Social Media Marketing Q&A

Hey, welcome back to the Social Sessions Podcast! Picture yourself as a digital marketing guru, a master of social media strategy, and a trailblazer predicting trends for 2024. Now, imagine gaining all these insights just from tuning into this episode! We've got a treasure trove of information lined up, with key nuggets on platform selection, content reuse, and savvy planning that could set your online brand on the path to greatness.

Ever wondered how to gauge the success of your digital marketing efforts? Prepare to have your minds blown as we delve into the nitty-gritty of measuring results, engagement rates, and return on investment (ROI). We’ll also shed light on how selective platform use, effective community engagement, and smart content reuse can give you an edge in this digital space. Exciting, isn't it?

But that's not all! We also delve into the future of social media and forecast some mind-boggling trends for 2024. Expect to hear about the rise of AI and AR technologies, and how they could revolutionize online shopping. Plus, we'll offer tips on crafting high-quality content that grabs attention and keeps your audience hooked. Remember, we're always here to answer your queries, so don't hesitate to drop us a DM at @socialsessionspodcast on Instagram.

34 Predictions for 2024: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/34-predictions-social-media-marketing-2024/697420/

ROI on Social Media: https://www.tj-creative.com/blog/buyersjourney

Try Later: https://try.later.com/d87iuh5hlhji

Chapters

• 0:00 Digital Marketing and Social Media Strategy
• 11:36 Understanding Results, Engagement Rate, and ROI
• 19:13 Platform Selection, Content Reuse & Planning
• 32:04 High-Quality Content and Engagement on Social Media

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Have you ever wondered what goes into your favorite brand's digital marketing strategy? I'm Tara, the founder of TJ Creative Agency, and I'm Audrey, the creative marketing director of TJ Creative Agency. Whether you're an influencer, a business owner, a content creator or just an overall creative person, we'll teach you how to create the perfect social media strategy and build your brand online. All right, hi guys, welcome back to social sessions podcast. It is just me, it's Audrey on the mic. But good news is, tara will be making a more regular appearance again, starting, I believe, next week, because we now have like a standing date in which we are recording. So I know you've been hearing a lot of my voice lately. You've been hearing a lot of solo episodes in the last month, two months, however long I literally don't remember. I really don't remember but she will be more regularly on the podcast again, which is exciting. Just wanted to let you guys know. So this week we're going to be doing a Q and A and I pulled these from a couple of different sources, so the first one being our Instagram. So if you don't follow us on Instagram, it's at social sessions podcast, and I had asked you guys yesterday in an Instagram story what are some of the questions that you have about social media that maybe we either haven't covered or you want more detail on that we have covered. You know, what are some things that you guys are wondering about, what are some questions you have. So that's where that's the easiest way for you to get in contact with us and so if you want to be a part of the next Q and A, that's the best place to do it. Also, if you just have like general questions for us, we are in the DMs over there. We might not get back to you immediately because we have our hands in several Instagram accounts, but we will get back to you and that's the most direct line. So I pulled from there. I also pulled from just comments. So, like I said, even if you leave a comment on our Instagram, like I got a few of these questions from TikTok, because I've gotten a few comments over there with questions that I see kind of pop up regularly, and our TikTok, if you want to go watch some of those, is TJ creatives with an S agency. We're always posting over there. I do a lot of like agent, not agency. I do a lot of like audits if you will, company audits where I'm looking over like some of your favorite companies, telling you what they're doing on social media, what's working for them, things like that. But that's besides the point. So I got some of these questions over there, some of them from Instagram and from Instagram, and then I also just asked the rest of our team at TJ creative. I asked the rest of our team and I was like what are some questions that you feel like you get a lot, either from clients, from friends that know you work in social media, from discovery calls, whatever. So I've compiled a little list of questions from those three places. But, like I said, when we do this again which I'm sure we will make sure to be following us on Instagram for you to be able to submit your questions. So, before we jump into that, obviously you guys know how this works. You know how this works.

