Make the Most of Your Paid Social Media Strategy

What is becoming a common theme for me, in the course of our Intro to Social Media class, is the thought, “I really wish I knew this a year ago.” This week’s class was no exception. When I first created our social media pages for our brand, I thought that organic was only something you found in the pantry. I knew that other companies were advertising to me, but I wasn’t sure exactly how that all worked.

In my industry, the internet just became a recruitment tool in recent years, and so the average cost per advertisement, which you could find somewhere in the newspaper, cost astronomically more than I found the average digital ad cost. In fact, when I first stumbled upon Facebook ads, and the suggested dollar value behind boosting my post started at $10/day, I was floored. In total, Facebook was suggesting I spend a total of $100 for my ad, and in return, they’d give me the exact number of views, demographics about who viewed my ad, and they’d even tell me how the consumer viewed my ad (mobile or desktop).

Although excited about how inexpensive digital ads were, I was also hesitant. I wasn’t entirely sure how any of this worked, and although I had a general idea of what I was able to accomplish and I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted to accomplish, I really didn’t know where to begin. Pretty soon, I realized I needed to be putting more money, more targeting and better ads out there if I wanted to draw the kind of audience I was hoping to attract. After last week’s class, and hearing Kevin Koehn explain more fully how to utilize paid social, I have a better picture of what I should and maybe what I shouldn’t have been doing.

Split test advertisements.

A suggestion that not only Kevin made, but Justin mentioned, is to run two ads simultaneously, both exactly the same, but with one major difference. For example, create two ads with exactly the same wording, but use two different photos. They suggested allowing both ads to run for a minimum of 4–7 days and compare which ad is performing the best. The best performing ad is the ad you’ll want to continue running, and you can discontinue the other ad.

This strategy helps to ensure you’re attracting the most candidates possible, and you aren’t running ads that are useless to your efforts in attracting customers. Although I haven’t yet tested this suggestion, I am excited to try it out. I’m planning a large digital advertisement campaign in the coming month to advertise some new positions we’re opening. I’ll be trying this strategy at that time.

Boost best performing posts.

In the past, I had a habit of only utilizing paid social when the post was “sale-sy”. For example, if we had a difficult position to fill, I’d boost the job posting for that position. These job postings are typically not our best performing posts, but I thought that since they directly lead to my ultimate goal (applications), they were where we wanted to be spending the primary chunk of our money. Meanwhile, our best performing posts, which were typically focused on our culture and values, I left as organic posts.

Now that I’m more experienced with digital ads and less trigger shy, I’m seeing the value in boosting those posts that are performing so well. Although I wouldn’t want to allocate a large portion of my budget behind these “boosted” posts, I think that they would go a long way with consumers who maybe are not as familiar with our organization and everything that we stand for.

Organic and paid social posts work best together.

Without utilizing both organic and paid posts, a social media strategy is lacking. Organic posts may make up the majority of a brands social media, and paid social will help support those posts. Paid advertisements help draw the audience, while organic posts keep the audience engaged.