Social Media Archives - Page 2 of 4

Optimize Community Management for Your Brand

Morgan Moresco on April 24, 2023

By: Danielle Gazda

Good social media content and a good product are the baselines for a successful online presence. However, great customer service keeps people coming back. Achieve the best online customer service with proactive community management.

What Is Community Management?

Community management is run by an individual or team that acts through the brand’s social media accounts. They address questions in direct messages, respond and engage with comments, and help the brand stay present in the wider community.

Community management is made up of all these bite-sized activities that can be done across social media channels to generate a brand’s organic, personable reputation.

Best Practices for Community Managers

Direct Messages

Whether it’s Instagram DMs, Facebook Messenger, or other platforms, it’s important to review these direct messaging channels daily. This is where people will often direct questions and complaints about products and orders — and they should be addressed in a timely manner.

Knowledge of your brand and what it sells is very important for this type of activity. Be sure to have an FAQ that community managers can refer to or a customer service email that can be shared for more in-depth questions. Give your community managers as much information as you can. They’ll be able to help your customers better and continue to grow your FAQ document as new questions arise.

Comments

It is nice for community managers to be active in the brand’s own comments. For smaller brands, try to respond to them all with an appropriate short reply, the answer to a question, or simply an emoji.

If you typically receive dozens to hundreds of comments per post, you can take a more measured approach. You can respond to the first dozen or so comments that the post receives or check the post frequently and reply to various comments as they come up.

Be sure to always respond to comments made by partnered brands or influencers. This includes unexpected comments from celebrities or influencers you don’t currently work with to build those relationships.

Community Engagement

Don’t forget about the wider community your brand is a part of. Like and comment on posts that are relevant to your brand and industry. These can be posts by those partnered brands and influencers to show your support, posts about industry news and knowledge, and fun, broader content.

Comments don’t have to be extensive. Simple replies such as agreement or emojis will often do, since this shows that your brand is aware of its larger community.

User-Generated Content

A brand’s image is only as good as what its most loyal customers have to say about it. Utilize user-generated short- and long-form content to your advantage. Potential customers are more likely to make a purchase after seeing real people use a product or service. This is great free content to share in places like Instagram Stories — but be sure to request permission before posting it directly to your feed.

Has your brand been keeping up with community management?

Google Ads: Best Basic Practices

Morgan Moresco on March 24, 2023

Written By: Danielle Gazda

What Are Google Ads?

Promoting businesses and products through Google Ads is one of the most effective ways to increase conversions, revenue, and meet business goals. Google Ads, also known as Google AdWords, makes building campaigns easy through automation and machine learning, but there’s still some work you need to do first to ensure that everything runs smoothly.

From knowing what information to add to your client’s (or your company’s) website to understanding the nuances of Google Ads’ abilities, here are some best practices for optimizing your campaigns.

Best Practices for Google Ads

The Website

Know that Google Ads has specific requirements for websites advertising on its platform. Some are fundamental, such as offering unique products or services, the website owner being over 18, working directly with the owner of a site (or the owner’s company), and not displaying any copyrighted material. A website must also be at least six months old and have a certain amount of traffic already going to it.

Lesser-known Google Ads requirements involve having technical pages — such as an About page, a Contact page, and a Privacy page — included somewhere on the website. These pages need to be well-defined and hold appropriate information, including a refund and return policy (even if it just states that you do not give refunds or do returns) and information regarding using and selling customer information.

Conversion Tracking

By adding UA or GA4 tracking code to the pages of a website, you’ll be able to track all conversions from Google Ads, no matter the specified landing page.

Whether you add a UA code or GA4 code to a website depends on the platform you’re using. Google has step-by-step instructions on how to find the right tracking code for a site in the Google Ads account page.

Ad Tools and Assets

Google Ads offers a number of tools and assets that can increase the performance of your campaigns.

Keywords

Group keywords into ad groups by topic, feature, or item to help Google build comprehensive and relevant Responsive Search Ads. This type of ad automatically pulls relevant descriptions, headlines, and creative assets based on what you supplied and the search query that’s prompting the ad.