Speaker 1: 3:22

We are going to do a little social media news situation and this one, I mean it's kind of like what we did with the Forbes influencer list, but I found an article from social media today. That's 34 predictions for social media marketing in 2024. First of all, let's take a quick moment to acknowledge what, to acknowledge what, I'm sorry we're already doing predictions for 2024. Crazy not crazy in the sense of like why are they publishing this? Crazy in the sense of like I can't believe it's almost 2024. I feel like we literally just uploaded our predictions for 2023. And obviously we didn't Obviously, it was almost a year ago, but crazy, crazy. So, anyways, I found this article and I kind of wanted to go over some of them. I'm not going to go over every single one of them, but I did kind of skim through this and one thing that's popping up a lot is AI. So this is actually kind of crazy. Let's let's take a little sidebar on that.

Speaker 1: 4:21

Normally, when these lists come out like lists or episodes or whatever everybody starts putting out their predictions for the next year. For social media, like everyone that's working in there and is making content around it is usually going to make something about their predictions for the following year, and normally there are nothing crazy, like there's nothing insane. It'll be like Instagram's pushing videos again or like something that's kind of already started. It's usually nothing like insanely new. This is one of the first times that I've seen these lists where I'm like, oh, there's like a lot of new technology, which is kind of crazy. So, like I said, I skim through this list.

Speaker 1: 4:59

Ai is a big thing that pops up on this list like multiple times, literally. The first one is on Facebook. They predict more AI and more video. The video part doesn't seem Shocking at all, but the AI kind of does. Then the other thing that has popped up probably just as much as AR, which I didn't I guess, I didn't know what the name was for it but almost on every platform they kind of predict a rise in the AR situation. You go to Instagram, they have this sectioned out by platforms. So Instagram, they said the same thing more AI, more video, cool. Evolution of threads, cool. None of these were insane.

Speaker 1: 5:52

Ar shopping this was the one that came up on multiple I believe. Like they said this for Instagram, snapchat and because I think Snap has already kind of developed this, but they made this prediction for Instagram, snap and Pinterest the AR shopping and this is actually kind of interesting right, where it's kind of like the try on. They're trying to bring in store scenarios in store situations to the digital space, so that's kind of interesting where you can like try stuff on virtually essentially. Yeah. So they said a big area of opportunity that I think Snap could have won out on is AR activations in real life, like AR displays in store so that you can see what an item looks like on you, and or a 3D version of a real world product that you can virtually collect and use in app. That's not like the best way to explain it, but if you guys are visual learners like me, they. There are a few pictures on this article, so I'll link this article in the description. But those I thought were were interesting with all the AR stuff and they had brought it up on Pinterest too. Right, like a lot of AR advances, try on advances.

Speaker 1: 7:19

So let me describe the oh, they already offer a makeup try on tool. That's cool and experimenting with home decor. So it's exactly what it sounds. You you know how on Pinterest, you can. First of all, you can shop on Pinterest, but you can also like click an image and you can click on a specific part of the image. Let's say you have like I'm sure all of you guys know this but let's say you see a photo of, like, a kitchen, right, and you can click specifically on the barstools and Pinterest is able to recognize what these barstools look like and show you exactly where these barstools are bought, or if they can't find the exact ones, they're going to find something similar to the barstools in the photo. So now it's like taking it a step further and almost like trying it on in your home, like you showcase your home and they do like an AR or an AI. I genuinely don't know the difference, but they like build out this virtual replica of the barstool that you were just looking at and placing it in your home to see what it would look like in your home before you purchase it. So that's kind of cool.

Speaker 1: 8:31

Yeah, those were really the biggest things that I wanted to talk about. Like I said, there are a lot of like technological type of predictions on here. There's a lot of advancements, if you will. So this is actually an interesting list. It does feel different from years past, where people are like oh, like memes are going to do great this year, or like we're going to stop dancing in front of the camera, like these are. These are kind of interesting. So I'll be sure to link that in the description if you guys want to check out all 34 of these predictions. And that's that on the social media news.

