How social media influencers can use advertising to increase their value to their clients.

1. Amplifying Your Influence: How to Use Social Ads to Increase
Your Value

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IT ME
Chris Curley is the Creative Director at Sensei Project. A former journalist, travel
writer, and occasional pop culture critic, Chris has worked in digital marketing for
six years. With Sensei Project, he helps create creative campaigns, works with
influencers to connect them to brands and heighten their effectiveness in their
field, and helps train companies’ marketing teams to embrace the future (while
sometimes dragging them kicking and screaming into the present).

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THE CASE FOR SOCIAL ADS
You’re already an influencer, so why do you need advertising?

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THE CASE FOR SOCIAL ADS
Here are a few main reasons to consider having a social ads budget.
It can increase your value to the brands you work with
It can help you make a stronger case for future pitches
It exposes your work and brand to new audiences
You can drive more traffic to your blog in a directed way
Increase your multi-platform versatility

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THE CASE FOR SOCIAL ADS
First, let’s talk about reach. This
audience knows that the older the
platform, the more difficult (in general)
it is to win maximum organic reach,
which makes ad spend a must when
attempting to even recapture your
original audience. This is especially true
on Facebook. But beyond that, it can
essentially “juice” your organic reach,
whether that’s on a video, a livestream,
a photo or a link.

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A LITTLE GOES A LONG WAY
You don’t have to break the bank to get
great results. This post at right had
$100 behind it and reached nearly
200,000 people.
You’ll note it looks like that audience is
largely organic, but it was the spend that
it got it there. This 15x the average post
reach for this particular client.
That said, you can move the needle on
Facebook for as little as $10-15 per
post.

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THE BRAND PERSPECTIVE
If you are going to plan on setting aside even a small budget when you’re working
with a brand, go ahead and ask them what kind of results they’re hoping to get.
You should already have an idea from your initial research and communications,
but perhaps there’s a specific campaign, product, or angle they’re trying to
highlight–which would give you an idea of where you might want to put some of
that spend.
The better you can tailor your ads audiences to your partners’ needs, the more
valuable you’ll be.
Furthermore, the better you can target segments of your audience, the stronger
an argument you can make to broaden your travel horizons. If you have 350,000
and 50k are from U.K., but you can target and engage them, this creates a more
persuasive argument for your value.

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DIFFERENT KPIs
One example of this is when promoting
video or–less obviously– multi-image
posts. These typically get fewer
traditional post engagements on Twitter,
Facebook, and Instagram (i.e. Likes,
Comments, Shares), but other key
performance indicators (KPI) could be
valuable to your brand partners and
make these posts worth promoting.
For instance, in the post here which has a $25 spend behind it, traditional
engagement metrics might say this is a 4% engagement rate (286/6976), but
it’s worth counting those 264 photo views. After all, if an advertiser ran a
promotional spread, a reader flipping through six pages is better than looking at
just one.

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BEYOND IMPRESSIONS
As Influencers, you may not think about the opportunities of Call-to-Action ads,
but if part of your platform is a blog, or you regularly present exclusive offers and
opportunities for your readers, these ads can drive traffic much more efficiently
than your standard post.
As part of your pitch, this is a value-add many don’t think about including.
Brands may be even willing to give you some budget to target your audience
specifically in driving traffic back to their site; remember that brands can target
your audience on Twitter themselves, but not on Facebook or Instagram
Even if you don’t have an ads budget, it’s possible to negotiate brand sharing
and boosting your post(s) thereby increasing your reach to a new audience.

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THE NITTY GRITTY | FACEBOOK/INSTAGRAM ADS
Say goodbye (mostly) to the Power Editor! Facebook has rolled 95% of the
functionality of the robust but clunky and complicated power editor into their
Ads Manager, making it easier than ever to run a variety of ads from the
back end of your page.

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THE NITTY GRITTY | FACEBOOK/INSTAGRAM ADS
From here, you can create an unlimited number of saved audiences that hit
different interest groups and demographics for using on Facebook and
Instagram posts.

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THE NITTY GRITTY | FACEBOOK/INSTAGRAM ADS

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THE NITTY GRITTY | FACEBOOK/INSTAGRAM ADS
Lookalike audiences are a handy way to raise your reach while staying planted in
your niche.

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THE NITTY GRITTY | FACEBOOK/INSTAGRAM ADS
Once you have these audiences created, the hard work is done and you can
access all of these via the “Boost Post” button, but with a much more robust
and cost-efficient targeting than you normally reach using that action.

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ADS PLATFORM INSTAGRAM NOTE
Note: Facebook changed their ads
platform defaults a couple of weeks
ago to always make Instagram
placements where the format allows.
If you want to target one platform at
a time (Facebook OR Instagram)–
which is recommended–you’ll need
to switch from automatic placements
to manual.

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INSTAGRAM
Speaking of Instagram, a month ago, the platform quietly rolled out some new
changes making their call-to-actions and website interactions more effective.
Call-to-action buttons now
extend to the comments
section, while videos will
actually continue to play while
the app loads in the link
website (which you can see in
the example at right).

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TWITTER ADS
Twitter ads have a lower ROI in general, but
still have their place. The key is
understanding how Twitter charges you to
get rid of some of the noise. Twitter counts
as an “engagement”:
Any click on the tweet
Any click on any hashtag
Any click on any @tag
Retweets
Likes
A video “view” is 3-seconds watched

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TWITTER ADS
That said, Twitter’s “Cards” is an effective way to drive clicks to your website or
an offer, and is great to set up and use when there is a specific article or action
you want users to take that you’d have a harder time capturing in an organic
tweet.

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TWITTER ADS
This is an “advertising” unit
you can take advantage of
without necessarily spending a
dime. Article Cards integration
in your blog means that links
now create full clickable areas,
increasing your CTR, while you
can also pin important call-to-
action cards to the top of your
timeline giving them first focus
(this is particularly good for
special offers).

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WHAT’S NEXT?
Find a budget that works for you
Choose a focus platform
Start small
Test, test, test

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YOUR CONTENT+
When you’re hired as an influencer, it’s
usually because your community is
made up of people that a brand wants
to reach and because your content is
compelling and desirable. Throwing
social ads into the mix is just one of
the tools in your arsenal to ensure
everyone is happy with the end results.

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THANKS!
Thanks for listening – and being part of SITSum 2016!