Estimated Reading Time 9 minutes

Social Media; a place to share, chat and connect with people from friends and family to like minded people who like cats. Social Media is also a platform for businesses to flourish, and in my opinion a gold mine for the lower budget companies, including independent jewellery makers, quirky gift companies and also not for profits.

Anyone and everyone seems to be on at least one social media channel, be it Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat there’s one for every need, every story and every moment. As there is such a variation of social platforms out there, you need to pick your channel wisely depending on your audience. However, it seems most not for profits choice in social sites hasn’t changed in popularity. Ranking most popular is Facebook, Twitter and then Youtube, we could argue that YouTube is actually a search engine but that’s another story.

Rising in popularity over the last four years is Instagram, with its acquisition by Facebook in 2012 and many new features being introduced in the last couple of years, makes no surprise really.

So, from the above we know the top social platforms used by nonprofits, we also read in the PPC series blog that social media is the 2nd top channel used by not for profits. Now add that 75% of internet users are on social media, you have yourself a strategy brewing.

There a few tricks of the trade when it comes to social media advertising, however, there are also some realisations people need to take on board before starting a campaign.

Know your audience
Before pouring money into social advertising you need to understand who your target audience is. You need to create audience personas, to really understand them, not just the demographic but the personality, the common interests and about them as people.

It’s not that expensive
If you know who your audience is then you’ve already cut expense, by targeting the exact people you want to reach. As you now know these people, you’ll also start to get a grip on what times they’re online, where they are in the world and finally how best to interact with them.

Be human!
Social media is there to be a conversation driver not just a broadcaster, you need to engage with people on a human level. You may think that’s a silly remark to make because well you are human, but if you are not talking to people on a one to one level, you could just be an automated robot behind a screen for all they know. Tell them your story and listen to theirs.

There are multiple reasons why people use social media but the number one reason businesses and organisations are getting onboard is because it’s growing and essentially it is the future. When getting together your next pieces of social content ask yourself:

• Why am I posting this?
• How will this connect with people?
• What am I trying to achieve?
• How am I going to measure and track the success?

Social media isn’t as easy as people think, you may be a pro at posting about sneezing pandas, but can you cut it when it comes to engaging and driving success for a company? Do you know who your current demographic is online? Do you know how to target them? These are the number one questions to get a strategy started. If you’re struggling to answer those, we can help, I promise.