Speaker 1: 9:11

And now, obviously, you guys know what I'm going to say I would love it if you rate and reviewed the podcast. I would love that. Consider it like my Halloween treat. By the time you guys hear this, it'll obviously be past Halloween. You can consider it my little Halloween trick or treat treat. You can consider it maybe an early holiday gift for me, any holiday. You can consider it a belated anniversary for me at TJ creative. Whatever you want to call it, truly, whatever you want to call it. Anyways, again like I said, love it if you write and review. But aside from that, now we will actually get into the Q&A. So this is one of the like I said, I pulled these questions from several places, right. So this first one is something that Megan had said.

Speaker 1: 10:09

She gets on discovery calls a lot, which I'm sure any social media manager hears a lot, but also, I think, just something people wonder in general once they start actually utilizing, like the social media tips that they're hearing and start taking it seriously, and that is how soon are you going to see results? Now here's the thing You're not going to post six TikToks or six reels and blow up. If you do, that's great, but that's pretty unlikely. We tell all of our clients they're not really going to see a huge change until maybe six months. But honestly, like here's the thing is I hate to be like social media is really saturated, but it is. There's a lot of people trying to do it and that doesn't by any means say you shouldn't try and do it. I also think our expectations are skewed right, because because it's so new, right, we've seen these people blow up and now we consider that the norm, when that is not at all the norm. That was very much. These people were no, I'm not discounting any of their work, but a lot of these people that we've seen blow up on different platforms where there was a little bit of a right place, right time situation.

Speaker 1: 11:36

So I think, in terms of results, it does depend on what you mean by that. For businesses, it could mean you know conversions, it could mean getting the word out there more. It could mean getting more people to come in or try your product or sign up for your email list or whatever. I would say like six months is usually what we tell our clients. That's when you'll start to see a difference. However, like so what I mean by the skewed expectations are, like sometimes you might see someone every industry has like an influencer within that industry, if that makes sense. Like, for example, there's a lot of dentists with like millions of followers on TikTok, or like hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, and like that's not the norm. And also, so, again, using using dentistry as an example, like that's not the norm and also that's not really what you need, right? So this is, this is business specific advice, but, like if your idea of results are becoming an influencer as a business, like that doesn't make sense. Because here's what I think about If I'm going to a dentist, I don't need them to have 30,000 followers on TikTok.

Speaker 1: 13:01

You know what I mean. That's not something I'm looking for in my credentials. Or a dentist, or like a local gym, because, first of all, they're a local business. But like a local gym, I don't really expect the gym that I go to to have 45,000 followers on Instagram. Like a thousand or 2000 is good. Because, to be honest, how many gyms do we know that even have a thousand people in and out the door every week? Not many. So why the hell are 40,000 people following you? They're not going to the gym. Again, I'm not like saying that's a bad thing, I'm just saying that's not necessary for most businesses.

Speaker 1: 13:38

Now, once you turn into like a product e-commerce type of business, then it's a little bit different because you can really ship to anywhere Assuming you can ship to anywhere. But my point is you don't need to have influencer, like numbers, in order to be successful with your social media marketing. That is what I mean by skewed expectations. So I took a little bit of a tangent there. My answer to how soon will you see results? I would say six months. Put in genuine, consistent work for six months and you'll start to see some return. But again, I took that little tangent because depends on what you think results are Okay.

Speaker 1: 14:21

Second question how to calculate engagement rate. I saw this one on our Tik Tok. Now your engagement rate is going to come down to content interactions divided by the accounts you've reached. That's how I do it. I know I've seen some people say you can do engagement rate by like the number of followers, but that doesn't feel as accurate to me because at this point your content isn't usually being shown to as many of your followers. So that's how I do it on Instagram at least.

