On September 29th, Dayvon Kimble, Digital Media Nation’s Director of Social Media and I attended a course at Ponce City Market taught by Christan Duncan to learn about paid social media advertising. Most people are familiar with social media in a personal way but as Marketers, we are interested in the business side of social media. This course discussed a variety of different paid ads such as pay-per-click (PPC), display ads, social media ads and even retargeting, which are all tasks we perform on a daily basis at Digital Media Nation. Specifically, we focus on Facebook’s paid ads such as page-like campaigns and boosting posts.
The purpose of attending educational sessions such as this one is to stay up to date on improvements, changes, or even new techniques to make these processes more effective for our clients. After all, social media is constantly changing, and Digital Media Nation believes in continued education in order to better ourselves and our clients. I appreciate working for a company that understands the importance of investing in employee development and for allowing us to take advantage of educational opportunities.
The Social Media Course:
Mr. Duncan kept the class upbeat and fun by telling jokes and using his own personal experiences to make the information more relatable. I enjoyed how he broke the successful application of social media advertisements down into a simple process that helps marketers build more effective campaigns. Let’s jump into it with the first step which is how to build a social media strategy with the components that follow:
- Brand: Include the company’s mission, vision, essence, value proposition, etc.
- Audience/Targeting: Who is your customer?
- Voice: How you are heard by customers (i.e. Are you funny, serious, or weird)
- Message: The majority of the time should be spent educating and informing and the remaining time should be divided evenly between inspirational and sales messages
- Goals/KPIs: Your goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should work together
- Channels: Only utilize channels that work best with the company’s business model
After defining the components of your business and target market, you can use this information to build a strong paid social media advertisement. As mentioned earlier, we specifically focus on boosting posts and building page like campaigns to improve our clients reach. These activities also bring awareness to our clients’ brand. Of the components listed above, selecting your target audience and tying together goals and KPIs were most relevant to the clients we manage.
All of the components are important, but for our services, these are key when building campaigns. The brand is the starting point to how customers perceive what a company represents. This is the driving factor in building the remaining components. Your brand drives the goals and performance indicators a company needs to meet to have effective ads, all while defining the customer that is being targeted. Once you understand the target market, you then can define your voice, which the way that your customers perceive and “hear” you as a business.
A better understanding of this process has given me clarity in building campaigns. I am now able to translate refined information for each of my clients into strong, responsive ads that build engagement and awareness.
See how Digital Media Nation uses social media to market YOUR customer experience and build YOUR reputation online today. I know the process works because I, along with the rest of our marketing team, help clients grow and humanize their brand through social media every day!
About Christan Duncan:
Solution seeker and brand architect of THRSHLD, Christan aspires to help others achieve their dreams. The Paid Social Media Event was educational, entertaining and an active event that served as the perfect learning environment for creatives and marketers such as ourselves. I attribute the success of the event to Christan’s ability to make people laugh and engage when he is speaking. As a business owner and educator, Christan has first-hand experience in social media marketing that is applicable to an individual’s personal and/or professional lives and I would be happy to attend another course if the opportunity presented itself.
