Category: Social Marketing

When Are Students and Parents Using Social Media?

During the back-to-school season, platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat see high activity from students gearing up for the new year. Posts about first-day-of-school outfits, “get ready with me” style videos, and study hacks fill their feeds. Once the school year begins, students spend less time on their phones during school hours and more time in the afternoons and on weekends. Similarly, parents may be more engaged during early mornings or late evenings when they have some downtime. Consider shifting your posts to evenings and weekends when these audiences are more likely to be active. Parents tend to use Facebook and Pinterest more, focusing on content related to organization, meal planning, and back-to-school products. Understanding which audience uses which social media platforms and the times of day they use them can be valuable information for brands.

What Should Brands Do When Back-to-School Season Approaches?

Now that brands understand the platforms and times their targeted audience uses social media, they can plan accordingly. Here’s how they can do it:

1. Targeted Ads: Interest-based targeting to reach both parents and possibly students with relevant back-to-school offers can help brands gain more attention.
2. Influencer Collaborations: Collaborating with influencers who resonate with your target audience and can promote your products authentically can create higher appeal.
3. User-Generated Content: Encouraging consumers to share their back-to-school purchases using specific hashtags for a chance to be featured on your brand’s social media channels can boost engagement and spread the word. An online survey by NerdWallet, conducted by The Harris Poll, included 2,010 U.S. adults, 595 of whom were parents of students from kindergarten through college. The survey stated that of those parents, at least 6 in 10 say their “students” are influenced by peers or social media when making their back-to-school wish list. Half of these parents said they usually end up buying products based on these influences.
4. Educational Content: Beyond promotions and shopping, educational content can also spread the word about your brand. Sharing valuable resources and creating inspirational content for students and parents can help this audience transition into the new school year while being exposed to your brand.

Conclusion

The back-to-school season presents a unique opportunity for brands to connect with their audience. By understanding the shifts in social media use and adjusting your strategies accordingly, you can effectively engage with both students and parents, making the most of this season. Whether through targeted ads or organic social media, the key is to pay attention to your audience’s behaviors. To get started with your back-to-school social media strategy, contact Fuel Marketing today.

TikTok can be an intimidating platform when it comes to marketing strategies- the algorithm is seemingly random, making virality seem elusive to every user. However, there are a few best practices that can ensure a greater audience reach.

Use Insights

TikTok’s Business Account feature gives insight into your company’s demographic makeup, such as age and gender. These insights can be valuable when planning content because they can help identify optimal trends and times to post. Understand and interpret insights here.

Stay Consistent

Unlike other social media platforms, the TikTok algorithm rewards those who post more frequently. Posting once a day can be a challenge for many businesses and content creators, but the platform has adopted a more “casual” and “down-to-earth” setting. While videos need to be high quality, do not overthink aesthetics. Great content can easily be created without the perfect background or scene.

Serve Fresh Content

While posting frequently is a key best practice for TikTok, the platform recommends posting engaging and intentional content. Trends will be your best friend when it comes to reach. Make sure to stay current with sounds, music, effects, and transitions to serve relevant content to your audience. Sound is power for your videos; easily find the fastest-growing sounds on the app through the search feature. Other simple tips to remember are to post vertical videos, use trending and brand-related hashtags, add captions, and keep videos between 15 and 21 seconds.

Play to Your Niche

Tiktok has over 150 million users on the app with over half of 18-29-year-olds scrolling consistently. Because of the unique algorithm, niche products and services can gain a large following while also educating potential consumers. Within 30 minutes of downloading the app, the algorithm will start to understand the interests of the user and what videos will resonate the most. Don’t underestimate the power of strategically writing captions and hashtags. TikTok is becoming the primary search engine for users, and “TikTok SEO” will increase in importance. This is the perfect opportunity to find and carve your space into the app.

Advertising on TikTok

While TikTok can seem new and daunting, the platform is easy to use and allows for a huge international reach organically or through paid advertisements. Nielsen research shows that 43% of heavy TikTok users feel that the advertising seamlessly blends in with the organic content, leading to more engagement and clicks. Now is the perfect time to utilize your marketing budget on TikTok!

It’s no secret that social media is ever changing, with companies merging, new policies, and adapting tastes of the public, businesses and marketers must learn to adapt to a revolving landscape. Modifying your marketing strategy to fit new tastes and policies is vital to having success online. Here are a few changes and trend predictions that you can expect from social media in 2023.

Pay Attention to Disruptors

Over the last 2 years we have seen the major social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook disrupted by growing channels like TikTok and BeReal. This will continue in 2023, with the introduction of the Metaverse. As the 3D parallel to the digital world, the Metaverse will be an augmented or virtual reality method to accessing the internet. With customized avatars and digital assets the virtual space will be an interactive, immersive, and hyper-realistic player in the digital economy. Jump on board with your company and invest in a space in the Metaverse to become an early adopter in 2023. Saks Off 5th & Instagram mogul “Betches” created the perfect example of an immersive experience with their virtual Holiday House.