Speaker 1: 14:56

Let me get real specific with you guys, if you, because I don't know how many of you guys know how to work the professional dashboard or the insights. So if you go into the insights on Instagram and then you go to accounts engaged and you scroll down, it literally says content interactions and it adds up all of the interactions, right? So take that number, then go back out and go to accounts reached. So divide that number that we just found divided by accounts reached. That's going to be well, that's going to give you a decimal, move the decimal over to and that's going to give you your engagement rate. So if it's like point zero, one zero, move it over to. I don't even know why I just like gave you an example. My brain is like not computing that at the moment, but you guys know what I mean. That's how you're going to do it on Instagram. I don't know if I can't remember if TikTok actually gives you that number, like. I can't remember if they give you content interactions. I don't think they do. You might have to do it on your own. Maybe the add the likes in the comments and the shares together and then divide that by video. Yeah, I guess video views. Oh, unique viewers yeah, divide that number by unique viewers.

Speaker 1: 16:23

Now, something that I do think is really worth saying which I kind of mentioned a week or two ago is knowing the average engagement rate for each platform, because, I'm going to be honest, your engagement rate is probably going to be like low-ish. So knowing what the average is on each platform is probably going to help you feel a little bit better about yourself. It says the average engagement rate on Instagram is 4.7. I don't know how I just Googled this, so I don't know how spot on this rate or this one is. It says OK. So then it says other studies have found the average engagement rate to be 1.22 and 4.59. So we don't know, but just know that, like you're engaged, the average engagement rate anywhere is not going to be like 15 plus OK, it's usually going to be around like three to seven would be my guess for an average engagement rate. So that's how you're going to. That's how you're going to do it. You're going to add up all of the engagement pretty self-explanatory comments, shares, likes, saves, whatever is available on that platform and divide that by the amount of accounts that have viewed your content.

Speaker 1: 17:42

Ok, next, how to determine ROI. Now I'm not going to go super in depth on this, because we have an entire blog post, which I will also link in the description, about how to determine ROI, and that really is dependent on what you're looking for, what your social media goals are, and that might be kind of a through line in this episode, but it's not really a one size fits all. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, then your impressions and your accounts reached and honestly, I know I should, on follower, count a lot, but that might be something that you look to as a form of ROI. Now, obviously, like in a very literal sense, roi is going to be return, meaning money, right. So ideally, the reason you're trying to increase brand awareness is because you're trying to get new customers that might come later down the line. This is why it's hard, because if your goal is brand awareness, you can measure that much easier than you can necessarily measuring, like when those new people start buying from you. So, technically, yes, roi is financial return on your investment, but it could very well be different analytics. So that's why it depends on what your goal is right, because it kind of depends on the phase that your business is in. Roi could also be like keeping returning customers right. So totally depends.

Speaker 1: 19:13

Next question, we get a decent amount. What platform should I be on? Now we're going to sound repetitive, but it depends on your goals Not only your goals on this one, actually, but it also depends on your audience. A lot of this comes down to knowing your audience. This is also not a blanket in answer, so it's kind of like are you okay? For example, are you trying to speak to like 50 year old business professionals? All right, then. Maybe LinkedIn is where you should be. Are you trying to reach like a Gen Z or a millennial? Maybe TikTok is where you should be. Are you trying to reach like a stay at home mom or like a 40 something Like female that lives in the suburbs? All right, maybe Instagram and Pinterest are where you should be. It fully depends and that requires a lot of just research on your end of knowing, like knowing who you're trying to target and then looking into, like the average it's such an easy Google search too Like looking into the, the, the average person on each platform, like the demographics that are on each platform. Literally, you can Google that. I think Hootsuite has an entire like thing about it, an entire article about it, so kind of depends there.

Speaker 1: 20:31

Also kind of depends on your, your goals too, right? Like I typically use TikTok more as a brand awareness situation versus Instagram, I think you can reach a lot more new people on TikTok than you can on Instagram. So and I don't I don't know how many people I think this is changing with TikTok shop, but I don't think conversion is incredibly high. I think it's a lot of people that are interested in TikTok, but I don't think conversion is incredibly high on TikTok. I think most people don't leave the TikTok app. Like it takes a lot to get someone to leave the TikTok app to see something else. So kind of depends on that too, right? If you're trying to have higher conversions, pinterest can be really good and Instagram and just even within Instagram, like stories and DMs are going to have higher conversions. That's where you're probably going to get more conversions. So it's a little bit dependent on both of those things your goals and who you're trying to speak to. That actually kind of answers the next one, too, on the difference between platforms. They all kind of serve a different purpose.

