Part II-G: The Business (continued)
Nine posts into this series on Facebook, and we have yet to even talk about content. What good is any of the data sets and input variables if you don't have content? The answer is quite clear...it's a useless understanding. Content is the most important element of your marketing campaigns. It is a vision of your brand, product or service portrayed through text, image, video, or engagement. Building out a library of digital assets are one of the most important marketing investments your business should make. The trick, however, is to limit the creative budget and allocate it to the campaign budgets.
Unless your business, product or service is in the content creation industry (photography, videography, movies, film, TV, art, etc.) you do not need a Hollywood production to build out your content library. I give the exemption of those businesses because content IS their business, which means that showcasing their work in the form of content is critical to show value. For a standard small business, however, organic content generally performs the best and is least expensive to make. Smart phones, nowadays, are equipped with unbelievable cameras and photo tools to modify, edit and create content. I recommend that you do some digging in your app store, online and with fellow business owners to see which functions are able to produce the desired quality of content. The rest is simply taking the time to get footage. (This part is quite difficult).
Run through your daily routine as a business owner. You have to worry about your workers, inventory, sales cycle, supply chains, vendors, payment processors, taxes, utility bills, customer relations, investors (in some cases), and on and on and on. Picking up your phone, setting up the perfect ambiance, and recording content footage is probably not on your priority list. Outsourcing this task is simple and more effective...particularly if you are going for a raw organic feel to the footage.
Once again, I refer to your own evolutionary experience using social media as a guide to developing effective content. What once began as white backdrop images of products with perfect lighting and mood setting environments have quickly transitioned to selfies and casual lifestyle product shots. The idea that this evolved content has is to trick the user in engaging with a post that does not resemble an ad. The more organic the feel, the more they can relate to their own type of content. This variation of ads across all placements of Facebook has proven to be the most engaging, interactive, and in alignment with the algorithms knowledge of users.
Content needs to be creative...but it also needs to understand how it will interact with the Facebook platform. As discussed in the previous post, Facebook has several placement options based on chosen campaign types. These placements have different content requirements for sizing and file types. For example, a video ad requires some type of video content. (Not difficult to put those pieces together).
If you're not creative or have no clue where to start...don't worry...because Facebook also offers creative tools for building content. By this point, you shouldn't be surprised. In the 3rd step of the campaign build, Ad, there are creative functions that allow a business to build content across all designated placements...simultaneously. While minor graphic design knowledge is useful, the plug-n-play model is set up to work with the most minimal design experienced users.
The fact is...the more effort you put into building your content, the less effort you put towards other aspects of your business. The content should be fun, but not stressful...effective, but not costly. The attention span of a social media user is measured in nanoseconds nowadays...therefore, use the framework for quick, easy, and engaging tools to build out your content portfolio.
On the next post we will run through the Ad funnel to finalize the marketing campaign steps.
Stay Strong~
~M~