SOCIAL MEDIA CONSULTANT IN LONDON
Experienced social media consultant in London who fully understands that social advertising services must drive a commercial benefit to your business. I am also an experienced internet marketing consultant which includes but is not limited to social media marketing services. My social advertising services are bespoke to the needs of the client and I will only recommend social advertising if I believe that it will benefit your goals. I am both a freelance social media specialist and a Head of SEO & SEM of a top Digital Marketing Agency in London. I hold two master degrees (MBA and MA in Marketing & Innovation), won numerous international and national awards, and previously managed large multi-million branded businesses and teams within UK as a Senior General Manager (Hilton & Holiday Inn). Get in Touch if you are looking for transparent and ROI focused social advertising services from a professional social media specialist in London.
Bespoke Social Advertising Services
My social media plans are tailored to your specific audiences on social media advertising platforms matching your target market, user intent and audiences.Social Advertising Services include:
All my social advertising services start with an audit of your company’s identity, goals and culture. How else could I tailor my social advertising strategy to your company?
Driven Social Media Consultant
My advertising on social media and any social advertising I undertake focuses on one thing and one thing only: achieving and exceeding your KPIs.You should know about me...
I have a proven background in achieving top results and awards. I passionately care about anything I do, I treat every project as my own business and I am highly resilient in delivering and exceeding the objectives we agreed.
Versatile Internet Marketing Consultant
I offer online advertising on various platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, Reddit, Pinterest, Foursquare, Stumble Upon, Tumblr and more.Types of Online Advertising
I have been providing complex social advertising services to many SMEs both established and startups, up to large well established and iconic brands in various industries.
Organic Social Media Amplification
Natural Social Media complements Social Media PPC advertising. I will focus on building your audiences on the right platforms displaying the right behavioural intent..Social Media Amplification methods:
Wether you have an WordPress website or not, I will install and configure the best social media amplification tools and plugins, allowing you to automate your best content at the touch of a button on over 15 social channels.
Social Advertising Services…
Facebook represents the most widely used social media platform, with the highest users market share and highest user interaction. The company is investing heavenly in artificial intelligence and their algorithms improve at exponential rates, driven by billions of daily interactions between its users. It is why the platform has maintained itself as an undisputed market leader for so long in a highly competitive social media landscape…its fanatic focus on delivering the most relevant content and experience to its users. As your internet marketing consultant and social media consultant in London, social advertising services on Facebook will be the first step I will consider against your goals. Its advantage, in addition to the high user base, is the high level of data of analytics and granularity you can apply to your audiences….you could target users that liked your competitor’s Facebook page, who have an interest in certain people, who have specific job titles or why not, people who have 3 children, low income, like baseball and are divorced. Call it creepy but it is of course every social media consultant’s dream!
Facebook is by far the largest opportunity of social advertising services available, with over 1.7 billion people using the platform every month. Most people know it for its flexibility in facilitating connections between people and sharing of your and your connections’ experiences. However, any experienced internet marketing consultant, social media specialist or social media consultant has fully experienced the benefits of social media advertising services on Facebook and generally included Facebook advertising as a default option within their social media plan. The large user base, the variety of approaches developed to tailor your social advertising campaigns to your goals and its far lower cost per click compared with Google and Bing Adwords makes Facebook the go to platform for social advertising services. Get in Touch if you would like to learn more about social advertising services on Facebook and how an experienced social media specialist, internet marketing consultant and social media consultant in London can help you and your business to get more leads and more business!
Facebook advertising offers the opportunity to choose between three macro marketing goals to support you in achieving your own KPIs on its social advertising platform: brand awareness, local awareness and reach. Facebook advertising will then ask you about the end goal of your campaign and offer various solutions (these social advertising considerations change all the time so don’t be surprised if your social media specialist, internet marketing consultant or your social media consultant in London will present different options when underlining his social media plan): traffic, engagement, app installs, video views, lead generation. Finally, Facebook will make available a third column allowing you to set up your conversions and track the results of your social media marketing campaign. Facebook advertising allows you several ads formats : Photo, Video, Carousel, Slideshow, Canvas. In turn these formats can be presented as Leads adverts, Dynamic Adverts and Link Adverts. get in Touch if you would like to find out more about how social advertising services can support the growth of your business!