Speaker 1: 21:40

Then I had a question about responding to comments. Should we be responding to every comment, like what's your guys's take on that? Yes, you should be responding to the comments. You don't need to be responding to the bots. That's fine. They're bots the way that I typically do it and, don't get me wrong, like we're human too and I miss comments every now and again. The way I typically do it is, I mean, a I'm just responding in a genuine way to almost all comments, but sometimes, like if I'm getting the same comment over and over again, I just start hardening it. I don't know, I don't want to copy-paste, because that also feels ingenuine, so I just start harding it. Once I've answered the same question or I've like responded to essentially the exact same comment, like two or three times, then I start harding it. But I think at the very least, acknowledging the people that are commenting is super important in a really vital part of the community building aspect of social media and the trust building aspect. And it also, like, when you do answer comments and you do answer DMs I'm throwing DMs into this conversation now too when you do answer people, you are telling people yes, I'm open, like I'm available, I'm open to talking to you, right, even if you're not answering, like if someone sees you answer someone else's question, it's still kind of putting out that energy Like we talk to our customers, we talk to our clients. Or if you're an influencer, like I actually engage with my community, like I care about you. That's kind of the energy that it gives out when you do answer comments and DMs. It's giving out like I care about your opinion.

Speaker 1: 23:30

Okay, next this one you guys, is it bad to reuse content slash? I hear this a lot from clients, too, newer clients. They'll say we already posted that photo, we already used that photo. Reuse it. You guys, reuse it. Nobody said you have to reinvent the wheel every time you post a photo. Okay, nobody said that. Actually, by the way, by the way, not a single person said that Reuse it. Okay, because here's the deal.

Speaker 1: 23:58

Majority of your audience probably didn't see it the first time. All right, so that's the first thing. Majority of them probably didn't see it. Second, even if they did, they've seen so much content by now they probably don't remember it. You remember your content way more than your audience does. Okay, because you're the one making it. You've got a little more skin in the game with your content. You have spent more time looking at it than your audience has and there's a very, very high chance that they don't recall it at all or at the very most they'll see and they'll be like this looks familiar. They're not going to like deep dive, unless they're like it's really driving them crazy or something. Most of them are not going to deep dive into your content, be like oh there it was. Yeah, I was right, they did repost this.

Speaker 1: 24:49

So reuse the content. I've been reusing our content a lot more recently because I have been a little bit burnt out. I'm going to be honest with you guys. So I've been reusing some of the content that I've had in the past. Also, there's different ways to reuse. You can quite literally repost the exact same thing, or you can take all of the wording and put like a different photo behind it or a different like B roll clip behind it. You can adjust it a little bit, see what worked, what you think might resonate with people visually a little bit more, and just use the exact same idea or the exact same topic. So absolutely reuse your content. It is not as detrimental as people think it is. It's really not a big deal and most social media managers are going to advocate for that.

Speaker 1: 25:46

Okay, then I got a question Best practices for calendar planning. Now, there wasn't a lot of detail in this and exactly what this means, but I'm going to assume this is yeah, do you have a pod episode about best practices for calendar planning? I'm going to assume that this is kind of just like how we are scheduling things out. So, in terms of us calendar planning, we plan things two weeks in advance. Typically, I'm a little behind on TJ step at the moment, but for clients I'm always two weeks out. So, for example, right now I'm planning content. It actually will go live on Monday, so I'm like four weeks ahead, but I will have content done for next week and the week after that. That's kind of how I'm doing it and I'm scheduling it all out. Everything is done. Cover photos, if it's a real like. I am looking at what it looks like on the grid. I am doing captions, tiktok. I typically only do one week at a time because things I feel like shift a lot faster on TikTok.

