Businesses across industries have recognized Instagram’s power to influence purchase decisions and foster loyal communities. Instagram continues to deliver engagement for brands, with 90% of users following at least one business, and 87% of users say they take action after seeing a product on Instagram. Innovative formats like Reels and Stories, AI-powered discovery, and refined ad experiences have transformed the platform for both users and advertisers.

Instagram’s success wasn’t just a matter of timing or luck. It was a result of strategic design, relentless focus on user experience, and forward-thinking innovation. Instagram has continuously adapted to meet the evolving expectations of consumers and brands alike.

In 2024, Instagram generated an estimated $70.9 billion in ad revenue. With video content consumption surging and new AI-enhanced features, analysts expect continued growth through 2025.

The evolution of Instagram reflects over a decade of intentional design, innovation, and marketing integration. Instagram is an essential platform for businesses working to reach engaged, mobile-first audiences.

The Evolution of Instagram Ads

Instagram’s history by the numbers:

• 2010: Created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Instagram is the first photo-only social platform.
• December 12, 2010: Instagram has 1 million users.
• April 9, 2012: The Acquisition. Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion dollars.
• July 26, 2012: Instagram has 80 million users.
• November 5, 2012: No longer just for mobile viewing. Instagram rolls our profiles for web browsers.
• February 26, 2013: There are officially 100 million users on Instagram.
• June 20, 2013: Instagram is no longer a photo-only platform. Users can now create and post videos onto their profiles.
• October 24, 2013: Instagram announces sponsored posts and videos.
• March 4, 2015: Instagram introduces Carousel Ads to sponsored posts.
• September 9, 2015: Instagram introduces small and large ad campaigns to their platform.
• February 24, 2016: 200,000 advertisers on Instagram.
• March 15, 2016: Say goodbye to chronological timelines. Instagram announces a new algorithm that optimizes the order of posts on user timelines.
• May 19, 2016: Instagram adds video to Carousel ads.
• August 2, 2016: Instagram introduces Stories–photos or videos that can be viewed by followers for 24 hours.
• August 23, 2016: Businesses start using Instagram stories to promote products, sales, and behind-the-scenes fun.
• September 22, 2016: Instagram has 500,000 monthly active advertisers.
• November 10, 2016: Gif with the times. Instagram adds Boomerang integration.
• November 11, 2016: Instagram announces vertical photo and videos ads.
• January 11, 2017: Instagram announces platform insights for Stories. Businesses will be able to see reach, impressions, replies, and exits for each individual story.
• February 22, 2017: Marketers can promote up to 10 photos or videos in one ad.
• March 1, 2017: Instagram Stories ads now available for all businesses globally.
• March 22, 2017: Instagram has 1 million monthly advertisers.
• April 13, 2017: 200 million people are using Instagram Stories.
• April 26, 2017: Instagram has 700 million users.
• May 25, 2017: Instagram announces new objectives for Stories Ads. They include Video Views, Traffic, Conversions, and Mobile App Install.
• July 26, 2017: Instagram announces 15 million business profiles.
• September 25, 2017: Instagram has 2 million monthly advertisers.
• September 26, 2017: There are 800 million users on Instagram.
• October 3, 2017: Instagram introduces Polls into Stories.
• March 2018: Released shoppable posts for businesses, making normal posts into ad-like posts.
• June 2018: Collection ads were introduced, allowing businesses to advertise multiple products within one ad unit/post.
• August 2018: Automated ad creation and placement tools expanded through Facebook’s AI, promoting smart creative optimization for story and feed ads.
• September 2018: Vertical video introduced in IGTV, sponsored IGTV content was slowly integrated.
• March 2019: Checkout on Instagram was rolled out in beta, allowing users to buy products within the Instagram app.
• June 2019: Branded Content Ads were introduced, allowing advertisers to promote influencer posts as paid ads.
• March–June 2020 (COVID-19 response): Allowed businesses to add gift cards, food orders, and donation stickers in stories.
• August 5, 2020: Introduced Instagram Reels, and ads for Reels were beginning to be tested behind the scenes.
• October 2020: Live shopping and shopping in Reels was launched for businesses and creator accounts, and a dedicated shop tab was added in the main navigation bar.
• January 2021: Reels had about 500 million daily active users.
• June 17, 2021: Reels ads launched, introducing full screen video ads labeled as sponsored within the Reels feed.
• March 1, 2021: Live rooms introduced, allowing up to 4 users to go live together.
• June 2021: Native affiliate marketing tools rolled out, allowing creators to earn commissions through brand partnerships within the Instagram app.
• October 28, 2021: Instagram’s parent company rebrands as Meta.
• Late 2021: Expanded ads into the Explore tab, which spread visibility beyond Feed and Stories.
• December 2021: Instagram reached approximately 2 billion monthly active users.
• Mid 2022: Focused on expanding Reels’ reach and usage with increased ad placements; Reels continued to grow as a key engagement format.
• March 9, 2023: Instagram stopped extending new and renewed Reels Play Deals in the U.S. and India.
• June 2023: Ads Manager rolled out new Commercial Music features and expanded Instagram Reels ad placements (plus additional campaign types)—signifying a broad update to Reels ads functionality.
• September 7, 2023: Instagram began internally testing longer Reels of 3 minutes and 10 minutes.
• 2023: Ad revenue reached $39.7 billion.
• February 5, 2024: Meta began testing “Ads on Profile”—allowing creators in the U.S., Canada, Australia, South Korea, and Japan to earn from ads displayed directly on their Instagram profiles.
• May 26–June 13, 2024: Users on Reddit observed that the “Ads on Reels” test program ended—various reports noted June 13, 2024, as the cut-off.
• June 13, 2024: Reddit users reported tests of ads overlaid on Instagram Stories, seemingly promoting Meta’s VR offerings.
• July 16, 2024: Meta officially added banner-style overlay ads (single-image and carousel formats) to Instagram Reels.
• January 19, 2025: Instagram officially allowed Reels to be up to 3 minutes in length, doubling from the 90-second limit.
• January 21, 2025: Meta unveiled a Breakthrough Bonus program, offering TikTok creators up to $5,000 over three months for exclusive Reels, with some deals reportedly reaching $300,000 over six months.
• March 9, 2025: Reddit users spotted Instagram experimenting with non-skippable “ad breaks” during Reels playback, introducing mandatory 5‑second waits.
• January 2025: Revenue program for Ads on Profile officially discontinued (had been operating in the U.S., Canada, SK, Japan, Australia).
• 2025: Ongoing rollout of features like clickable links in Reels for verified users, AI-powered ad insights, and enhanced carousel & shoppable posts for commerce, highlighted in update guides.