Boosting a post is one of the fastest social media advertising services offered by Facebook to bring your post in front of people who are interested in your Facebook page. This is also the easiest way to share updates, posts, videos, special offers with a larger audience…just choose the post you would like to boost, click the Boost Post button under the right hand side corner of the post, choose your audience and budget and mention the duration of your social campaign, add or change payment method and boost your post. Done. While this is a fast way to advertise on Facebook I must say that as a social media consultant I never use it, mainly because its targeting settings are limited compared with Facebook’ Adverts Manager or its Power Editor. To be honest, as an experienced internet marketing consultant, social media specialist and social media consultant in London I strongly recommend you the use of any of the former two social media marketing tools to launch and mange highly targeted Facebook social advertising campaigns.
The Facebook Ads Manager is the place where most social media consultants create and manage their social ads. Here you can choose your campaign objective (brand awareness, local awareness, reach), your end social media marketing goals (traffic, engagement, app installs, video views and lead generation) and set up your conversion pixels (conversions, product catalogue sales and store visits). In the Facebook Ad Manger your social media consultant can set up your new campaign, audience, placements of your ads, billing and the actual ads. Having used it quite a lot during my career as a social media consultant in London, I must say that I really like the Facebook Ads manager due to its high level of targeting options and ease of use, and I would strongly recommend it against the less targeted boost post option.
Facebook’s Power Editor is its advertising tool for large accounts, agencies and social media consultants who run social advertising services for a living. Out of all the social media advertising tools offered by Facebook this tool is my all time favourite for several reasons. To begin with, the Facebook Power Editor offers almost the same flexibility as the Google Adwords tools, in fact if you worked with Google Adwords you will quickly pick up Facebook’s Power Editor as well. The Power Editor structure begins with creating the new campaign and its objective. You can then create your ads groups and its ads. The great option of “Duplicate” allows you to quickly well…duplicate various parts of your campaign, which is a great option for split testing aspects of your social media marketing campaigns. The second advantage of Facebook’s Power Editor is its audience targeting which allows you even more granular targeting options than the Facebook Ads Manager, it really is the ultimate Facebook advertising tool! So, if you are a professional social media consultant in London, a social media specialist or an internet marketing consultant and not using Facebook’s Power editor than start using it….you will create value for your clients, gain deep data insights, enhance your targeting opportunities and improve both leads and conversions.
Facebook Audience Insights represents, in my opinion the greatest social media audience targeting tool around, it really gives Facebook an edge both against other social advertising platforms and against more traditional advertising services such as Google and Bing Adwords. While there is a lot of talk around privacy (with Facebook learning about you and your audiences both via their platforms and through 3rd party large data insights companies) the Audience Insights represents the heaven for every savvy internet marketing consultant. There are too many factors that you can use to set up a highly targeted audience to be discussed here however, to give you an idea about the Audience Insight’s power: you can target people by age, location, gender, interests i.e. people who have an interest in translation services, connections (i.e. people who are connected to your competitor’s CEO), behaviours, language, income, relationship status, education, work and many many more. Having worked as a social media expert in London for a while I assure you that if you haven’t done so by now you should get on board with Facebook’s Audience Insights tool!
The simple explanation is that Facebook allows your image ad to have a limited text to image ratio of text, if you have too much text than Facebook will reject your ad. To support social media consultants, internet marketing consultants and businesses with evaluating their text to image ratios Facebook provides the Text Overlay Tool. Simply upload the image and the Facebook text overlay tool will tell you wether your image is within the right text to image ratio, wether it has too much or not sufficient text to optimise its reach.
There are three ways you or your social media consultant or your internet marketing consultant can create social ads on Facebook. The first one is by boosting a post, this is the easiest and fastest option though the targeting options are quite limited, I would always recommend you to use the Facebook Ads manager or the Facebook Power editor to really ensure that you are bringing your ad in front of the right audiences. To learn more on how to create an ad via Facebook Ads manager or Power Editor, and learn a bit more on the Audience Insights tool please read the previous FAQs: What is the Facebook Ads Manager, What is the Facebook Power Editor, What is Audience Insights and How to boost a post. If you are looking for an opinion from a professional social media specialist in London, there you go…my personal preference is the Power Editor and I use it in all my social media marketing campaigns.