Speaker 1: 27:00

We do all of this on later. We have a link in the description for later as well. If you want to give it a try. That's where we plan all of our content calendars. It's great because you can do, I believe, like literally every platform I'll do. Sometimes I plan our TikTok on there. Sometimes I just do TikTok in the drafts and come up with the caption on the fly. That's for me, that's for, like our account, not necessarily our client accounts. But yeah, you can do TikTok on later. You can do Instagram, obviously, on later. I believe you can do Pinterest. I know you can do LinkedIn. That is helpful over there. That's kind of our calendar planning.

Speaker 1: 27:44

I don't know if you mean like how I actually create content, like plan the content, but I'll kind of go into that a little bit. Typically, I come up with a little list of ideas. I start by reviewing, I kind of scroll for a little bit. I see what's going on in the industry, like what are topics Other people are talking about, what seems to be doing well, what are some questions that I'm seeing circulating a lot? Then I go into the analytics and see, okay, what is some content that has resonated, what got high engagement? Even stories like what are some stories that people gravitated towards? How can I turn that into grid content? And then I write out all of my ideas. Again, I'm planning two weeks out, so it's usually about 10 ideas. I write them all out and then I usually have like a mock grid on Canva. This is just for the visual side of things. This is also only for Instagram. This doesn't really apply for TikTok.

Speaker 1: 28:46

Otherwise, my TikTok content creation process is pretty similar, minus this step. But I will kind of look at the photos that I want to use and place those in there and if I have a graphic, I just do colors if that makes sense. So I typically do like photo color photographic, photographic, photographic whatever, something like that. Not always, but I do it on Canva to see what the grid overall is going to look like and then I actually create the content. So that's like super, super vague, but I have an idea of what I'm working with and what I want it to look like. From there I like turn those photos and just know I need graphics with certain colors. I'm not sure if any of that's making sense. I'll probably make a TikTok about it because that's like much easier to understand if I'm just showing you versus talking about it. So then, after I do that, I actually get to creating the content.

Speaker 1: 29:41

I make a lot of videos on CapCut. Sometimes I make them in the apps. The way it works with a lot of our clients is we just have a shared folder with a ton of video and photos, and then I'll make the graphics that I need to make. I input them into later at all of my captions, shuffle things around, schedule them, then I send it off to the clients and they send me back their edits. I do what I need to do and that's it. So that's kind of how I plan out my content.

Speaker 1: 30:15

Last question we're going to go over is I got essential steps for developing an Instagram post with high views and engagement? Originally, I was like controversy, controversy is going to get you high views and high engagement, but this also comes down to knowing who you're trying to talk to. Well, yeah, for the most part, know who you're trying to talk to, but also, when you want high views, it's almost better to not be so niche and just you're trying to. I think of it as casting a wide net. You're not going to get all the people you want. You're going to get some people who don't really resonate with your content, but it's going to increase the views. So, in that sense, your content is typically relatable. Your content might lean into curiosity. Your content might, like I said, lean into controversy. Controversy is great because it's going to get people to comment too. That's why I said that, because it's probably going to increase your engagement too. Because it's one thing to get views you can get high views but that doesn't mean you're going to get a lot of engagement on the post.

Speaker 1: 31:32

So I will also say, with engagement, if you ask a question, or sometimes on our TikToks, I'll be like I just did a post the other day of top seven social media ics that I found an article about. I was like a green screen video and then I was like what is this article missing? What are some of your ics? I'm inviting people to give me their opinion. People do genuinely enjoy giving their opinion. So that's one way to increase engagement.

Speaker 1: 32:04

But, like I said, with high views it's tapping into a wider audience and usually has nothing to do with your. I shouldn't say nothing, but it's not salesy. So I hope that's helpful. And also, in terms of high views, it's grabbing their attention in the first few seconds. And that first few seconds, that type of clip, it needs to be high quality, because if you're starting with a low quality clip, you're losing people immediately. Anyways, other than that, those are all the questions I'm going to answer this week. This is already like it's not a long episode, but it feels long for us. So that's that. If you have more questions which I'm sure you do, because there's always a million social media questions then be sure to DM us at social sessions podcast on Instagram. Like I said, that is the easiest way to get a hold of us and we will talk to you next week. Bye.