The Daily Carnage

There is no one-size-fits-all spending formula for social media, just like one brand’s failed content is another brand’s big win. It really all depends on an individual brand. So when it comes to budgeting, it can be hard to determine if you are throwing money in the trash or building up your social presence.

Luckily, there are steps to make trackable progress with your social media dollars. Here are 8 ways to make sure you are spending with tip-top efficiency:

1. Master (and maintain) audience targeting. Custom audiences, look-alike models, geo-based targeting, and interest-based audiences are just some techniques. Make the most of individual platform targeting capabilities.
2. Actively manage paid social media spend. Don’t leave your campaigns to simmer too long. Review your individual campaigns frequently and your social media investments quarterly.
3. Expect disruption … forever. Apple and Google have made big changes to the privacy and tracking. Try your best to account for new tracking and measurement methods ahead of the ever-changing data landscape.
4. Create content where your engaged users are. Brand-engaged users use a given social media platform at least once a week, and enjoy seeing content from brands. Target these users where they’re most abundant by building platform-specific social content.
5. Budget for TV advertising to complement your paid social. Guide media investments into over-the-top (OTT) TV, connected TV (CTV) and YouTube in ways that work well with your social campaigns.
6. Pair your paid social and earned media. The volume of consumer posts about brands continues to grow. Take advantage of this built-in engagement and use it to fuel your paid content as well.
7. Don’t be afraid to stray from the pack. While the big dogs like Facebook and YouTube are tried and true, set aside media budgets for emerging platforms. Don’t be afraid to experiment placing ads with smaller, growing platforms.
8. Develop a pipeline of relevant social content. One of the biggest lifts for SMMs and brands is successfully optimizing your assets, scaling your production, and building a robust pipeline of content.

Check out the full article by Gartner for more pieces of budget and tracking advice.

We’re doing it. We’re having ourselves a little bragging moment. A few months ago, Moosend put us in its crosshairs for creating a scannable newsletter and broke down the best practices we do every day in The Daily Carnage.

19 Things Done by The Daily Carnage:

1. We gave it a cool name.
2. We offer accessibility options.
3. We don’t forget to mention the team (Carney) behind the newsletter.
4. We love us some bullets, checklists, and numbered lists.
5. We use distinct colors for links.
6. We organize our content with categories.
7. We try to keep overviews of content concise and compelling.
8. We make our buttons pop.
9. We drive engagement with polls and quizzes.
10. We add breaks between sections.
11. We make have options for sponsors and partners.
12. We use strong language and CTAs.
13. We invite our audience to speak with us, too.
14. We serve content relevant to our audience.
15. We entertain when we can with some fun content instead of being all biz.
16. We created a referral program (that cool sharing section at the bottom of the newsletter).
17. We are always down to collaborate or partner up.
18. We give more contact options and proper email info.
19. We let our audience members manage their profiles and subscriptions.

The Daily Carnage is our labor of love to deliver you the freshest marketing content around. We don’t do it for the praise, but we will take this as a little pat on the back. Check out the full post for a visual breakdown as well!