As any other pay per click model the cost of your ads depends on several factors. In Facebook’s case the cost per click is impacted by the bid that you or your social media consultant are setting up to begin with. Your cost will differ depending on wether you or your internet marketing consultant are setting a manual bid or an automatic bid. The idea of the automatic bid is that Facebook will optimise your cost to drive as many clicks as possible and, as you have probably already realised this option will increase your costs. The other factor is the ad quality and relevance. Facebook, just as Google focuses obsessively on user experiences for two main reasons. On one side bad ads damage their brand identity, image and loses them users. On another side, bad ads don’t get clicked on, hence do not make money for Facebook. Thus, if you or your social media specialist are looking to optimise your cost per click it really pays off to focus on ensuring that your ad is relevant and optimised for your target audience. Another factor that can increase or decrease the cost of your Facebook ad is the congruence between the action you set up (let’s say you optimise for purchase conversions of your translation package) and the intent of the audience (just because your audience showed an interest in translations or certain pages it doesn’t mean that they are looking to buy translation services, they might just seek for information). In this case, the higher the gap between your goal and the audience intent the lower the cost for you (Facebook assigns a lower value to an audience that is less likely to buy). Conversely, the closer the match between your and your audience goals (i.e. purchase translation package) the more value Facebook places on that audience hence higher costs will occur. What you need to keep in mind as a social media consultant, social media specialist or internet marketing consultant is that an ad with a lower bid per click but higher quality and relevance may be shown at the expense of another ad with a higher bid per click but poor quality. Which is why as a professional social media consultant in London you really need to focus on testing, testing and testing at all times…it really pays off.
Throughout my career as a social media consultant I have always found Facebook’s ability to A/B split quite limited if I compare against Google Adwords. Specifically, as a PPC consultant Google Adwords give you the possibility to set up as many ads you may want within an ad group, rotate it evenly for a given period and then optimise based on performance: Great! By contrast, as a social media consultant you do not have this option in Facebook Advertising. There is however a way around it and I use it all the time when setting up my Facebook social media marketing campaign in the Power Editor. The Power Editor has a very handy option to Duplicate…I simply create another ad group by duplicating the first ad group, make my changes and use the two ad groups for my A/B split test.
Ooo…but it is so much more than social! If you read all my FAQ in the Facebook social advertising services section you will by now know that Facebook provides the largest social media user base, superb audience targeting options, various goals set ups to meet your KPIs, great reporting and analytics, lower costs per click vs. Google and Bing Adwords, and re-marketing!
As a social media consultant in London, internet marketing consultant or social media specialist you just can’t ignore the power of Facebook. Well, you can…at the expense of your clients of course!
If you are looking to boost a post then go ahead…you will not need consultancy on social media Facebook advertising. If you are serious about social advertising services on Facebook that you will need a professional social media consultant, internet marketing consultant or social media specialist. Your social media specialist will set up your ads, conversions, goals, heat maps, analytics and reporting, A/B split testing, identify best targeting opportunities, set up funnels and much more. Hence, if social advertising on Facebook is part of your social media plan and integrated within your overall digital marketing strategy then by all means employ a professional social media specialist, social media consultant or an experienced internet marketing consultant…it pays off.
If your business relies on Twitter as part of its natural social media plan, than Twitter social advertising services may be something you would like to consider. Twitter social advertising allows you to increase engagement rates of your tweets, reach more people and start conversations. Twitter social advertising services can be tailored to grow your followers on Twitter, drive people to your website, drive conversions, encourage people to download and engage your mobile app and extend your email database with emails of people showing an interest in your business. Twitter ads represent therefore another great option to consider when creating your social media plan with your internet marketing consultant, social media specialist or your social media consultant in London.
In spite of its recent growth worries within the Wall Street financial community you cannot deny the power and reach of Twitter social advertising services. With over 317 million active users Twitter is a preferred communication medium for a large variety of people including business leaders, celebrities and…president elected Trump. Twitter social advertising services can be used for various goals such as increasing traffic to your website, gain more followers, promote specific tweets and promote your mobile app. You may instinctively believe that social advertising on Twitter is a very competitive arena but you may be surprised to hear that it is not always the case. In fact, as an internet marketing consultant, social media specialist and social media consultant in London I regularly interact with social media professionals and I am always surprised to hear of how little resources they put in Twitter social advertising services. Implicitly, their clients are missing out on this essential online advertising channel, and give you an even better opportunity to get ahead and beat your competition. Do Get in Touch to learn more about how a professional internet marketing consultant, social media specialist and social media consultant in London can benefit your business goals!
As most other other social advertising services Twitter uses an auction based system to determine placement of your ad. The difference is that Twitter only focuses on the monetary part…the higher the bid the better the chance you or your social media specialist win the auction. This means that quality plays little role within Twitter decision to place your ad (though your ad will of course go through a moderation process). Twitter uses two types of biding strategies: automatic and maximum bidding (or CPC as better known). Depending on which strategy you use you cost will be higher or lower (with an automatic option you will most surely see an increase on your CPC). The great thing about Twitter ads is that you are only being charged for the clicks to your website… you will not pay for any other actions and engagements (impressions, replies, and Retweets, for example). Hence, in a nutshell, just as explained for all other social media advertising platforms your cost on Twitter ads can vary depending mainly on competition….the more competition, the higher they will bid, and the higher you will pay for your ad. Looking for professional social advertising services?…get in touch with an experienced, multi award winning internet marketing consultant and social media specialist in London! (that is me, of course…).
