Sahil: Okay. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the video series growth drivers of growth. I’m Sahil curry, the project manager at a growth. And today, we have with us, Swami Kimani, who is an account manager at our growth.
So we are going to ask me a few questions on social media marketing and a few advanced topics in that, and we’ll straightaway get into the topic. So me the first question to you is, this is a question is that most of the social media marketers face.
And they have to stay updated with the changing algorithms, changing all the updates which go on and on facebook, instgram and all the other social channels. So how do you stay updated with all these trends and all these changing algorithms.
Somi: Well, best way to stay updated is because you’re a social media marketer, you are always there. There is no like, easy way to say Google is not going to help. Honestly, as based on my experience, Google hasn’t helped much I had to pay for find my way through the new changes.
And that’s the best way you just have to explore. Like, I always add, anytime anyone asked me, I always tell them, please keep exploring the page, because that’s the best way to figure out things. So yeah, that’s how you keep yourself updated.
Sahil: Okay, that’s a good answer, you have to just do it by yourself, you have to do some trial and error. get the hang of the algorithm or whatever updates. Okay, good.
So my next question is, so can you just tell me a bit about the few social media campaigns you have run? And how do you, you know, measure the success whether that campaign has been successful or not?
Somi: Okay, so I’ve worked on a couple of good campaigns that have worked for recent campaign that I can think of is one of the clients that I worked as an NPO, or not for profit client, who, you know, takes care of all these small businesses.
And like, they help out these small businesses and like any kind of need, they need any kind of requirements, these small businesses have the NPO help them out.
So for them, we had run we had created actually a campaign called a Brand Baja and Business, which was surrounding around any kind of wedding related business, this could be event could be makeup artists could be, you know, music, anything or everything related to businesses.
And yeah, we had, like, created like a very interesting, fun campaign line. And like, we it created the entire page tonality as if like this, like a wedding happening.
And yeah, we learned ran like a very, like, you know, detail detailed campaign, which involved ads, which involve social media content.
So like, yeah, it was quite elaborate. And it was like one of the most successful campaigns for me, we were able to gather quite a lot of leads through that, by leads. I mean, like, a lot of businesses came and asked for help from this NPO.
And, yeah, I mean, pretty successful. One more campaign that I can think of is like a very big brand, very famous brand.
Actually, everyone knows us, who, like we worked on this, like very interesting concept, which also aired, I think, on television. So that was very interesting. So yeah, I mean, that like a lot, because I’ve been working in the industry for the past seven years now.
So I mean, there were there are quite a lot of campaigns that I’ve worked on. But the best way to measure the success of any campaign is say simple.
You know, you you think of something you prepare a target aap ek aim banate ho. And then like you try to, you know, work towards reaching to it reaching it. So even like, if you reach that closest number you count is as a success.
So yeah, I mean, like, it’s a trial and error process. But as long as I’m, you know, meeting my targets or meeting my projections, that’s the best way to measure the success to any campaign.
Sahil: Yeah, awesome. Awesome. Cool. My next question to you is, so this is related to the paid, the paid ads, or the paid ads campaign that you also run a lot.
So let’s say a brand wants to start these paid campaigns, these ads, so can you just walk us through the steps that the business should take when they are, you know, starting this for their own brand?
Somi: Yeah, so a lot of businesses, especially when it comes to new businesses, they immediately want to get into ads because obviously the aim for any business is to ultimately get profits.
And the best way to profit is you give them money, and then Facebook will run your ad. And that’s how we will get the sales or whatever profits leads. But that’s a very common thought process.
And that’s, that’s very obvious, but it’s not how that works.
So you know, if you’re a new business, I’m talking only from the point of view of that, or if you have not started any kind of social media marketing so far, even if you’re an old business, you should not immediately get into paid marketing, you should first start with organic or non paid marketing and marketing terms, we call it organic.
So just start preparing a content plan, maybe like a six month plan, I would say or even longer time, because that’s how long it takes to you know, analyze your channel your data. And based on that data, you know, trial and error.
And again, the social media is all about trial and error. So you know, you post the you post, you know, create some post content out there and a bar when you have like a good bank of content in your on your channel, then you can figure out okay, fine.
This particular post worked for me, so I can maybe now start an ad people now are aware of your brand. So once awareness happens through non paid media or just content marketing, then you can start with ads, because Jab tak aapke brand ko koi jaanega nahi tab tak kuch khareedega nahi!
