This week is all about Social Media Advertising...

Social media advertising, are advertisements targeted to users on social media platforms. Social media networks use user information and data to target users with advertisements based on interactions within specific platforms. If done successfully social media advertising can provide a huge return on investment and significant opportunities for sales and business growth in a relatively short period of time. 

BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING

There are many benefits of social media advertising including:

• Growing your audience

• Growing your sales

• The ability to reach audiences all over the world

• There is no limit on your ability to scale

• Results are generally both quick and efficient

• Building your audience helps you create long term results

• Ad campaigns are relatively simple to run and manage

• There is a low cost barrier to get started

different social media platforms

There are lots of different social media platforms, here are some of the more popular ones that may work for promoting your creative business depending on the nature of your business.

• Facebook - Facebook is the most popular social media network globally .With more than 2.8 billion monthly users, Facebook hosts over a quarter of the world’s population, 59% of social media users providing advertisers with the opportunity to reach many, many people.  Facebook also has the most number of active users out of all the social media platforms and people spend hours a day scrolling through their Facebook feeds. Contrary to popular belief, Facebook still remains popular with young adults. 65 percent of Facebook users are under the age of 35 When it comes to time spent on Facebook, the latest Facebook statistics show that users spend an average of 19.5 hours on the social media app each month. Facebook allows advanced targeting. Advertisers can target by location (within a 5-mile radius), job description, interests, past activity, and many other incredibly valuable criteria.

• Instagram - Instagram may not have the volume of users Facebook has, but it does have a growing audience of 1.074 billion users worldwide in 2021, 73.5 million more than its number of users in 2020. It also has higher audience engagement rates than Facebook and Twitter. It’s also worth considering that 71% of the billion monthly active users on the Instagram app are under the age of 35 and that people spend almost as much time on Instagram as they do on Facebook. Instagram is an image and video sharing platform, which means that sellers of products that are visually appealing or who can successfully incorporate visual media into their campaigns usually perform best on this social media platform making it the best platform for many creative businesses to use for advertisements. For more information on Instagram you can check out our resources here or watch our Industry expert videos here.

• Twitter - Twitter has a growing audience of 192 million daily active users a 27% year on increase and is a platform that provides a unique opportunity for breaking news and for users to connect with influencers. News is one of the top reasons people use Twitter. In fact, journalists make up nearly a quarter of all verified accounts on Twitter. Twitter has older users than Facebook and Instagram (63 percent) Twitter users worldwide are between 35 and 65 years old. Twitter is also more popular among males than females 66 percent of Twitter users worldwide are male compared to just 34 percent females, which puts the ratio of males to females at two to one. The average time spent on Twitter clocks in at 3.39 minutes per session part of the reason why Twitter marketing can be tricky - content has a short lifespan as well as a challenging character limit.  However it is a good platform for organic engagement and according to Twitter users shop online 6.9x a month, while non-users shop online just 4.3x a month and  60% of users purchase from an SME. Ads on Twitter are often used to drive brand awareness.

• Pinterest - Pinterest is unique. It’s visual, like Instagram, but unlike Instagram, it is highly targeted toward women with an 81% female user base. Pinterest has 322 million monthly active users. Pinterest is widely regarded as a strong platform for ecommerce sales, with high levels of engagement and intentional use by users to find and purchase creative products. On Pinterest promoted pins are discrete and blend into the Pinterest boards. Pinterest has a highly targeted search engine, meaning that Pinterest ads can be really valuable for promoting brands and products.

• LinkedIn - LinkedIn is another unique social platform that revolves primarily around the Business to Business market. LinkedIn has 722 million members. It’s not the biggest social network but with a specific business focus, it is a strong platform for business to business creative businesses. 57% of LinkedIn users are men, and 43% are women. 59.9% of LinkedIn’s users are between 25 and 34 years old. LinkedIn users also find the highest average disposable income. LinkedIn is particularly suited for Business to Business Ads and social media marketing campaigns. For more information and resources on LinkedIn visit our DIY Guide on LInkedIn page and industry expert videos.

Choosing the best Social Media Platform for your Creative Business

Which social media networks you choose to focus on for your creative business will depend on a number of factors including

• Where your target audience is most concentrated

• Where your target audience are easier to access and likely to engage with ads

• The creative medium of your business for example is your business a product or service based business? How visual is your content? Does it translate best to photo, written word or video content? 

• Remember your content has to be compelling to your target audience on your chosen platform (a place those people will actually see it) to yield results.

social media marketing industry expert videos

This week’s exercise will get you thinking and planning for social media advertising strategies you can implement for your business.

WEEK 24 BOOK

Our book inspiration this week is How Do We Know We're Doing It Right: & Other Essays on Modern Life by Pandora Sykes

Modern life is full of choices. We’re told that happiness lies within and we can be whoever we want to be. But with endless possibility comes a feeling of restlessness; like we’re somehow failing to live our best life. What does doing it right even look like? And why do so many women feel like they’re getting it wrong?

From that Zara dress to millennial burnout, the explosion of wellness to the rise of cancel culture, Pandora Sykes interrogates the stories we’ve been sold and the ones we tell ourselves. Wide-ranging, thoughtful and witty, How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? explores the anxieties and myths that consume our lives and the tools we use to muddle through.

So sit back and take a breath. It’s time to stop worrying about the answers ­– and start delighting in the questions.

WEEK 25 PODCAST

Our podcast inspiration this week is The High Low Podcast a weekly pop-culture and news podcast created and hosted by Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes. Inspired by Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown, who coined the term ‘high low journalism’ in the 80s to denote an amalgamation of water-cooler gossip and hard-hitting cultural happenings. Each week they dissect and discuss the zeitgeist with stories found far and wide, from brows high and low.