Twitter has a base of over 317 million active users and it still is a high profile communication channel for most celebrities, business and thought leaders, and general public…you will have to look no further than president elect Trump’s twitter activity to gain a sense of the social advertising opportunity at hand. When consulting on social media advertising I always present Twitter social advertising services as a major growth hacking opportunity…it is such an under-used paid search opportunity, which is surprising as most social media marketers acknowledge it’s importance as an organic strategy but fail to understand the paid advertising benefits that it brings. So…why would you advertise on Twitter? Well, Twitter gives you several reasons (goals): you can choose to increase the traffic to your website, increase engagement with your tweets, promote your app or gain more followers. You can promote accounts, tweets or trends which really give you and your internet marketing consultant / social media specialist lots of online advertising opportunities to think about. Finally, I would like to challenge you on researching any top Google ranked social media marketing agency, social media consultant in London or UK, social media experts or social media specialists…look at their social advertising services page and try to identify the Twitter social advertising services. You will be very surprised to observe that most of these social media experts or agencies do not advertise or provide this service and they mostly focus on one or few social media platform such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram. But, as we’ve seen Twitter represents with 317 million users a major social media platform in its own right…what a greatly missed online advertising opportunity for these social media agencies and consultants’s clients…. and what a great growth hacking opportunity for you, your internet marketing consultant or your social media specialist in London!
You will first have to sign into your Twitter business account (not your personal account). Next, click the Get Started button. You will be prompted to choose your target audience based on interests, geography, gender, device, users similar to your followers or targeting by keywords in people’s Tweets. Choose from the type of ads available (Promoted Account, Promoted Trends, Promoted Tweet). Set your budget and your bidding strategy (automatic or CPC) and …push the button, you are good to go!
It really depends of your business goals and objectives. As I have mentioned in most of the FAQs within the Twitter advertising section, as a savvy SEO professional I assure you that most of your clients, while acknowledging the power of Twitter are completely unaware of the existence of the paid advertising option. This is not due to ignorance though…most of the social media professionals in London that I speak to are not running or offering Twitter advertising services and focus entirely on Facebook, Instagram and sometimes LinkedIn. Implicitly, their clients are not educated of the benefits of Twitter advertising and are missing out on it…which is a great social advertising opportunity for you!
You probably don’t…if you are on a low budget, only occasionally boosting a tweet, without a social media plan or overall online marketing strategy. If however, you do have a budget this indicates the fact that social advertising represents an integral part of your marketing strategy. Choosing the right medium, for the right objective and the right audience with the right intent is only the beginning of your social media marketing efforts. Setting up a campaign on social media is an art not a process…get your audience, locations, bidding strategies, intent etc wrong and you will not meet your objectives. Get your ads or keywords wrong and you will miss your objectives. Fail to track results to the most granular level and you will not identify opportunities to optimise your campaigns or even the need of a strategy shift. The truth is…running a professional social media campaigns involves a lot of work, technical knowledge and experience. As a social media specialist I would be running keyword research (volume potential, keyword difficulty and competition, competitor keyword analysis, semantic analysis, scrapping major search engines of most popular terms and so on), I would pay special attention to the structure of your campaign, its ad groups, actual ads and behavioural intent, keywords and modifiers, settings and so much more. I would set up, track, monitor and refine your Twitter advertising campaign based on goals, events, funnels, conversions, A/B split testing (ads, modifiers, biding strategies, heat maps and visitor behaviour on page), monitor and optimise your landing pages for conversion and so on. In a nutshell…you will need a professional social media consultant to run your Twitter social advertising campaign.
When thinking of advertising on social media and putting together you social media plan, one of the social advertising services that I will look into is LinkedIn ads. I have been providing services as social media consultant in London for a variety of SMEs, large brands, startups or established businesses. Throughout my career I have found that social advertising conversion to leads varied on LinkedIn vs. Facebook depending on many factors such as time of day, day of week, purpose of message (i.e. branding, sale oriented, lead generation). As your social media specialist in London I would of course be advising you on the best option but the main advantage of LinkedIn vs. Facebook is the professional nature of the network and the mindset of LinkedIn professionals. Specifically, LinkedIn users are more receptive to your business message while users on Facebook are generally more in a relaxed non-business mindset. A social advertising campaign on LinkedIn complemented by a social media campaign on Facebook could initially capture the attention on LinkedIn and then gently establish your “share of mind” on Facebook.