Landing Pages

Landing pages must make sense alongside the keywords to be served and drive conversions. Whether it is a website’s home page, an About Us page, a specific product, or a specific service, make sure they are correct for their ad group.

Ad Extensions

Utilize the tools available to you, including sitelinks, callouts, calls, prices, and promotions, that will provide the searcher with options and relevant information that can lead to a higher conversion rate.

Performance Metrics

Weigh performance and metrics against your industry’s benchmarks when starting new campaigns. These industry benchmarks will help you make adjustments to your campaigns by experimenting with everything from descriptions to ad extensions. You may also find that you’ve surpassed industry benchmarks with your campaigns.

For example, one of 270M’s real estate clients maintained a cost per conversion that was 64% lower than the industry benchmark throughout a campaign. The conversion was for a tenant application being filled out for an upscale new development in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

Another example is a wholesale vendor client of 270M that maintained a click-through rate that was 75% to 100% higher than the industry benchmark for a hyper-targeted campaign for specialized produce wholesalers.

270M is proud to be a Google Partner. We earned that distinction by proving that we consistently had at least a 70% optimization score for all of our clients’ accounts and managed at least $10,000 in ad spend over the course of three months. Additionally, 50% or more of our account strategists demonstrated proficiency in Google Ads by earning Google Ads certifications.

By following these best practices, you can optimize your Google Ads campaigns and achieve better results for your clients.

Purchasing Popularity: Verification Subscriptions

Morgan Moresco on February 23, 2023

Written by: Danielle Gazda

For years, brands and content creators have worked hard to build loyal communities and notable social media accounts in order to earn their verifications. The elusive and exclusive blue tick of verification across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter is now a purchasable commodity. It’s part of a growing trend toward paid social media subscriptions.

Snapchat+

The first to provide a subscription service was actually Snapchat. In August of 2022, they announced Snapchat+, an “exclusive, experimental” service available for $3.99 a month. This innovative idea is decently priced and meant for the most consistent and passionate users of the photo-sharing app. Some of the exclusive features of Snapchat+ include various icons, notification settings, the Story Timer, and a badge. This exclusivity has produced moderate results for Snapchat with 2.5 million subscribers since the announcement in August 2022 to February 2023. This is compared to its 750 million active users and 375 million daily users.

Other apps have taken note of this success and have begun to integrate subscriptions of their own, providing additional incentives and services for users — and an alternate source of income.

Twitter Blue

Elon Musk announced in a tweet on Nov. 1, 2022, that blue checkmark verification would be purchasable through a Twitter Blue subscription for $8 a month. This announcement came with mixed, but primarily negative, reactions. Public figures would now be obliged to purchase Twitter Blue to maintain their verification, while Musk cited this as a way to “give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators.”

Twitter did release information on the updated Verification Requirements. It addressed some of the concerns and outlined the grandfathering of accounts that were previously verified through the original system. The company also specified that accounts must be non-deceptive with verification revocation a possibility for those who violate subscription policies. No matter the rules and criteria put in place, a verification no longer carries the weight it used to.

Meta Verified

Now, three months after Musk’s announcement, Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that Meta platforms will also be offering a verification subscription. It’s being marketed as a safety net for creators. Meta’s official announcement describes the program as “a subscription bundle on Instagram and Facebook that includes a verified badge that authenticates your account with government ID, proactive account protection, access to account support, and increased visibility and reach.”

Users can verify their accounts so Meta can work harder to remove bots, as well as fake and impersonated accounts — though reporting offenders has not been fruitful in the past. Creators are already voicing discontent, as they’ll be forced to purchase Meta Verified to protect their real public accounts.

Note that because this system is based on verifying an individual with a driver’s license or similar document, as of now the subscription is not available to businesses.

What’s Next?

While these changes don’t directly affect personal accounts, they do affect brand and creator accounts. It’s important to weigh the positives and negatives for your brand when considering a purchase of these verification subscriptions. They do come with other useful tools, like the ability to edit posts, longer tweets, etc.

Will you be purchasing verifications for your brand when available?