Aap directly sales m nahi ghus sakte ho. Until so like, this is how you have to build it’s like a, you can imagine it like a funnel. So first you create a brand name then where people know you and then slowly people would start showing interest in you where engagement comes.
And then the last stage is ads. That’s how it works.
Sahil: Awesome. Okay, good. So another question on the same topic. So when you are using when you are running ads, what kind of what are the ways that you use to, you know, drive traffic to the website or to increase the sales of your business? What can you tell us about this.
Somi: So to increase the website, traffic through Facebook, or Instagram, so if, like someone who knows how to run ads on Facebook, ads manager, there are like multiple objectives that Facebook gives you, right?
Like there could be website traffic, there could be engagement that could be reach conversion sales, there are multiple objectives that you choose from.
So Facebook provide this like typical particular objective called just focused on website traffic. So you can either go to a more elaborate version, which is called website traffic, sorry, which is called Facebook ad manager.
But if you’re not aware of that, or if you do not have enough time to that you can directly just boost your post. And when you boost your posts, you have like a simpler user interface through which you can choose simply choose an objective called website traffic’s and build your, you know, ad that can lead your audience to website.
Sahil: So yeah, okay. And when it comes to, let’s say, insights, all the analytics that you get from Facebook to judge how an ad has performed, or how Facebook pages performing in general, how do you use those analytics to, you know, tweak the strategy going forward?
Somi: Um, so yeah, again, like I said, a, you know, A/B method, or just trial and error method that you call it, you have to figure out like, you will, it won’t be like, it’s a very, like, rare thing that if you run your run an ad for the first time, and it works out wonders for you, if it does, like kudos to you probably doing something right, please come and tell me also, otherwise, just do some trial and error, like, you won’t be able to crack in the first trial.
So do it like 10 times 15 times and then you will have like a data of information, right? Again, you have like a huge list of data through which you can figure out that okay, fine.
The through these 10 different ads, X, Y, Z, or ads work for me, for example, 10 ad I ran in a span of say three months and asked that maybe two ads work do one dose like they got me leads, they got me all kinds of they fulfilled all my objectives could be leads could be engagement.
And I mean, yeah, of course, when you’re building an ad, you’re also building a target audience, target audience, which is extremely important when you’re running an ad or even when you’re creating content for as a matter of fact, but you can save those target audience and then you can further run your ad targeting them because those target audience work the best.
So yeah, I mean, this is how you can you know, utilize your analytics they’re like all like if I sit with your like, then start giving detail it will take another like, week or something I’m not sure
Sahil: Yeah, it’s a big topic to cover. So next question is. So when it comes to Now, you talked about paid ads, you’ve talked about the paid side of things.
Let’s go to the organic side. So can you tell us about how you manage a page on Facebook? How do you go about creating a content calendar?
And what are the things should a business you know, keep in mind while creating the content calendar or while posting on Facebook or Instagram?
Somi: Okay, so Okay, Mr. Zuckerberg has made it very difficult for us, like I have like a major tiff with him saying it out loud in probably if he sees this, I’m gonna be in trouble. I’m not sure. But yeah, Facebook is like, all the time changing.
And it’s very difficult for marketers, all the marketers, in fact, globally to keep a track or, you know, catch pace with the ever so changing platform.
What like, like I said, in like our first, like, when we started our conversation that you have to, like, keep exploring, and like keep checking the chat page, because you won’t be able to understand like, even like, there have been like a major, major Facebook user interface change.
And I’ve been working on the page for like, I think a good four or five years now. And I’m still figuring out how you know, things, these changes are working.
So yeah, like, first first step is to keep track of the changes be on the page, spend some time maybe like an hour to half an hour, every day on the page.
Second, like setting up your business page on Facebook, it’s quite easy, you just have to, maybe you can also put it on Google and say like, I want to set up a business page on Google and you’ll get like the first very link of Facebook and you can easily you know, fill up like the details, whatever Facebook ads like a form and you can start your business page, it’s not that easy.
How to maintain a Facebook page is first of all, two three things that you need to keep in mind is first, the profile image, the profile picture has to be has to be your logo or anything, if you do not haven’t created your logo so far, if you’re a new business, then I would say like maybe play some something easy or maybe as simple as your business name could be your profile, but profile has to be something that you know, identifies or like which people immediately understands looking at, that’s your business.