More familiar to the world we are currently living in, a best practice for social media in 2023 is to utilize TikTok SEO. TikTok has become a major search engine player, creeping up on Google as a method to search for restaurants, products, and more. With new features like TikTok “local”, it becomes more important to start optimizing your brand content early to rank high on the TikTok search page. 

Focus on Engagement & Virality

Going viral has become a benchmark for success for many companies. But is it a credible marketing strategy, or just a buzz phrase? Predictions for 2023 show that Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn algorithms will continue to prioritize “likes” and engagement over the amount of followers, making virality a possibility for any user. This means it’s even more imperative to create interesting content because brands will have a greater opportunity to engage new prospects and build brand awareness. 

Short form videos will continue to drive as the leader of marketing content. All players in social media have adjusted their algorithms to favor bite-sized videos. Grab and keep the attention of users with punchy, high-quality content to cut through the noise. Multi-sensory experiences and interactive ads will also rise in popularity allowing the consumer to “experience” the brand and participate leading to more brand awareness and viewing time. 

Authenticity is King

New social media channels like TikTok and BeReal, grew in popularity and continued to soar in 2022. It’s important to pay attention to why and how these platforms gained their success. Users are now demanding authenticity rather than perfectly curated and filtered photos. Businesses are now expected to nurture authentic human connections, and in return, consumers will build an emotional connection with the brand. 

A brand will be more successful on social media by using authentic images of everyday life, user-generated content, and having a “personal presence” of company leaders on the pages. Dove and Daniel Wellington are great examples of brands that use primarily user-generated content. Because of this, users are encouraged to post themselves using their products, creating more brand awareness and community around the brand name.

 

Looking for help with your social strategy in 2023? Talk with FUEL about how to grow your digital presence and strengthen your brand.

Whether you use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram, having a social media presence can increase brand awareness, humanize your brand, and allow you to reach your target audience and potential customers. However helpful it may be, utilizing social media for your brand may feel overwhelming. You may have questions like: what should I post? How often do I want to publish content? What do I want the brand voice to be? What graphic style do I prefer?

We can help you answer all those questions, but what will help your social media presence the most is to remember one thing: keep it simple.

Less is much, much more.

With over 3.96 billion social media users worldwide, it’s no wonder that social media can be overwhelming.

Anyone who regularly posts on Twitter knows how restrictive the character count can be. Even after the restriction was increased to 280 characters, it’s often challenging to fit your whole message into such a small space. However, by keeping your message short and sweet, a simple message can help your brand stand out.

Although the limit for Facebook posts is 63,206 characters, the ideal length for a Facebook post is 40-50 characters, according to HubSpot. Especially in a space known for its rambling updates and overshares, keep your content focused on exactly what you want to say, without any extra frills. Focus on maintaining quality information and nixing any filler words. No need for complicated composition and extensive exposition in your post copy. It’s Facebook, not an academic forum.

Go for graphics.

Using visuals is an easy way to capture attention and communicate a lot of information in a small amount of space. Whether you implement infographics, quotes, behind-the-scenes shots, or dynamic photos, high-quality, powerful visuals are the way to easily reach your target audience.

A study analyzing nearly 60,000 websites found that most people only read 20-28% of the words on a webpage. When words are replaced with images, interest, attention, interaction, and subject retention skyrocket. Simple, clean, eye-catching graphics can help convey your brand’s message in a text-saturated space.

Simplicity reigns supreme.

Cutting down your content to feature simple essentials can be difficult. Here at FUEL Marketing, we’ve worked with many companies to reframe and rephrase their social presence to efficiently share their message. If you’re interested in a social media shape-up, contact us today!

Recent research studies confirm that people staying at home are consuming more content, news and videos than ever before. And, they are also using more online communication tools.

Facebook reports a 50 percent increase in messaging, with voice and video-calling more than doubling on Messenger. With a large percentage of usage centered around messaging, groups, and livestreams, Facebook has revealed that many of these features are not monetized and Facebook is seeing a decline in revenue.

Despite this, many people are returning to Facebook who had previously abandoned the platform over privacy concerns. While Facebook may be experiencing a decline in revenue, this is good news and a great opportunity for companies to consider Facebook platforms. It means there is an opportunity for advertisers to see less competition and increase market share with either a small increase in budgets or no change in their current budgets.

Today, as opposed to last month, there’s a better opportunity to reach more people at the top of the funnel through PPC and paid social ads. 

Here are a few opportunities worth exploring now, as people consume more content:

• Google display ad and Microsoft ad expansion 
• YouTube and in-video ad placement options.
• Pinterest.

And remember, at some point, various mandates and restrictions will be lifted. When that happens, consumers will be eager to get outside and engage again. Whether online advertising will be the same as before the Coronavirus is yet to be determined, but it’s a good time to prepare for any and all future business developments.

To learn more about how Facebook and digital media can fuel your business, please contact [email protected].