Social media is not easy!

When you venture into social media, you will realize that it is not so breezy, and you should get a social media marketing agency (SMM) on your side. If your customers and potential clients are on social media, you should be visible there too. However, social media is a very complex space. It requires constant attention, experience, out-of-the-box thinking, good analytics, and so much more for success. Some brands underestimate the work that goes into making social media successful. This miscalculation leads to ineffectiveness, and the brand slags online. Customer queries are not processed on time, you fail to listen to your audience, and miss out on building/strengthening your community online. Failing on social media can make you lose both new and old customers. And just so you know, it costs almost twice as much to get a new customer as it takes to retain one.

A social media agency has the knowledge and expertise to help you to get great results from your social media space. You need a social media marketing agency to help you create, optimize and share content that increases engagement/awareness/followers, signals brand authority, converts, and drives profitable customer action.

5 reasons why you should hire a social media marketing agency;

● Agencies will maximize your budget

● They will save your time

● They have the experience

● Creative thinking

● You will have a dedicated social media team

Social Media Marketing Agencies will maximize your budget; They know the best practices to get the best out of your social media campaigns, and they will use them to maximize your budget. SMM agencies know how to get the most value from your social media ads. They know the platforms that work best for your brand and the type of ads that achieve results on those platforms. A social media marketing agency will help you get the most value from your budget.

They will save your time; Many brands don’t have the time to run their social media marketing campaigns themselves. Most times, when these brands set up a social marketing team, it is usually comprised of individuals with other responsibilities. Even when they hire a social media manager, it is still one person with a tonne of work to do. A social media agency dedicates a team to your brand and will help you save precious time. With a social media agency by your side, your workers will save time and be more productive in their core roles.

They have the experience; Social media marketing agencies have the experience and expertise that your team currently lacks. That experience can make or break social media campaigns. It can be the difference between a successful social media strategy and an inefficient one. You are not experimenting, and that means fewer mistakes. The mistakes are less because they use tried and tested formulas. Hiring social media marketing services can give your business a competitive edge and help you navigate the social media space faster. Their experience allows them to generate content ideas and plan successful campaign strategies. They know what works and what doesn't. They also have many fully-paid tools that help you with planning, scheduling, posting, reporting, analyzing, converting, and more.

Creative thinking; You’ll be surprised by how much out-of-the-box thinking your business needs to be successful on social media. Creativity is required in social media strategy, content creation, community management, paid social advertising, influencer marketing, and more. You need wittiness and intelligence while maintaining sensibility.

You will have a dedicated social media team; Social media can be very time-consuming, so you should leave it to experts while your staff focuses on more productive activities. With a social media marketing agency, you will have a team dedicated to your page(s). You are not just hiring and burdening one person with all that work. You are hiring a whole team!

Let us help you use social media to boost your business

Hi there, we are The Owlet! We are a social media marketing agency that wants to help you boost your business and increase your revenue. How do we do this? We design and implement a carefully curated social media strategy to increase your leads, drive up revenue, boost sales, and achieve whatever goal you have for your social media space. Don’t just exist on social media. Make money from it, build awareness, and better customer experience on it.

Hashtags are important for extra visibility

Hashtags remain one of the best and most effective ways to get your post to a wider audience on Instagram. If you are a business owner trying to get your products/services discovered and get more eyes on your content, you need to use hashtags. Hashtags help you widen the spread of your posts. Did you know that posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement than those without a hashtag?

How many hashtags should I use?

Instagram permits users to use up to 30 hashtags. However, dropping 30 hashtags under your post can make it look clunky and ugly. You can use one or two in the caption and post the rest in the comment section. It will make your post look better while retaining the visibility that hashtags can give you.

Which hashtags do I use for my business?

There are different hashtags that you can use to promote your business. There are popular hashtags, branded hashtags, campaign hashtags, location hashtags, community/industry hashtags, daily hashtags, and trending hashtags.

● popular hashtags; These are hashtags that are well-known and widely used. They include hashtags like #instadaily, #LikesForLikes, #instagram, #landscape, #blue, #london, #holiday, and so much more. You can choose popular hashtags relevant to your field to reach a wider audience. Don’t use too many popular hashtags though. Your content can get lost among the many posts that use the hashtag.

