Much like the diverse audiences you aim to reach on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, social media marketing lacks a one-size-fits-all solution. The methods and strategies available are as varied as the people you’re trying to engage with. While starting with social media marketing is relatively easy, knowing how to effectively launch, manage, and refine your campaigns from the beginning is essential.

Whether you’re introducing a brand-new social media strategy this year or enhancing an existing one, we can assist you. In this post, we’re revisiting our top social media marketing advice from recent years, including strategies for Facebook marketing, tips for increasing engagement on Twitter, methods for maximizing the return on investment for social media advertising, and much more. From pinpointing and reaching the right audience to expanding your presence across various social media platforms, there’s valuable information for everyone.

Let’s start by examining 10 quick statistics that highlight the overall importance of incorporating social media marketing in 2019.

10 Important Social Media Statistics for Marketers

• Facebook currently boasts 1.5 billion daily active users (DAU), along with 2.3 billion monthly active users (MAU), and 300 million daily active users (DAU) for Stories.
• Facebook is the second favorite platform platform for video consumption among consumers (second only to YouTube).
• Across various industries, the average conversion rate (CVR) for Facebook Ads is 9.21%.
• Instagram has 1 billion MAU, in addition to 500 million Stories DAU.
• 72% of teenagers are active Instagram users.
• Brands connecting with consumers on Instagram experience a high engagement rate of 1.73% per post.
• LinkedIn has 260 million MAU.
• The average visitor-to-lead CVR across industries on LinkedIn is 2.74% (compared to 0.69% on Twitter).
• LinkedIn is the leading platform for driving 80% of.
• 37% of consumers turn to social media for purchase inspiration. No other channel, digital or traditional, influences consumers at this rate.

What can we learn from these statistics?

Primarily, they emphasize the significant value of Facebook Ads. Not only does it allow you to connect with a vast number of consumers, but nearly one in ten clicks translates into a conversion for your business!

Secondly, Instagram users are highly engaged. If you’re looking to make an impact with your best, concise content, Instagram is the platform to do it.

Finally, advertising on LinkedIn is a worthwhile investment, particularly for B2B marketers. With high-quality leads converting at such a high rate, the long-term benefits far outweigh the initial costs.

Social Media Advertising Tip #1: Don’t Let Potential Customers Get Lost - Skip the Landing Page

Quick note: We have even more tips in store for you! Once you’re done here, explore our collection of over 60 social media optimization tips for even more valuable advice.

Marketers often focus heavily on the customer journey through the marketing funnel. Unfortunately, leads often vanish right at the conversion stage. Thankfully, certain PPC and social media advertising methods allow marketers to bypass the most leak-prone part of the funnel altogether - the landing page.

Our initial social media marketing suggestion is to eliminate the risk of losing potential leads at the landing page stage. An effective way to achieve this is by utilizing Facebook’s “Call” buttons within your Facebook ads. This useful feature enables mobile users (a significant portion of Facebook users) to directly contact your business by simply clicking on your ad – no landing pages, no waiting for pages to load, no vast digital chasm where potential leads disappear.

For more information about Facebook call buttons and other effective social media marketing tactics, explore Larry’s blog post highlighting his top 10 paid social media hacks of all time.

Social Media Advertising Tip #2: Use Life Events to Your Advantage

Targeting the right audience with your social media advertising is crucial, but reaching them at the right time is even more impactful and surprisingly straightforward. Our next piece of advice is to capitalize on significant events in people’s lives by using Facebook’s “Life Events” parameter to deliver well-timed, relevant advertising to those experiencing major life changes.

We’ve all seen those “life events” pop up on Facebook. It could be an old rival landing your ideal job, a former crush marrying someone unexpected, or that high school power couple finally having the adorable baby they’ve been hinting at for years - you get the idea. The point is, you can utilize these life events as the foundation for a marketing campaign.

Beyond targeting based on events like getting married or having a child, you can even control when your ads appear after these events. For example, wedding venues could schedule their ads to reach newly engaged couples after two or three months, while baby clothing retailers could target couples soon after they announce their pregnancy.

To delve deeper into Facebook Life Events targeting and other highly effective targeting methods, read Larry’s post on powerful Facebook ad targeting strategies.

Social Media Advertising Tip #3: Create a Seamless and Consistent Visual Experience

Social media has not only transformed how consumers shop but also how they perceive the web. This particularly applies to the appearance of your ads and their corresponding landing pages.

Consider this example of a well-designed Facebook ad:

Here’s the landing page users were directed to from the ad – note that our primary focus is on the visual appeal of the page, not necessarily its adherence to best practices:

Providing users with a smooth, visually appealing experience is equally important as the messaging in your ads. Imagine a user clicking on a well-designed, attractive ad only to land on a visually unappealing landing page. This disconnect can be a major turn-off, potentially costing you a lead or sale. Therefore, it’s crucial that your ad creative is not only well-designed but also consistent from start to finish. This means landing pages should perfectly match their ads in both appearance and message.

