By Jabez LeBret
Pay to Play with Facebook
Your Facebook strategy starts with paying-to-play. There is almost zero organic reach anymore. However, Facebook allows for two types of strong targeting: psychographic targeting or like-audience targeting.
Psychographic targeting is a fancy way of saying more than just demographics. What are people’s interests and habits? Within the ad platform, you are able to target people based on the types of things they are interested in along with the typical demographic profiling. This is important because you are able to broaden the criteria for who should see your ad.
A Facebook ad should be just a link to some content (blog, video, infographic) with a nice image. Alter the color of the image so the tone and hue are off. This will make the ad pop off the target’s wall better. You should also avoid adding any text above the image.
It is important that the image on your landing page is at least 500-by-300 pixels (the size of the Facebook graphic shown above). This will generate a large image in the Facebook stream.
Use Hashtags and Images on Twitter—But at the Right Time
Using Twitter for marketing is challenging on several fronts: tracking end results, hitting at the right time and getting traction. This does not mean you should ignore Twitter, but there are a few things to note:
Images on tweets almost double your engagement for both favorites and retweets. Users like the images. This does not mean every tweet needs an image. Stick to a solid 80/20 rule, with 20 percent of your tweets having images.
There is plenty of data showing that the time of day you post matters. Your best call-to-action tweets should happen at the optimal time of day for your target audience. If you believe your target audience is everyone, then post it twice so you hit both the eastern and western United States.
Hashtags also increase your post’s likelihood of engagement. There is a diminishing return to the number of hashtags you use. In this case, more is not always better. Try using one or two for optimal results. This also leaves you more space for the actual tweet.
Share Infographics and Memes (Yes, Memes) on Pinterest
The Pinterest ecosystem is all image-driven. It sends more referral traffic to blogs than any other social platform — and it
is still a place where you can get all this traffic organically.
For a law firm, two types of images work well with the Pinterest audience: memes and infographics. These certainly do not work: eagles with American flags, courthouse steps, scales or gavels of any kind.
Typically, the best approach for Pinterest is to create an infographic that correlates with a blog post or article. The Pinterest user is accustomed to leaving the Pinterest website, so create a visual to post on Pinterest and useful content on the website to accompany the image. This will maximize your retention of the Pinterest user on your website.
For more information about social media marketing mediums read my full piece, “How to Make Your Social Media Marketing NOT Suck”, on Attorney at Work.