Social Listening vs Social Monitoring: How to Use Both for Content Planning
With social media listening platforms like Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social, and others, it’s easier than ever to listen to what people are saying about you online. But how do you know which conversations matter most to your brand? And how do you use those insights to plan your next move? In this guide, we’ll show you how to make sense of the data — and find out where to go from there.
What Is Social Listening?
Social listening tools let you see what people say about you across multiple channels. They monitor mentions of your brand name, product names, hashtags, URLs, and more. You can even set up alerts to notify you whenever someone uses certain keywords related to your content. For example, if you run a blog about dog training, you might want to check Twitter every day for mentions of #dogtraining. If you spot a mention of your brand name or product, you can quickly respond and engage with customers.
Why Should I Listen?
The best way to understand why people talk about you is to actually pay attention. When you’re monitoring conversations, you’ll notice some things that don’t seem relevant. Maybe people are talking about your competitor, or maybe everyone’s just having fun. But by paying closer attention, you’ll learn what matters to your audience. This insight can help you decide whether to invest time and energy into a given conversation, and whether to ignore it altogether.
How Do I Start Using Social Listening Tools?
There are lots of ways to start using social listening tools. Some companies offer free accounts, while others charge monthly fees. Here are three popular options:
Facebook Ads Checklist for Optimization
Facebook is one of the most powerful channels for online marketing. It allows businesses to reach millions of people across the globe. However, there are many things to consider when optimizing ads on this platform. We've compiled a comprehensive list of tips to help you maximize your success.
1. Set up your ad accounts
2. Choose a target audience
3. Create a campaign strategy
4. Customize your ads
5. Use dynamic creative
6. Track performance
Why use Facebook Ads?
The number of potential customers is staggering. There are over 2.7 billion monthly users on Facebook alone. If you're trying to reach those people, why bother with anything else?
Facebook ads offer incredible targeting options. You can target based on geography, demographics, interests, behaviors, and much more.
Why run a Facebook Ads campaign?
Facebook Advertising is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your product or service. You don’t even need to hire a marketing team to do it. All you need is a computer and a credit card. But how much does it really cost to advertise on Facebook? And what exactly can you achieve with such a low budget?
The answer to both questions is simple: Facebook Ads are extremely affordable. If you want to test out some campaigns without investing too much money into them, Facebook offers three different types of ad packages. They range from USD2.50 up to USD5.00 per day. These prices include everything you need to start running a successful campaign - including targeting options, creative assets, and landing pages.
You can use Facebook Ads to target specific groups of people based on demographics, interests, age, location, gender, relationship status, education level, religion, occupation, income, hobbies, language preferences, and many others. So, whether you want to attract customers from a particular region, sell more products to women, or send targeted messages to fans of your favorite band, Facebook Ads can help you find those exact people.
After selecting your target group, you choose the type of ad you'd like to run, set a budget, and select the number of days you'd like to run the campaign. After that, just sit back and wait for the traffic to roll in.
The Apple iOS 14 update and its impact on Facebook Ads
Apple recently announced its latest version of iOS, iOS 14. The update introduces several changes, including some that could affect how people use Facebook ads. For example, the update includes a new feature called "App Limits," which lets parents block apps on their children's phones.
This change affects how people access conversions from Facebook Pixel. In short, this means that if someone goes to a site that uses Facebook pixel, and then visits another site within the same browser session, there won't be any data shared between those sites. This change doesn't apply to mobile devices, where people are already limited to one app per device.
However, Apple's decision to limit the number of apps that can run simultaneously could make it harder for marketers to track conversions across multiple channels. If someone sees an ad on Instagram and then makes a purchase on Amazon, for example, it's difficult to say whether the person saw the ad because he or she wanted to buy something on Amazon or because he or she happened upon the product while browsing.
In addition, Apple says it will begin enforcing stricter privacy rules for developers. Apps must now ask permission before sharing information like location, contacts, photos, videos, and even calendar entries. Developers can no longer collect personal information without explicit consent.
To learn more about the iOS 14 update, see our article, "What you need to know about Apple's iOS 14."
How to Prepare your Facebook Ads for the Apple Update
The Apple Watch Series 4 is set to launch later this month, and it looks like Facebook is preparing for the changeover. On Tuesday, the social media giant announced that it would no longer allow developers to access certain data collected via the Apple Health app. This includes information about heart rates, sleep quality, and exercise activities.
This means that advertisers won't be able to track Apple Watches as well as iPhones. However, there are still ways to make sure you're capturing the most accurate data possible. Here are some tips:
1. Verify Your Domain
Before you start advertising, verify that your domain is up-to-date. If you've been sitting on a.com address for a while, now might be the perfect time to switch over to a.io. You'll want to do this because Apple doesn't provide a way to verify domains. In fact, one developer even reported that his ad account was suspended when he tried to verify his domain.