Trends to Integrate Into Your 2023 Marketing Strategy

Morgan Moresco on December 12, 2022

Written by: Danielle Gazda

At the beginning of 2022, the digital marketing community prepared for the start of a massive digital expansion. This expansion was the true start of a more integrated and accessible metaverse. It includes the increasing use of AI/AR/VR and other new tools in social media and advertising. In social media specifically, video content would be king in 2022, which was proved to be true. We saw this with the rise in TikTok’s popularity as Meta and Twitter declined.

2023 presents opportunities for continued digital expansion across social media, marketing, and everyday life.

Here’s what we’re expecting to see in 2023.

Social Media Content

AI Algorithms

Social media platforms, especially Facebook and Instagram, will continue to push AI algorithms. These algorithms are supposed to show consumers content that relates to them. While individuals may not relish the idea of seeing fewer posts from family and friends, this opens up more opportunities for brands to reach a wider audience that is more likely to convert.

Digital Representations

Avatars, NFTs, and AI-generated art are all becoming more prominent across social media. While there is a juxtaposition between wanting more original content with NFTs and opportunities for digitally generated content with AI, both show that digital art is the future. More brands may find themselves generating NFTs as a form of revenue for themselves or as fundraisers. They will also likely begin using AI-generated art to create the promotional content they need.

E-Commerce

Livestream Shopping

Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest are looking to livestream shopping as the next way for brands to sell on their platforms. While these platforms are testing and having success with this feature in other countries, it hasn’t quite made it to the U.S. yet. Expect to see more announcements about this from social media apps in 2023.

Customer Service

Mobile/in-app shopping and online shopping overall have continued to increase as Gen Z reaches an independent purchasing age. The key to happy (and repeat) customers is personalized customer service. There are many options across social media, in Messenger, DMs, WhatsApp, etc., that allow businesses to automate replies to common brand questions. This is a great way for customers to have an inquiry answered or resolve an issue quickly. However, it’s important still to have real people available on the back end to intervene with more complicated requests.

General Marketing

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing continues to be a superior way for brands to gain exposure and bring in revenue. Partnering with influencers whose audiences intersect with your own can boost sales. And influencers perform a variety of services, whether it’s posting on their own social media or creating video content for you to share on your own platforms.

Advertising

Social media advertising remains the best way to gain reach, conversions, and more for your business. As the space becomes more crowded with businesses, it can be hard to find your footing. The holiday season, a time when spending increases greatly, is the best example of this. Refined targeting to reach audiences that meet your business goals is the best way forward. SEO, tagging, and defining your audience will get you to your goals.

What are some of your digital marketing predictions for 2023?

Is AI Art the Future of Digital Marketing?

Morgan Moresco on November 28, 2022

By: Danielle Gazda

With the metaverse, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI) becoming more commonplace, the digital universe is expanding and becoming more accessible. Digital marketers have questioned if moving into these areas is worthwhile or even viable. For most of these platforms, the utility and practicality don’t quite seem to be there yet. AI-generated art, however, is on the rise and is something that marketing teams can use to further their creative abilities.

Two of the most popular and well-known tools for generating AI art are DALL-E 2 and NightCafe. There are many other apps and websites that are just beginning their development with open betas. Others are more established like Midjourney and the two listed previously. Either way, this is an ever-growing field of interest with endless possibilities for advertising.

The basic form of any AI-generated art is derived from a prompt entered by the individual using the generator. This can be as specific or nonspecific as desired. You can specify descriptions with the style of art and aesthetic the user wants along with the exact elements, colors, etc., the image should contain. The system’s algorithm then takes that prompt and scours the internet to find images — a process called “scraping” — that will help it to develop options similar to your request.

Sourced images are scraped from all over the internet, including blogs, stock imagery sites, and news sites. It can be an invaluable tool when you’re looking for a precise image but can’t seem to find it anywhere among the copyright-free asset websites you subscribe to.

Something to note is that copyright issues may arise with AI-generated art in the future. It’s often unclear if what is being “scraped” is free for commercial use or is actually owned by someone. Some websites and apps use software that is trained to only search for copyright-free content. However, the technology is still imperfect and not implemented by all AI art systems. Currently, scraping is legal and protected under the “fair use” doctrine. Also, DALL-E 2’s terms of use and content policy say that “you may use Generations for any legal purpose, including for commercial use.”

