments a business gets, the more trust and exploration it receives.

Expands brand awareness: 

Every time an individual engages with your brand on social media, overall awareness of your brand increases. An engagement by a customer could be seen by friends and followers of that person who might visit your page to explore it further. In turn, overall awareness of your brand increases.

Helps increase marketing reach: 

Because social media platforms are global, your business can engage its fans and customers from anywhere in the world. There is no geographical limit to your business. With the right tools, you can develop a social media strategy that engages people around the world and thereby effectively increases your marketing reach on a global scale.

As discussed, there are two ways to reach your audience via social media – organic and paid. While using organic social media for marketing is definitely cost-effective, however, it can be challenging to reach a wide audience solely with organic methods, which is why paid social media should be part of your marketing plan in conjunction. While paid social costs more, you can boost posts to engage a much larger proportion of your followers and reach new target audiences with it. 

Tips on how to get the most engagement from your social ads.

Use tools that are available (targeting options, boosted posts): 

Every social networking site has tools you can use to analyze a post. For example, Instagram offers features that tell you the content interactions that have happened on a post. Consider this as the crux of your analysis and then analyze which posts are popular with your audience. Moreover, based on your paid social campaign, you can even target specific audiences with your sponsored posts.

Boost posts that have good engagement: 

After you have done an analysis of your social media posts, you will be able to determine which of them have performed well (have received more likes, comments, and shares than others). By boosting posts that have performed the best you can further increase engagement with your content.

Analyze and monitor content: 

All paid media campaigns should be subjected to regular and thorough analysis. As a result, you will be able to refine and strengthen your current and future paid social media efforts. Having a strong paid media plan and understanding of what’s working and what’s not will make generating engagement easier.

Familiarize yourself with algorithms: 

Understanding social media algorithms are crucial. Because they are a key to determining what practices (for example time of posting, the format of posts, hashtag research, etc.) you need to adopt while planning a post. Algorithms are constantly evolving. To stay on top of them, you need to update your knowledge regularly. 

Quality over quantity: 

It is futile to have multiple paid social posts with no quality content for your target audience. The prospect of paying for multiple social media posts that are not of any quality is a waste of advertising dollars and is unlikely to gain engagement. You want to deliver value that your audience appreciates, therefore, be sure your paid media strategy delivers top-quality content. 

Key Takeaways

For social media advertising campaigns, engagement is a key metric. It’s one thing to drive clicks on these paid ads, but quite another to drive those clicks back to your website or convert fans into customers. To achieve engagement and profit from that engagement, it is imperative that social paid media strategies are well-planned and analyzed on a regular basis. Use our best practices listed above for tips on how to increase engagement on paid social media and increase the ROI of your social ads.

If you would like more assistance with your paid media marketing strategy, we are happy to assist: Contact Pyxl today to get started with a paid media plan that helps achieve your business goals.

Updated: Apr 13, 2022