● Branded Hashtags; Many brands create hashtags related to their brand or products. Papier makes customized stationery and photobooks. They created a brand hashtag that includes their name. They can use it to create a brand identity online and strengthen authority..Coca-cola uses the #ShareACoke hashtag.

● Campaign hashtags; You can create special hashtags for campaigns on Instagram. For example, you can pair your brand name with a Christmas theme for a Christmas promotion campaign. Using Papier as an example, they can curate a hashtag like #PapierXmas to support their Christmas sales promo. Campaign hashtags are designed for a particular marketing campaign, and they only last for the duration of the campaign.

● Location hashtags; Location hashtags look like #OlumoRock and #LekkiConservationCenter. These hashtags use location to attract more viewers to your content.

● Community/industry hashtags; These hashtags are not brand affiliated but rather industry related. They include #Travel, #Marketing, #Journalism #SEO, etc

● Daily Hashtags; These hashtags are popular, and if you curate content around them, you can get a wider audience to view them. They include hashtags like #MondayMotivation, #MondayThoughts, #TuesdayTips, #WednesdayWisdom

● Trending Hashtags; These hashtags take advantage of current trends to push your content. #Valentinesday is usually popular in February, while #Christmas is popular in December. Other hashtags like #Summer and #Vacation also perform well. Trending hashtags are a constant on Instagram, and they bring good results.

Struggling to come up with hashtags? Use hashtag generators

Finding the right hashtags can be a tiring task. It can take the fun out of using Instagram. Fortunately, there are a few software solutions that make creating hashtags easier. They include Instagram Hashtag Generator, Hashtagify, Iconsquare, Ritetag, etc.

Use hashtags to promote your business

Hashtags are the key to success and growth on Instagram. They help you reach more people, grow your audience, and get more engagement on your content. You can use hashtags in your posts, stories, and on your reels to push them to a wider audience. Also, you can use influencer marketing to promote your hashtags. Influencers can help you promote your hashtags to their very large audience.

However, you need to use hashtags strategically for them to be effective. Many hashtags together can throw the algorithm off your post. You should mix and match different types of relevant hashtags for your posts to keep things interesting. Don’t be monotonous with your hashtags!

● Identify your objectives

● Identify your audience

● Choose ad type

● Monitor the numbers

Identify your objectives; You need a social media marketing strategy before advertising on Instagram. You need to ask yourself what you want to achieve with your Instagram ad. Do you want to increase your brand awareness or commercial purchases? Are you trying to drive traffic to your website? Set out a clear objective for your paid ad to achieve.

Identify your audience; Mapping out your audience is very important for more precise targeting with paid ads. It helps the ads to reach the people you need to reach. For example, if you run a bridal fashion line, it makes sense to target only women. It will be wasteful to target men with your paid ads for a bridal brand. You can also estimate that most women decide to get married between 19-40 and set the ads to target women within this age range. Using these parameters to define your ad will help it become more precise, and your ads will reach people that will take profitable action.

Choose ad type; When setting up a paid ad, you should remember that there are different ad formats you can use. They include photo ads, carousel ads, videos, Reels, etc. Photo ads, as the name suggests, are photos. They appear organically on your feed with the title “Sponsored”, while carousel ads are multiple photos in one photo ad. The difference is that carousel ads have more pictures, allowing customers to take different actions.

You can also use video ads to share your dynamic content. Package your content into high-quality videos, and you can use it for a good ad that will help you convert. Reels can help you catch more customers with viral content too. Instagram’s algorithm is beginning to favor videos as much as pictures. Instagram stories also have a massive reach, and you can reach your audience with an ad in between stories. Evaluate the different types of ads and choose which one works best for your business.

Monitor the numbers; Keep a close eye on the results of  your sponsored ads. Monitor your numbers and see where they are coming from. Also, watch the actions they are taking on your page. Even if your first ad is unsuccessful, the numbers can show you where you went wrong. You can then plan a more successful ad.

In conclusion

About 27% of social media users find new products and brands through paid social ads. Your business could be the new one that they will find. Use the steps above to create outstanding ads to help you reach your objectives as a business owner. Instagram ads can help you increase the number of people who see your post and broaden the audience you can organically reach. You should try it!