LinkedIn is another high profile social advertising platform that I often use as an internet marketing consultant and social media consultant in London. This social advertising tool presents a great opportunity for any professional social media specialist, internet marketing consultant or social media consultant to leverage an over 450 million user base! Moreover, the platform is mainly targeted towards professionals, hence compared with Facebook, the audience is far more inclined to include within their profile information as title, company, demographics and so on. What this means is that as an social media consultant you can really get value from your social advertising services on LinkedIn and reach professionals (i.e. CEOs etc) you would not reach via other social advertising services and platforms. And finally, as LinkedIn is a professional network, people are far more inclined to listen to your social advertising message than let’s say on Facebook where people display a more social mindset. Do Get in Touch if you are looking to learn more about social advertising services on Facebook …and how an experienced internet marketing consultant, social media specialist and social media consultant in London can help you and your business get more leads and more sales!
There are several types and benefits of social advertising services on LinkedIn. One of the social advertising services that LinkedIn offers is sponsored content. Sponsored content allows you to get your updates in front of a larger base of highly targeted audiences on any device and with an option to set up your budget to a CPC or CPM option. Conversion tracking is available to asses the impact of your LinkedIn sponsored content ads. Another type of social advertising service is Sponsored InMail which presents the advantage of reaching a highly targeted audience directly in their email inbox, with highly personalised messages. This option also presents the opportunity to A/B split test your conversion based on different messages delivered to your audience. Finally, text ads complete the social advertising services “palette” offered by LinkedIn, and it can help you reach a highly targeted audience within minutes. Its main advantage over other social advertising services as sponsored content and sponsored InMail is that you can quickly create your own social ads, set your budget, choose your audience and payment option (CPC or CPM) and you are ready to launch you social media marketing campaign on LinkedIn. By contrast, you will need to contact LinkedIn’s sales team to set sponsored content and InMail social advertising services and campaigns. Do Get in Touch if you would like to asses how an experienced internet marketing consultant and social media specialist in London can help you grow your business, get more leads and more enquiries!
As LinkedIn advertising is set as a CPC business model the price generally varies based on several factors, but overall it revolves around your bids and historical performance of your campaigns (CTRs). This means that, as opposed to Google and Bing Adwords and even Facebook Advertising, LinkedIn’s focus is mainly commercial. There are two options that LinkedIn advertising offers as a biding strategy: CPC (cost per click) where your internet marketing consultant or social media specialist pays only when their ad is being clicked on, and CPM (Cost per thousand impressions) when your social media consultant, internet marketing consultant or social media specialist gets charged depending on the amount of impressions your ad received. Having tested most bidding options, as your internet marketing consultant and social media consultant in London, I would recommend and always use the CPC option for most types of social advertising services. You may find at times though that the CPM option more appropriate if your intent is to drive brand awareness. Finally, I have found LinkedIn ads to cost far more than Facebook social advertising services hence I would always suggest the use of both social advertising services, asses ROI and refine social media plans accordingly. Get in Touch to fin out more about the bespoke social advertising services I offer as an internet marketing consultant and social media specialist in London.
As a professional social media specialist, internet marketing consultant and social media consultant in London I run various social advertising services on a multitude of social platforms. I have found LinkedIn to deliver both great results in terms of conversions (i.e. leads) vs. Facebook for example, mainly due to the mindset of the audience: on Facebook people are social (they “shut off” their business mindset) while on LinkedIn the audience is more likely to engage with your ad (people are in “business” mode). This is why LinkedIn social advertising services are more expensive by far compared with Facebook – it assumes that the leads are more valuable, more “ready” to take action. In my role as a social media specialist and internet marketing consultant I always recommend to my clients (depending on their objectives, brand identity, circumstances, budget and so on) to run social advertising services on both LinkedIn and Facebook, asses results against objectives and refine their social media plan and strategy accordingly. As a final word, I will also mention occasionally I have found LinkedIn social advertising services inconsistent in terms of conversions to leads (depending on the industry targeted) and it’s cost quite high compared with other social advertising platforms. Get in Touch if you are looking for advice on social advertising services from a professional internet marketing specialist and social media specialist in London!