AI-generated art will certainly be more common in the future, growing alongside the development of NFTs. These new segments of the digital art space breed myriad opportunities for artists and graphic designers alike. While nothing may be perfect yet, both are worth looking into for your business or marketing agency.

Are you interested in the future of AI-generated art? The 270M Design Team is always expanding its skills and knowledge of digital design. Reach out to us at info@thisis270m.com to learn more about what the 270M team can do for you.

The Evolution of Black Friday

Morgan Moresco on October 26, 2022

Written By: Danielle Gazda

While the phenomenon known as Black Friday has questionable origins, potentially going back to the 1800s, the retail holiday as we know it today started in Philadelphia in the 1950s. This is when people from the suburbs flooded the city for an annual Army-Navy football game and a round of discount shopping. However, the use of the term “Black Friday” for the post-Thanksgiving shopping spree didn’t become a nationwide trend until the 1980s. Read more about the history of Black Friday and the myths surrounding its origin on the History Channel website.

In its 40 years of being an official retail holiday, Black Friday has evolved greatly. A significant development was the first-ever e-commerce transaction, which happened in 1994. As e-commerce has taken off in the past two decades, first with websites and now through social media, how people purchase what they want and need has transitioned away from physical retail locations. Black Friday is no longer the physical fight it used to be (well, it usually isn’t), but brands are still finding ways to entice people to shop online and in stores.

Here are some Black Friday best practices all retail businesses should know:

Month-Long Sales

Black Friday is no longer confined to just a single day or even the following weekend, which includes Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. In the past few years, many brands have opted to create pockets of sales throughout the month of November. These sales sometimes even start in late October.

You don’t have to discount items during this entire time, but it’s good to get a leg up on holiday shoppers who don’t want to leave things to the last minute or hate feeling limited to a single day, especially if they need to go in person.

These discounts can start small — for example, with free shipping — and ramp up throughout the month as it gets closer to Black Friday.

In-Store Exclusives

If you have physical locations and you’d prefer to have at least part of your customer base shop in person, then offering exclusive in-store discounts is a great option. It may be worth staggering your online and in-store deals, so you can draw more people into your stores. Start with limited discounts online and add further offerings in-store to reach that initial wave of holiday shoppers in your area.

It’s a great idea to advertise in-store deals in marketing newsletters or on paid social media ads with proximity location targeting.

Special Discounts for Loyal Customers

If your brand has a rewards program, VIP group, or even a newsletter, you can target loyal customers with exclusive deals just for them. Repeat customers are more likely to actually make a purchase and to purchase a large number of items. They may be interested in buying for themselves or giving gifts to loved ones and friends who may, in turn, also become loyal customers. People often have more trust in brands that are recommended to them by people they’re close to.

Holiday Marketing

Competitive holiday marketing is key to making Black Friday sales work for your company. As with most things, it takes money to make money. Investing in ads across social media and Google is your best bet for reaching a wider audience or an audience that is most likely to complete a purchase. Other brands will be doing the same thing, so bids for display space may be higher than you would usually be comfortable with. Finding the right balance of creative assets, copy, landing page, and other elements may be difficult, but in the end, it should be worth it.

Newsletters, as mentioned earlier, are a great way to reach already interested customers. If they’ve signed up for emails from your brand, then they have probably made a purchase in the past, or, with the right deal, are likely to make a purchase in the future. Utilize newsletters to share sales, exclusive discount codes, promote best-selling or low-selling items, and inform customers about restocks and product availability.

The last part of holiday marketing is promoting your business on social media. Aside from paid advertising, social media is how many people now find products and services they’re interested in buying. Don’t forget to keep up with your social media posting. Share your products, share online and in-store promotions, and run a few giveaways. Giveaways during the holiday season can get people excited about your products — and even if audience members don’t win, they may be more likely to look at your website and make a purchase anyway.

If you’re interested in stepping up your holiday marketing strategy, check out some of our other holiday marketing blogs. You can also contact us through our website, or email us at info@thisis270m.com, for help in working on your digital marketing strategy.

