Learn, Collaborate, and Chat: New Ways To Understand Your Target Audience on Social Media
Ready to go back to school? With Facebook’s new collaboration with Coursera, small business owners everywhere can now learn more about reaching their target audience online. This comes at a time when we see new ways to interact every week! We’ll help you apply your new knowledge with a quick summary of Clubhouse, now open to all, and an overview of Instagram’s new collaboration features.
Photo by Facebook
Facebook 101: Online Marketing Fundamentals
In a response to the changing job market and their own evolving positioning, Facebook has partnered with Coursera to offer new online learning in the digital sphere. Previously, the platform had only one certificate available in Social Media Marketing. The two new additions are in Marketing Analytics and Software Development. These are self-directed courses that are intended to be completed in about 20 weeks.
Though they’re designed to give someone a start in a related field, these courses are a resource to all small business owners and marketers! If you’re not looking for a certification, check out their topics and focus on what interests you most. This is a great resource for understanding how to promote yourself on Facebook and around the internet!
What does this mean for Gainesville Businesses?
Facebook’s course topics range from building a community to measuring your ad’s performance. If you’re not sure where to start, start with this question: What are you looking to gain from your Facebook presence? Knowing your goal is step 1. These guides will help direct you once you know where you’re going.
Image by Vishal Shah
Group Project! New Collaborations on Instagram
Brands and Instagram influencers go together like PB & J. And now Instagram is giving us new ways to collaborate on their platform. With these new collaboration tools, collaborative posts will appear on the main feed or Reels tab with two profile pictures and usernames together, showing who contributed to the post.
Though this is just in the test phase, it’s exciting for those brands that work with influencers or encourage interaction with their Instagram profile. These posts will be displayed to both sets of followers, which broadens your reach so much more than a shoutout. This feature might become the elevated form of tagging your business – which will give you some free feed content.
What does this mean for Gainesville Businesses?
This experiment isn’t available to all Instagram users yet – and we’re totally fine with that. We’ll be interested to see how these look, how people interact with them, and what safeguards will be put in place to keep our feeds looking good. While we’re waiting on the results, perform a collaboration check on your own social media profiles. Should you be engaging more with influencers or everyday customers? Do your followers know what hashtag to use when they post your products? What are your competitors or similar businesses in other locations doing on Instagram?
Photo by Nathana Rebouças on Unsplash
Free Period: Clubhouse Is Open To All!
If you never got an invite to Clubhouse, you’re not alone. But the good news is, the Clubhouse app is now available to all! We’ve talked about Clubhouse a good bit in the past but it’s time for a quick overview. Clubhouse is a little bit like a house party in an app. Someone hosts a live audio room that everyone can join. Guests can come and go as they please, but the host has to be there, or else the party stops. If the host makes you a speaker, you can contribute your thoughts to the conversation – otherwise, you just get to listen in.
So what’s the consensus on Clubhouse? This is a medium that’s all about connecting with people and back-and-forth conversations. For a small business, this might be a great tool to talk about your industry, answer audience questions, or just connect with the local community. It feels spontaneous, welcoming, and a lot more authentic than a lot of social media. The downfall is that it’s all live – your conversation isn’t going to be saved, so only those who tune in get to hear what you have to say. In general, treat these like a radio show or a town hall. Bring enough to say but make sure to jot down the best tidbits to make permanent content later.
What does this mean for Gainesville Businesses?
Not sure how to start the conversation? This is where your other social media presence comes in. Ask your followers what they want to talk about and invite them to connect with you on Clubhouse. Once your first topic is set, you’ll be good to go! In your first conversation, notice what topics you could go on about and save them for next time.
Ok, now what?
Now that you’re up to date with the latest industry news, it’s time to invest in a team that specializes in all things social media and digital marketing. We can help! Liquid Creative is a full-service marketing agency ready to help your business operate to its fullest potential without missing a beat.