There are three types of LinkedIn ads you can create: sponsored content, sponsored InMail and text ads (please refer to the FAQ point on types of ads in LinkedIn). If you are looking to run sponsored content or InMail then you or your social media specialist will need to get in touch with LinkedIn’s sales team, they do not currently offer a DIY option. If you are looking for a quick DIY option than text ads are available and you or your social media specialist can launch your social advertising campaign within minutes. The interface is intuitive as well which helps. You will first need to log in to the Campaign Manager, find the account where you would like to create your text ad or click “ad account” if you are new to LinkedIn advertising. Choose ” Click campaign”, then “Select text ads”. Fill all fields and then click next. Chose “Destination”, write down your ad and Save. Ad any further creatives, then click Next. Choose your target audience, click Next, choose your bid type (CPC or CPM), input your bid and “Launch Campaign”. And of course, you can always Get In Touch with a professional internet marketing consultant and social media specialist in London for an initial conversation about the potential benefits of social advertising services to you and your business!
If your LinkedIn advertising represents an integral part of your social media plan and strategy, than you will definitely need a professional social media consultant to run your social advertising campaign. Running a successful LinkedIn advertising campaign is a continuous process of hard work, testing (ads, landing pages, audiences and so much more), data insights, conversion optimisation, tracking (heat maps, individual ads performance, market share of the keywords volume etc). Take my advice on this one…employ professional social media providers, it pays off.
While compiling your social media plan, Instagram advertising is another platform I will consider as part of your social media marketing strategy. Instagram has a user base of over 500 million users which makes this platform ideal for businesses looking to use social advertising to share their stories, create new stories and reach highly engaged audiences in a highly creative social environment. If you asked your Social Media Expert what are the benefits of adverting on Instagram he/she will point out that, as a Facebook company Instagram benefits from all the advantages, know-how and systems developed for Facebook social advertising. In fact, Instagram adverts are created via Facebook’s Ads Manager and Power Editor, hence the same level of segmentation is applied both to Facebook ads and to Instagram Ads. When you employ me as your Internet Marketing Consultant I will review the types of social ads that would match best your shorter and longer term goals.
Instagram Advertising is another platform with a significant potential of bringing your message in front of highly engaged audiences. How do you asses the social advertising potential of Instagram? Well…Facebook did buy Instagram, not a bad vote of confidence! So where will your Instagram ads appear? To quote Instagram : “Instagram adverts appear in a bold, linear format at the centre of visual inspiration”…cheesy but really powerful particularly for brands looking to develop strong brand identities, reach creative and savvy audiences that engage with their content. And, as Instagram ads are set up via the Facebook Ads manager or its Power Editor it brings all the relevant benefits described within the Facebook advertising section, including the exceptional targeting opportunities.
As a Facebook company Instagram advertising uses the same social advertising platform as Facebook, that is you can set up Instagram ads via the Facebook Ads manager or via the Power editor. What this means is that the same cost principles apply for Instagram as for Facebook…the cost revolves around the relationship between your bid, how you manage your CPC (automatic or manual), the quality and relevance of the ad and the intent of the targeted audience (the more relevant the audience the higher the cost). Please read the “How much does Facebook ads cost” section for a detailed explanation of how cost is determined for Facebook and Instagram.
You can create an Instagram Ad via Facebook’s Ad manager or its Power Editor in the very same way you would create a Facebook ad. For a more detailed information on how you can create Facebook ads, and implicitly Instagram Ads, please read my FAQ on how to create a Facebook ad in the Facebook advertising section.
Instagram ads represent an excellent social advertising opportunity particularly for companies looking to build a brand, enhance their brand identity or re-launch their brand in front of a highly engaged, savvy and creative audience. If your social media strategy represents an integral part of your overall marketing strategy then, as an experienced consultant on social media in London I assure you this is one opportunity you do not want to miss!
Just as in the case of Facebook advertising, Instagram advertising involves a high level of complexity that goes beyond creating an ad and launching it…tracking results, A/B split testing (audiences, ads, imagery, intent, CPC etc), audience targeting, heat mapping, goals, events, funnels and so much more. If you are serious about a social media strategy than a social media specialist in London or throughout UK will ensure that you are getting the best ROI on your money. A DIY Instagram advertising approach will save you a bit of money but will deliver you no leads…you can only imagine the opportunity cost of the lost leads!
Your decision of wether to use online advertising on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn depends entirely of your social media strategy and goals. Instagram works great when you are looking to raise brand awareness and build a distinctive brand identity with a creative, savvy and engaged audience but may not work as well for more commercially focused goals such as generating sales or enquiries. By contrast, generating sales and enquiries is something that LinkedIn is ideal for several reason: the large pool of users and granular targeting options, the professional nature of the network and the more “commercially engaged” audience (LinkedIn members are more switched on to business related messages) and the ability to target audiences based on factors such as job titles or company your audience works for. Finally, you would use Facebook Advertising to get a bit of both worlds. Facebook’s large user base, the social nature and the social mindset of the audience can appeal to social media professionals running brand awareness campaigns to a more “general” audience compared with LinkedIn or Instagram, drive traffic to your website and move potential leads to a first stage within your sales funnel. In reality, as a London social media expert I never really use one social media advertising platform alone, each platform has its place within a funnel depending of your social media strategy and goals.