The Most Authentic Social Media Platform: BeReal

Morgan Moresco on September 27, 2022

Written by: Danielle Gazda

By now, you’ve probably heard of BeReal — then again, as a business owner, you may have heard nothing about it at all. BeReal is the latest social media platform taking Gen Z by storm first released in August of 2020. It now has over 15 million daily users and over 28 million downloads as of September 2022. This is a 315+% increase in usage and over 1000% increase in downloads since the beginning of 2022. What makes it unusual is that it’s almost an anti-social media app because it has a way of subverting all current preconceptions of how content is created nowadays.

How Does BeReal work?

Central to BeReal’s quirky appeal is that users are prompted (just once every 24 hours) to share an in-the-moment photo at a random time during the day. It also utilizes both the front-facing and back-facing cameras on the phone. This dual camera system has already been duplicated for Instagram Reels and TikTok. So far, BeReal is strictly a photo-sharing app, which goes against what all digital marketers now know — video content is king.

Previous Blog: How to Utilize Google Analytics for Your Business

Interacting on BeReal

With the daily prompts, users get two minutes to post their photos. If they miss that window and post later in the day, a notification about the late post is sent out to all of their followers. This is another way BeReal subverts social media expectations: It gives the impression that sending out a post notification is a bad thing. In reality, it doesn’t matter too much, but that’s the novelty of it.

No Advertising on BeReal

Currently, there is no way to advertise on BeReal, nor are there any plans for advertising in the immediate future. The creators of the app wanted to get back to the roots of social media, where friends and family share images of daily life without the intrusive boosted posts, sponsored posts, or inducements to buy. They are considering bringing in-app purchases to the platform to earn some money, but the app itself will remain free, and the in-app purchases will not be required to use BeReal.

Companies on BeReal

Beauty brands have been the first companies to migrate over to BeReal. It’s easy to tell that their posts are coming from genuine employees. And while they may be curated to a certain degree, these photos are definitely shot on phones and are meant to feel as organic as possible. Some brands have leaned into doing giveaways or providing special discount codes to drive up interest for their products and to attract new followers. It will be interesting to see if this continues and if other categories of companies will follow suit.

Is BeReal Right for Your Brand?

If your audience is primarily Gen Z (or you want to grow your Gen Z audience), then yes, adding BeReal to your monthly content calendar may be a good move. It will take time to adapt to the less curated, less professional platform, but it could definitely be a beneficial move. Even TikTok and Instagram are trying to integrate dual camera photos for their own platforms. If your team isn’t familiar with BeReal, it may be best to have some employees try it with personal accounts first and report back on what they think might work for your brand. Keep in mind: BeReal could be a heavy lift since the expectation is a post every day — and that post can be prompted any time between the early hours of the morning and the late hours of the night.

Check Out BeReal Here

Follow 270M’s social media to keep up to date with the latest digital marketing and social media trends. If you’re interested in hiring a digital marketing team, visit our website, or email us at info@thisis270m.com.

How to Utilize Google Analytics for Your Business

Morgan Moresco on August 24, 2022

By: Danielle Gazda

Google Analytics is a free website traffic tracking tool. It takes user information gathered from each page of your website and compiles it into reports that help you analyze it. You can discover demographic details, bounce rates for each page, and much more. Most importantly, this information allows you to make better-informed decisions about products and user experience.

You can also connect your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts to combine user engagement ad campaign data with website data.

Get Started with Google Analytics

Here’s what you need to know:

Tracking Code

After you’ve created your account, Google Analytics will provide you with a piece of G4 tracking code that you’ll need to embed on each page type of your website. This is what enables Google Analytics to gather user data from your website.

The Hierarchy

Here are some primary terms to know after you’ve set up your Google Analytics account.

Account- Having an account is mandatory. You’ll provide some general information that relays what type of company you have.
Property- For each account, you can determine “Property,” which can either be a website or an app. If your company utilizes multiple websites or a website and an app, they will have to be set as separate properties. They will each receive their own unique G4 codes. You can combine data later in Reports.
View- Under each property, you’ll need to set up your “Views.” These determine what data Google Analytics looks at and pulls to process into reports. Limiting a View too much will result in missing information. Always keep a view of “Raw Data,” which contains no limiting factors, and another view that excludes internal company traffic and bots.