For a more in-depth look at the importance of visual continuity and how to achieve it in your campaigns, explore my post on Facebook landing pages.

Social Media Advertising Tip #4: Build Communities Using Actionable Hashtags

Despite claims to the contrary, hashtags remain relevant in the world of social media. Their use extends far beyond merely helping users discover relevant content; they can also cultivate and grow communities of dedicated fans and brand advocates.

The beauty of this technique lies not only in its easy implementation but also in its cross-platform compatibility. Employing the same hashtag across different social media platforms allows for consistent messaging across various social campaigns, providing users with a unified experience regardless of where they interact with your brand.

Leading brands have mastered this technique, as Margot illustrated in a case study featuring Nike’s #chooseyourwinter and #runfree hashtags in 2014. Nike effectively built an online community of consumers around these hashtags, which enjoyed immense popularity and led to widespread social sharing—all with minimal investment from Nike.

To learn more about this technique and other impactful social strategies, read Margot’s post on 10 ways to use Instagram marketing to build your brand.

Social Media Advertising Tip #5: Align Your Social Campaigns with Your Business Goals

Much like in paid search, many social advertisers often overlook account structure. This oversight is a common pitfall in social media marketing. In their rush to launch a campaign, they neglect the importance of proper account structuring. This not only results in a messy and disorganized account that’s difficult to optimize but also significantly hinders performance. For this reason, our ninth social media marketing tip emphasizes structuring campaigns based on their objectives.

For Facebook ad campaigns, many objectives are straightforward, such as “Promote your Page” or “Reach people near your business.” Whatever structure and objectives you choose for your campaign, pay close attention to these details before launching. You’ll be grateful you did later on.

To discover how to effectively structure your Facebook ad campaigns and harness the platform’s power to boost conversions, check out Brett’s comprehensive guide to Facebook for lead generation.

Social Media Advertising Tip #6: Use Twitter as a Testing Ground for Content

While marketers frequently use Twitter to promote their content marketing initiatives, far fewer leverage its ability to gauge interest in potential hot topics before creating content.

Twitter can be a powerful “content lab.” It allows you to test the potential reception of a content piece or gauge interest in subjects outside your usual editorial focus.

For example, Larry stumbled upon an intriguing infographic and tweeted it, as shown above. He then turned to Twitter Analytics to assess the tweet’s engagement performance and discovered an 8% engagement rate, significantly higher than his average. Encouraged by this free experiment, Larry wrote about the infographic for his column on Inc., resulting in an exceptionally successful post.

Learn more about this technique and how to leverage data to refine your social media strategies in Larry’s post on mastering Twitter Analytics. Additionally, check out this post on content advertising to learn more about promoting content through paid social media and PPC.

RELATED: Our 50 Best Marketing Tips in 5 Minutes

Social Media Advertising Tip #7: Utilize Your Highest-Converting Ad Copy in Social Campaigns

Just as the position of AdWords and Bing Ads on the search engine results page (SERP) heavily relies on Quality Score, the visibility of your social ads depends on a similar metric. For Facebook advertisers, this is known as Relevance Score, while Twitter advertisers refer to it as Quality Adjusted Bids.

For each 1-point increase in your ad engagement rates, you can anticipate a 5% reduction in cost-per-engagement.

One of the best ways to improve your Relevance Score or Quality Adjusted Bid (and consequently, your ad visibility and potential click-through rate) is to repurpose the highest-converting ad copy from your PPC ads for your social campaigns. This not only saves time by reusing effective social media copy you’ve already created but also ensures consistent messaging across your paid search and social campaigns. If a campaign performed well in PPC, it’s highly likely to succeed on social media as well.

For more information on becoming a “VIP socializer” and other valuable techniques, read Margot’s post on leveraging PPC data for your Facebook ads.

Social Media Advertising Tip #8: Hone Your Targeting to Boost Engagement and Minimize Costs

We just discussed the importance of Twitter’s Quality Adjusted Bids, but how do you actually enhance them? The key is to prioritize increased engagement by narrowing your focus.

Casting a wide net reduces your chances of achieving high engagement rates with your tweets. Lower social media engagement, in turn, leads to higher costs for poorly performing ads - a vicious cycle that persists until you improve your engagement rate. One way to achieve this is by refining your targeting.

Larry’s experience refining the audience targeting for a tweet promoting his speaking event offers a perfect example. While he could have paid to promote the tweet to a million people, doing so would have negatively impacted his engagement rate and increased costs. Instead, Larry utilized Twitter’s powerful geotargeting feature to limit the tweet’s display to users living or working near the event—in this case, southern Florida.

To discover how to boost engagement on Twitter and improve your Quality Adjusted Bids, explore Larry’s post on mastering Twitter Quality Score.