Second thing that comes is the cover image. cover image is the first thing like the biggest thing on your Facebook page, or whenever anyone like visits your Facebook page, that’s the first thing that anyone sees, the cover image has to be in tandem with your you know, your business.
For example, if I have a clothing business, and I’m putting a cover image of maybe like mountains or somewhere I visited, it’s not like resonating with my brand image.
So I have to have to put a cover image of, you know, my my clothes or my products that I am showcasing. So yeah, these two things you have to keep in mind. Third thing that you have to keep in mind is all kinds of about me information, you have to be very apt about your business, you do not put in like a paragraph or an essay, but like make it short, simple, very sweet.
And so that people can understand what exactly your business is in one go. And then like once you’ve set up all these things, the final thing that comes to setup, setting up your content, calendar content calendar is not rocket science, actually, it sounds very big.
But content calendars basically, you can imagine a content calendar in your head, and you can mark the days you do not have to post every single day.
It could be a Monday, it could be like three days a week, it could be two days a week, minimum, I suggest all my clients to post atleast skip two days a week of posting and not just one.
Two to three posts a week is very important for any social media channel. So So for example, if you mark imagine like Monday to Sunday in your head, as in a calendar, and you can mark Monday, Wednesday or Friday for your postings and just write some content over it.
You can plan in advance a week in advance or two weeks in advance or a month in advance depending on your bandwidth your time. And yeah, this is how you plan your content calendar.
And yeah, the the final thing that remains is you start posting now.
So because you have everything prepared in advance, it’s just easy. You just have to like you know, pick up the information and immediately post on you can also schedule it.
There are like a lot of tools inside Facebook to which you can schedule your post. Explore please.
Sahil: Yeah. So now you’ve we’ve spoken about organic and we’ve spoken about paid side of things. So what would you recommend a business?
How much of their time and effort should they focus on organic and how much on paid off? Would it be? 50:50? What would you say?
Somi: I think it depends it’s a very subjective question. I mean, it depends on how much budget Anyone is having. So currently, I’m helping my mother in her business, which is a very new business.
And we do not have any kind of investment using our own cash, we are using our own savings to build her business.
So we do not have enough budget to, you know, run ads every month or every week, or like, we have to like legit plan like once in two months, okay, fine.
We can put maybe, like, XYZ amount into this, or it’s a very little amount, actually, because we can’t put in so much.
But there are some businesses who have the kind of capital through which they can like, you know, segregate between for ads and organic.
So yeah, I mean, it depends. If you have the kind of budget, I think go for it. Like I said, start with organic, and maybe after six, seven months, once you’ve built up your brand, then start with your ads, it will work wonders
Sahil: Great! thanks for that. And so, now there are so many things happening in the social media world, there are so many new things coming up, be it live streaming, or be it you know, even new technologies that are emerging. So how do you see social media evolving in the next, let’s say, five or 10 years?
Somi: Oh, yeah, that’s, that’s a very topical question right now. Because with the introduction of artificial intelligence, which, by the name, you might have heard of called ChatGPT. And DallE, things are like changing drastically.
And you’re saying five to 10 years, I can see the changes in another year. Because social media and digital is slow, so quick, it is going to take like a 360 degree turn, I’m very, very sure.
So all the social media marketers are all like anyone involved with in these kinds of businesses or industry out there, please, please start, you know, learning about these tools, because they are going to take over and doesn’t mean that your job will be like our bread and butter will be gone.
That’s not the case. They’re still, like, the digital world will still need a human touch. But yeah, I mean, like with the introduction of so many AI tools suddenly, like just just out there, and we don’t even know what to do with it.
So we have to keep ourselves updated, like explore, like, I’ve been spending like an hour every day to you know, understand and learn these tools.
And they’re actually very helpful.
Because I’m able to, you know, it’s helping me like cut down on my time. Not thought process, I would say, but it’s helping me cut down a lot of, you know, processes that are used to that used to take me like a very, very long time, like two or three hours.
So yeah, I mean, yeah, AI is like the future now. So yeah.
Sahil: That was a good message for everyone. We should you know, spend time keep ourselves updated on what is going on in the world. not take anything for granted.
Yeah, so great. I mean, that was a I had a good time talking with you and even I learned so thanks for your time. Yeah, to all the viewers. We’ll see you in another episode, which will come soon.
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