Once this hierarchy has been established and code embedded, you can run Real-Time reports to see the metrics coming in. However, you won’t be able to generate accurate reports until after a few days later — it takes some time to gather enough data to make meaningful reports.

Also Read: What is Social Commerce? What are Shoppable Posts on Social Media? How Can my Brand Implement These Strategies?

Dimensions and Metrics

Now we get into how to read the data you’re seeing in reports. Most of it is broken down into Dimensions and Metrics. These are the different user variables Google Analytics learns about and reports on.

Dimensions- Dimensions are categories of demographic information. This can include the browser and device being used, landing and exit pages, as well as specific user information, like location and customer type.
Metrics- Metrics are the quantifiable data that is collected. This includes information about sessions, session duration, page views, conversions, bounce rates, and numbers of new and returning users.

You also can make custom dimensions and metrics if there is specific data you want to see that are not standard options Google Analytics offers.

Reports

There are five different categories of reports: Real-Time, Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, and Conversions. Each report has an overview and then provides various breakdowns of the information.

Real-Time Reports provide you with insight into what’s happening on your website at that exact moment. This report won’t be used often. It’s good for checking performance when you implement new filters to ensure everything is running properly.
Audience Reports allow you to go deeper into the difference between new and returning users. It digs into demographic, geographic, and behavioral information. These can help inform your ad campaigns as you learn what your audiences are interested in.
Acquisition Reports break down traffic by the source. A source is what brought your user to your website. It includes organic, direct, referral, email, social, paid search, display, affiliate, and (Other).
Behavior Reports provide you with information about how users interact with your website. Some basics are Landing Pages, Exiting Pages, Page Speeds, Search Terms, as well as sessions and events.
Conversions Reports share user behavior as it relates to e-commerce business goals. First, you’ll have to establish goals in Google Analytics. These goals can include newsletter subscriptions, adding products to cart, completing an order, or making an account. If your website is for e-commerce, this will be important to set up.

Previous Post: Five Ways TikTok Can Help Grow Your Business

Conclusion

Google Analytics is a great tool for any business with a website, whether it’s a company site, e-commerce site, blog, or any combination of these. If you have goals for how users will interact with your website, Google Analytics provides detailed reports about users and their behavior to help you optimize your website and ad campaigns.

Would you prefer to have a team manage Google Analytics setup and reports for you? 270M can handle all of your digital marketing needs. Contact us on our website, or email us at info@thisis270m.com.

Five Ways TikTok Can Help Grow Your Business

Morgan Moresco on July 21, 2022

By: Danielle Gazda

The use of video content is a proven method of advertisement. Commercials have enticed audiences to try new products, visit new places, and make countless purchases in the decades since they first appeared on television. Now, video has become the best way to market products, services, and yourself on social media platforms, as well. Static visuals can be well crafted and beautiful, but short video content is what younger generations want to see more and more.

At the moment, no one does this better than TikTok. As Instagram, Facebook, and the rest try to catch up, TikTok has quite the monopoly on enticing, shareable, bite-sized video content. Vine, for those who remember it, was essentially an early version of this. However, it was rarely used for marketing purposes, yet it showed what kind of communities could be built. If your product or service is geared toward a younger audience, then TikTok is where you want to be.

Here Are Five Ways to Make TikTok Work for Your Business:

1. Post Genuine, Less Commercialized Content

Obviously, the goal is advertising and getting your business out there, but you shouldn’t be doing that in your company’s everyday posts. Audiences don’t want to feel like a product is being forced on them. Content should be fun and laid-back, and not always focused on a product or service. Show the people who work for your company. Show behind-the-scenes glimpses of how your product is made. And show your workspace and office — audiences want to know that there are real people behind companies nowadays.

2. Stay On Top of Trends

A great way to get TikTok to organically boost your content is by creating content that has the potential to go viral. Participating in popular trends can be a great way to do this. But you certainly don’t want to go viral for the wrong reasons, so know when to skip a trend and leave it to the influencers.