As your internet marketing consultant the main three social advertising services I would consider in compiling your social media plan are Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. This is purely based on the large market share of user base, quality of interactions, highly targeted audiences and know-how allowing to match best prospects to your ad (after all it is Facebook’s, Instagram’s and LinkedIn’s interest to ensure your ads are successful, given their pay per click business model). However, only very few internet marketing consultants and social media consultants will ever offer you another advertising solution on social media. This situation presents a significant opportunity for you, your internet marketing consultant and your business. During my career as an internet marketing consultant I have experimented with many other social advertising services and platforms. This includes social advertising services on Reddit, Xing, Tumblr, Stumble Upon, Pinterest and Foursquare. A recent highly targeted Reddit campaign I ran for a tech startup delivered 20% more leads than the social ads we ran on LinkedIn, reinforcing again the potential of other social media marketing platforms. So, if you would like to explore the opportunity to run un-tapped, high potential social advertising services do Get in Touch! I am an experienced internet marketing consultant in London who values and offers integrity and transparency at all times. I also specialise in websites for translators having ranked over 20 translator websites within Google already!
There are various other social advertising services and opportunities, and in my role of internet marketing consultant and social media specialist in London I have been running online advertising campaigns on Tumblr, Reddit, Pinterest, Stumble Upon, Foursquare and Xing. These are all highly untaped online advertising opportunities with most social media agencies and social media experts in London focusing mainly on Facebook advertising, Instagram and LinkedIn. These social networks present growth hacking opportunities for any internet marketing consultant and social media specialist looking to find new growth opportunities, enhance brand identity and promote content, products and services. If you are looking for a professional internet marketing consultant, social media specialist or social media consultant in London then get in touch and I will quickly asses the type of social advertising services your business may benefit from!
Well, as your internet marketing consultant, social media specialist and social media consultant in London I strongly recommend you to consider these social advertising services depending on the target audience and your goals. Bottom line, that 99.99% of the London social media professionals I talked to are not aware and do not provide social advertising services on these networks. Even if you will ask them the question, they would dismiss it telling you that it is not worth the effort. In reality, in 9 out of 10 situations they haven’t even tried these paid social media mediums, and they will probably move the conversation to what they know best: Facebook advertising, LinkedIn and Instagram. Do not let yourself mislead!…your social media consultant in London should explore all paid search opportunities available. Think about the audiences that come with these underused social advertising services, less competition, less cost, higher interaction in many situations, variety of intent and so on… and the opportunity to be a first mover. Hence my advice is…get your social media specialist at work, there’s leads to be had, new growth hacking platforms to try and lessons to learned !
Tumblr social advertising services represent a great opportunity to amplify your content online. If you think about it, 200 million blogs and 80 million posts a day should give you an idea regarding the potential of this social advertising services for you and your business. I test regularly Tumblr advertising against Taboola and Outbrain Amplify, and on quite a few occasions my articles got more visitors, better CPC and more links to it via Tumblr! So what are the type of social advertising services available on Tumblr? The most common ad is the Sponsored post, which in effect is a normal post but far more visible. The targeting options of the Tumblr sponsored ads are quite limited: you can target audiences based on location, gender and interest. Sponsored video posts are also available, and are basically just a replica of sponsored ads but for videos, and offer further video related analytics such as views and engagement. And then there is the Sponsored Day which allows you to tag your logo and tagline at the top of the dashboard for one day, links to the high traffic Explore page populated which can include your posts or posts you’ve selected…very clever and innovative social media marketing idea! Want to hear more on Tumblr social advertising services?..Get in Touch with an experienced Social media consultant in London !…that is me, of course.
Reddit represents such a great opportunity to bring your brand in front of the right audience and the good part about it is that your competitors’s social media agencies or social media consultants in London have none to very very little knowledge of these social advertising services…a great growth hacking opportunity for you to beat competition and gain market share (rankings, website visits etc). I mean, just think about it…234 million active users and more than 10000 communities of highly engaged (anyone who knows a bit about Reddit will vouch that Redditers are sometime far too engaged!)…and your competitors digital marketing consultants and agencies do not leverage this potential! So, what do you need to create an Reddit add? Well, you need a Reddit account to start with. You will then need to click on the “advertise” link at the bottom of any Reddit page. You will need to create an ad copy, there are two ad options available here, link and text , with link ads used to drive traffic to your website and text ads used to engage the audiences in a conversation. You can then ad (optional but I would strongly recommend it) a 70X70 thumbnail and an 1200×628 card image. Once you or your social media consultant in London created the ad you will be taken to an “edit promotion” page where you can preview your ad, select your targeting options, set your maximum bid (Reddit uses a CPM model), scheduling and you are good to go! If your social media consultant in London is not aware of Reddit advertising then you should point out this social advertising services to him!