Social Media Advertising Tip #9: Layer Your Targeting Options for Maximum Impact

In the past, advertisers had to settle for extremely broad targeting options. Today, however, the possibilities for ad targeting are almost limitless—almost to the point of being unsettling. For advertisers, this level of granularity is incredibly powerful, especially when you layer your targeting options.

Used strategically, this technique can be incredibly effective. Most companies are impressed by the ability to target potential customers based on age, income, and education level. However, by layering these already effective targeting options with additional data—such as incorporating purchasing behavior on top of demographics—you can create timely and relevant campaigns.

Imagine targeting Facebook users not only between the ages of 30 and 40 with master’s degrees and preschool-aged children but also those who own minivans and enjoy playing the drums.

The options for this secondary layer of targeting data are practically limitless. You can include Life Events (refer to tip #13), places visited, hobbies, interests, or virtually any other demographic. Consider this technique a “mix-and-match” approach where you combine various datasets and targeting options to create highly customized, laser-focused audiences.

This technique is another one of Larry’s powerful Facebook ad targeting strategies. You can explore the rest in this post.

Social Media Advertising Tip #10: Avoid Excessive Granularity with Social Audiences

Both Facebook and Twitter offer highly granular targeting options. However, this specificity is a double-edged sword. Target too broadly, and you risk lower engagement and higher costs for underperforming ads. Target too narrowly, and you might negatively impact your campaign’s reach.

Facebook even enables you to target users who are friends with individuals who’ve shown interest in soccer.

For advertisers new to paid social or those coming from a PPC background, the targeting options offered by paid social can be astonishing. This often leads to advertisers getting carried away with their targeting parameters. As their targeting becomes more specific, their audience reach shrinks, sometimes to the point of only displaying ads to a handful of people. We recommend using audience targeting strategically (as in the previous example) but exercising restraint – it’s all about finding the right balance.

For a better understanding of how specific you can get with your Facebook campaigns, check out Margot’s post about 11 surprisingly specific Facebook audiences you can target—and the potential harm this can inflict on your campaign’s reach if you’re not careful.

Social Media Advertising Tip #11: Regularly Monitor Ad Performance to Keep Campaigns Fresh

The social media landscape evolves rapidly. A “set-it-and-forget-it” approach is never a good idea in paid search, and the same applies to paid social, particularly on Twitter.

The older a Promoted Tweet, the less effective it becomes. This means the longer you wait to refresh your ad creative or other elements, the lower your overall ROI will be. Let’s examine this example from Larry’s Twitter Analytics data:

Notice how the impression volume steadily declines over time?

If you’re running Twitter campaigns, your strategy needs to incorporate multiple variations of the same ad to keep your campaign content fresh. Fresher ads generally lead to more impressions and, hopefully, higher engagement rates.

Social Media Advertising Tip #12: Offer a Glimpse Behind the Scenes with Stories

Combined, Facebook and Instagram see approximately 800 million users engaging with Stories daily.

Now, consider that statistic alongside a statement made by Facebook CFO David Wehner during the company’s Q4 2018 earnings call: News Feeds are approaching a saturation point concerning ads and brand content.

What does this tell us? It highlights that Stories provide an ideal opportunity to engage Facebook and Instagram users with captivating, unique content.

Specifically, we recommend using Stories to share behind-the-scenes content.

Via Hootsuite.

Why? Because, as consumers have told us, they are drawn to social media to connect with brands they love. Offering your loyal followers an exclusive look at your business’s inner workings (and perhaps more importantly, the people behind it) is a fantastic way to make them feel like part of an exclusive group.

After all, humans are social creatures. When used effectively, Facebook and Instagram Stories can tap into this inherent nature.

Social Media Advertising Tip #13: Start Remarketing on Social Platforms

Regular readers likely anticipated this tip, but our top social media marketing recommendation is to incorporate remarketing into your paid social campaigns.

Think back to the last time you browsed your Facebook News Feed. You saw an ad, immediately clicked through, and purchased or signed up for whatever the site offered. Remember? Probably not. Unlike the ideal scenario marketers dream of, people rarely behave this way online. By neglecting to remarket to potential customers on social media, you’re essentially investing all your resources into a single conversion opportunity—which sounds as illogical as it is.

Remarketing is a highly effective technique, even more so on Facebook. By remarketing to potential customers on social platforms, you significantly increase the likelihood of conversion. Even if they don’t convert immediately, the added brand exposure alone justifies the investment, making remarketing on Facebook crucial.

To get started, explore Margot’s comprehensive guide to Facebook remarketing.

Eager for More Social Media Insights and Tips?

Dive into our comprehensive post on The 6 Biggest, Baddest Social Media Platforms of 2022 (and How to Wield Their Power). Get ready to conquer the social media world.