3. Posting Product/Service Content

Of course, you’ll need to post some product/service content so your audience knows what they’re buying. Videos can be a great tool to show off a product, answer frequently asked customer questions, do demonstrations, provide tips, and more. The goal is not only to make your product stand out but for the video to be interesting. It’s very easy for audiences to simply keep scrolling and move on, so think carefully about your opening visuals and audio.

4. Partner With Influencers

Working with influencers can seem almost necessary to get your business better known, and in a lot of cases, it’s true. Influencers can have enormous reach. If even a small percentage of their audience follows up and views your brand, that can mean hundreds of people with their eyes on your product. Working with influencers can be expensive, though, so if you’re a small business, you can initially reach out to smaller influencers who may be willing to post in return for free products instead of an actual fee. You can find creators to work with at TikTok Creator Marketplace.

5. Let’s Talk About Advertising

Now, down to advertising on TikTok. TikTok offers six forms of advertising: In-Feed Ads, Spark Ads, TopView Ads, Brand Takeover Ads, Branded Hashtag Challenge Ads, and Branded Effect Ads. Learn more about each of these ad types from this article at the Later blog. Each advertising option offers unique opportunities to engage with your audience and expand it. Some may work better than others for your brand depending on how you think you can best reach your audience.

Mindful Social Media Posting Habits

Morgan Moresco on June 13, 2022

Written By: Danielle Gazda

Social media can sometimes be tricky to navigate. It’s particularly important to be mindful when posting about months or holidays such as Pride Month or Black History Month. You don’t want to appear to be pandering to a group by suddenly making inclusive posts or changing your brand’s logo to be “on-theme.”

There are a significant number of memes about companies that suddenly become friendly to the LGBTQIA+ community during Pride Month as their imagery explodes with rainbow colors. Even if your brand is well-intentioned, it may come across as manipulative and capitalistic. The same is also said when horrific events, such as mass shootings or police brutality, are featured prominently on news outlets. Numerous companies will feature blacked-out solidarity posts or send out empty statements of sadness and consolation.

To be a good brand on social media, you need to be consistent, conscientious, and aware. Below are a few tips for doing this with your own brand’s social media posts.

Inclusive Imagery

Throughout the year, your brand should strive to continuously include imagery that contains a diverse cast of models. It’s important to promote inclusivity. It follows a modern trend in organic posting of allowing audiences to see themselves in your posts. The representation of minority ethnic groups, LGBTQIA+ individuals, as well as plus-size and disabled models are massively important. Be conscious of who you include whether you’re setting up your own photo shoots or using stock imagery.

Employee Participation

Include your employees in the decision-making process for posts about potentially sensitive topics. This will boost company morale and help to ensure you’re getting everything right. Facilitate company-wide conversations about what you should be doing for Black History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, and more. Your own diverse team members are your greatest asset.

Avoid Stereotypes/Cliches

Your employees can also be invaluable by helping you avoid using language or imagery that may be offensive. It’s true that you can’t please everyone, but you can avoid glaringly obvious issues by being cautious, curious, and mindful.

Transparency

Always be deliberate with posts showing support, and be transparent in your intentions. Targeting is a part of creating ads and enticing people to purchase your product or service, but there can be a fine line. Continue to steer away from harmful stereotypes. Some decisions regarding targeting may be specific to what your company offers and represents.

Activism

Even after making claims of inclusivity, diversity, and solidarity, companies may not take a genuine stand or make an effort toward actively benefiting the groups represented in their ads and posts. Part of being an open and welcoming brand is to put your money where your mouth is. Larger companies can donate to charities and organizations. Smaller businesses can set up fundraisers or promote awareness campaigns for organizations. However, both should start closer to home. Ensure that your work environments are safe, inclusive spaces that are stocked with resources for your employees.

Being an advocate and an ally for multiple groups is necessary nowadays. It should also be what you want to do and what you want your brand to be a part of. This does not mean your content should bombard your audience with “Look at how inclusive we are!” Part of being a trustworthy business is knowing when to use your platform to raise your voice and when to step back and allow the individual communities to speak up on their own — potentially using your platform to do so.

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