With 150 million monthly users Pinterest represents a great alternative to Instagram ads (think about it as Instagram’s little brother). It is unfortunately underused from a paid search perspective which represents a great growth hacking, brand awareness exercise and potential competitive advantage ( opportunity for you and your business to jump ahead your competition as a first mover). Just pick the pins you would like to promote, set up your targeting audience, choose your goal (engagement or visits to your website) and launch! As your internet marketing consultant and social media consultant in London I would strongly advise you to give Pinterest social advertising services a try if it fits within your overall marketing strategy. You can afterwards split test results against Instagram advertising (visits to your website, engagement, cost etc), draw your conclusions, learn and refine your social advertising services and strategy.
Stumble Upon is another social media platform that you or your social media consultant in London can leverage to your advantage, mainly as an opportunity to amplify all kinds of content starting with articles, videos, slideshows, basically anything that has an URL address. It has a considerably lower user base than the other social media advertising platforms we have talked about until now, with “only” 25 million users. This being said, a study published in article by searchenginepeople.com shows that StumbleUpon drives more traffic than Reddit which in itself is quite impressive given the significantly higher user base that Reddit has. With StumbleUpon it really is all about the content…the platform represents yet another content amplification opportunity to split test against the mighty Outbrain and Taboola content discovery platforms. As an experienced internet marketing consultant and social media consultant in London I love Stumble Upon both from an SEO perspective (building links to your site), driving traffic and improving time on site, lower bounce rate and for building loyal followers…try it on, you may just be surprised!
With over 60 million users and its clever business model Foursquare represents an exceptional opportunity to drive people nearby your location in your shop, restaurant, hotel and so on. What do I mean? Well, let’s say a Foursquare user is in your neighbourhood, he is looking for a restaurant, hotel etc. In an normal organic situation the most relevant local businesses would be served to the users in the same manner that Google would work from an local SEO perspective. With a Foursquare ad however, your business would appear at the top of the listings bypassing your competitors, hence far higher potential to convert searchers in customers! Foursquare social advertising services are a great opportunity to complement your Google local SEO services and get ahead your competitors…I guarantee you than most of the businesses in your neighbourhood are unaware of the potential of these Foursquare social advertising services…which is in effect a great growth hacking opportunity for you! How do you get started with Foursquare online advertising ? Well…tell Foursquare your monthly budget, write your message and get on with it! You will only pay when the Foursquare user interacts with your ad either by visiting your business or by tapping on your business information and you can always use their analytics to asses your ROI…having run quite a few Foursquare social advertising services and campaigns I would strongly encourage brick and mortar businesses to take advantage of this opportunity!
You can think about Xing as LinkedIn’s very little German brother, they are very similar, both professional networks though Xing has a far lower user base at only around 12.5 million users. The same benefits of the social advertising services on LinkedIn apply to Xing as well, though as a word of caution the intent of Xing users is quite different than LinkedIn’s….while LinkedIn user base is formed of professionals who are mostly in full time employment on Xing most users (an estimated 50%) are searching for a job and around 750 000 users are students in German speaking countries. Understanding the intent on Xing and its demographics (mainly Germany) will allow you to asses wether these are the right social advertising services for you and your business i.e. is your product, software, service targeted at students?…in Germany? Well…why not give Xing social advertising a try?
I strongly suggest you get consultancy on social media advertising before integrating these channels into your social media plan. It is quite essential that your social media consultant in London understands very well your strategy, long term and short term objectives and integrate the appropriate social media advertising services within your overall business strategy. Putting aside the obvious technical expertise (i.e. keyword research, setting up campaigns, ad groups, settings, ads creation, A/B split tests, goals, events, funnels, heat maps, competitor benchmarking, conversion optimisation and so on…) I have also underlined throughout the FAQs above the lack of expertise in growth hacking techniques involving social media services on Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Pinterest, Foursquare or Xing. All these social advertising services present massive untaped opportunities both due to their large user bases and due to their “untapped” nature. While I strongly suggest you employ professional social media advertising services I also advise you to really check the credentials and experience of the Social Media Agency or Consultant…as explained, 99.99% of the social media consultants in London have little to no experience on managing campaigns on these channels. Hence, my last advice is…pick well!