There's A Fine Line Between Discovery And Feeling Sold

When it comes to paid posts in the social space - people literally don't care if content is organic or sponsored - what they want is discovery; selling a feeling - helping the audience imagine the look and feel of the product in their lives.

But all too often paid posts look like a rush job - a bad sounding :30 second radio ad visually coming to life.

And while there are a million little tactics to deploy in order to create a memorable and impactful campaign - the graphic we created for you below outlines the two more important approaches for paid social media posts.

Aligning Content With Platform Use & Interaction:

Focus more on selling a feeling and balanced (fun) unpredictability in the social space.

And once you have alignment and interaction down - pay attention to other approaches in paid social media:

Audience Signals

Form data insights from studying what drives actions.

Get To The Point - Fast

Half of U.S. adults admit checking their phones 30 times a day, and during those "check-ins" only giving content on average 1.7 seconds before they decide to consume.

Have An End In Mind

Content should either:

Breakthrough - meaning it should be remembered/re-called.

Respond - it must trigger reaction.

Consistency

Social content is stock (planned) and flow (unplanned).

Planned content = cadence (paid should be scheduled in the cadence)

Unplanned = in the moment

Relevance Matters

Content must be coherent; fitting to the brand.

Create Content Buckets

Top emotional triggers people say they want from content:

Inspire, Teach, Entertain, Empower and/or make them feel relatable.

It's really simple - do more around what works and less of what does not.

Place greater focus on ads being useful.

Reach out to me anytime on Twitter @lorilewis.

Please enjoy MERGE archives here.