2. Use Only Conversion Events You Can Control
Facebook says that it will continue to support conversion events such as "Add to Cart," "Download Now," and "Book Appointment." These are great for tracking sales and conversions. However, if you don't control those events, you'll miss out on some important insights. For example, if you run a retail store, you probably don't have much control over "Download Now" events. So, you'll likely miss out on some key customer behavior metrics.
3. Opt Out of Advertiser Tracking
1. Set up Facebook Pixel to properly track your ads.
Facebook Pixel is an analytics platform developed by Facebook that allows marketers to collect data about how visitors interact with their campaigns. This includes things like what people do once they land on your website, whether they clicked on one of your advertisements, and even where they came from.
The tool is designed to help advertisers make better decisions about their marketing strategies. For example, if someone lands on your website and doesn't convert into a sale, it could mean that there are issues with the design of your landing page. Or maybe the product description isn't clear enough.
You'll need access to the backend of your website to set up Facebook Pixel. If you don't know anything about coding, we recommend hiring a developer to build this for you. Once it's installed, you'll want to see how many people are interacting with your content. Then, you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
2. Choose the right marketing objectives.
Facebook’s Advertising Manager is designed with the target audience in mind. If you don’t know who your target market is, it’s difficult to choose the best type of advertisement. For example, if you want to promote your product to people aged 18–24, Facebook will show you ads based on age, gender, interests, location and device. But if you lack information about your target market, Facebook won’t be able to help you out. So how does Facebook determine your target market?
You tell Facebook what you want to achieve by choosing one of the 11 different goals listed above. This way, Facebook knows exactly what kind of advertisements you want to see.
3. Choose and properly segment audiences.
Facebook offers three different ways to target your ads: Interest-based targeting, demographic targeting, and geographic targeting. Interest-based targeting allows you to select specific topics that appeal to certain groups of people. For example, if you sell shoes, you could target people who like hiking. Demographic targeting lets you pick out people based on their characteristics, such as age, gender and languages spoken. Geographic targeting helps businesses find customers near their physical locations.
If you're looking to target a small group of people, use interest-based targeting. If you want to target everyone, use demographic targeting. Or, if you want to target people across the globe, use geographic targeting.
4. Use multiple Facebook Ad formats.
Facebook offers four different types of ad formats:
- B.
- Video Ads You might think video ads are best for generating leads, but they don’t necessarily work well for brand awareness.
- While video ads do generate a lot of impressions and views, they aren't always effective for driving conversions.
- On average, video ads perform worse than image ads.
- But there are exceptions.
STORY: "5. Create video ads to promote events."
Video ads are still one of the most popular ad formats on Facebook. They're easy to make, cost-effective, and allow you to target specific audiences based on demographics and interests.
If you use video ads to promote events, you'll see high levels of engagement and reach.
In fact, video ads performed much better during the 2018 midterm elections than text ads did.
5. Optimize for placements and delivery.
Facebook Ads Manager allows advertisers to optimize their campaigns based on placement and delivery. This includes choosing where to place the ads and what type of device it appears on. You can choose whether to show the ads in News Feed, Messenger, Mobile App, Desktop, Instagram Stories, or WhatsApp.
You can also decide how often your audience sees the ads and when they are shown. For example, you can set daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly frequency. You can even schedule your ads to run automatically on certain days or times.
7. Creatively design your ads
Designing an ad is more complex than it seems. There are many things to consider, including the type of device the user is viewing the ad on, whether the ad is shown during the day or night, the location of the user, how old the user is, etc.
Below are some technical recommendations you should be aware of when designing your ads:
Technical Specifications - The implementation of image ads has technical requirements that can boost their effectiveness, too.
Here are the recommended parameters so you can make the most of the image ads you post for your campaigns and hopefully yield the best results for your clients:
Image Format - JPEG or PNG
Image Ratio - 1.91:1 - 1:1
Resolution - 1080x1080 pixles
9. Analyze your data
The most important thing about managing Facebook ads is knowing what works and what doesn't work. If you're spending money on advertising without analyzing your data, it could end up being wasted.
Analyzing your data helps you understand how people respond to different types of advertisements and provides insights into where your audience is located. This allows you to target your audience better and reach them in ways that are most effective for your brand.
There are three main areas of data analysis:
1. Audience targeting - Understanding who your audience is and where they live.
2. Ad performance - How well your ads perform compared to others.
3. Campaign performance - How well your overall campaign performs.
Key Takeaways
Facebook advertising is the most affordable way to start building relationships with customers. But it takes a lot of work to win the game of getting noticed. In today’s world, there are many ways to reach people—and some are better suited to your brand than others. To maximize your efforts, here are three things you should know to get the most out of your Facebook ads:
1. Always keep yourself up to date with changes in the industry. This allows you to adapt quickly and remain ahead of your competition.
2. Keep an eye out for these trends because they give you insight into what works best for your target audience.
3. Align everything with your objectives. If you want to build trust, offer discounts, or encourage people to buy now, make sure your messaging matches your goals.