Ready to Level Up Your Social Strategy with Agentic AI?

Did you know that 73% of consumers now discover brands through social media? With the reach of apps like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, it’s easy to see why. These days, staying relevant isn’t optional—it’s essential. SOCi’s Genius Social Agent helps multi-location businesses create engaging, locally-optimized social content at scale. Harness the power of agentic AI to boost your brand’s visibility, respond swiftly, and win over your audience, wherever they scroll.

Book your demo today and start leading the conversation on social.

The post [Infographic] The Evolution of Instagram Ads appeared first on SOCi.

🎓 Introducing SOCi University: Empowering Your Success!

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of SOCi University, your one-stop platform for mastering the SOCi platform and elevating your local marketing strategies!

Whether you’re new to SOCi or looking to sharpen your skills, SOCi University is packed with on-demand courses, live webinars, and resources designed to help you get the most out of our platform. Here’s what you can expect:

• Comprehensive Training: Built with top-tier technology and diverse content formats, this platform offers functionality and content that drive users to exceptional learning opportunities
• Expert-Led Live Sessions: Learn from industry leaders and SOCi experts on how to use the platform, best practices, and cutting-edge strategies.
• On-Demand Access: Learn at your own pace, anytime, anywhere, and revisit lessons whenever you need.

Ready to level up? Log into SOCi University today and start exploring the training that can help you drive measurable results.

✨ Spotlight: SOCi ReImagine Recap

SOCi ReImagine was an action-packed two-day event filled with insights for multi-location brands! SOCi’s very own Chief Product Officer, Falk Gottlob, took the stage with special guests to talk all about innovation and what SOCi customers can look forward to in the SOCi Platform.

SOCi’s exciting new product releases include Genius Suite, which combines our three major Genius offerings—Genius Search, Genius Reviews, and Genius Social—into a powerful integrated solution.

Additionally, Falk highlighted Genius Studio, which is set to launch in Q1 2025, where AI will become more intelligent by constantly improving as teams utilize it.

Missed it? Catch all the highlights in our latest blog and elevate your marketing game!

Search

Genius Search: Category Replacement

Staying on top of shifting consumer interests and Google’s ever-changing categories can be tough.
Genius Search now makes this easy with Category Replacement recommendations—by constantly monitoring your GBP additional category performance and suggesting replacements with higher search demand, you can stay in sync with your customer’s search needs and keep your listings current.

With this new recommendation, Genius Search users can:

• Attract more customers with top-performing categories
• Keep listings aligned with the latest search trends
• Streamline category management for multiple locations at scale

Never fall behind on search trends again with Genius Search’s new Category Replacement recommendation, enhancing your local search visibility and user engagement like never before.

Interested in Category Replacement and all of the other impactful recommendations Genius Search can generate for your locations? Explore Genius Search and book a personalized demo today!

Social

Rewrite With AI

Creating engaging social media content takes time and can be frustrating when inspiration runs dry. With Rewrite with AI, SOCi makes it easy to overcome writer’s block by enhancing copy, making it more creative and engaging with ChatGPT. Save time and quickly deliver high-quality content, all within SOCi. Available with SOCi Social only.

Want to take your local social strategy to the next level? Genius Social goes beyond AI, delivering unmatched strategic, automated, and localized social media content and engagement replies.

LinkedIn Threading

LinkedIn comments now thread correctly under the original post in Genius Social and SOCi Social, improving conversation management and aligning with LinkedIn’s native threading for a better user experience. Available for both Genius Social & SOCi Social.

Genius Social

Product & Service Posts

Genius Social now includes promotional posts as part of its posting strategy, helping you create a more diverse monthly content calendar and driving revenue to your locations.

Bulk Actions For Quick Approvals

Approving multiple posts is time-consuming and inefficient, slowing down the process of publishing social content. SOCi introduces the first bulk approval workflow in the industry, allowing users to approve Genius-generated posts in just two clicks.

New capabilities include:

• New Genius tab: Find Genius Recommendations, Admin Planning (aka Admin Genius Library), & Genius Reporting Insights all in one place.
• Approval views: Choose between a list or grid view for faster approvals, tailored to your workflow.
• Post Previews: See how posts will appear on Facebook and Instagram, with insights into why and how Genius created them.

Surveys

Introducing Link Delivery: Effortless Feedback, Anywhere, Anytime.

Customer feedback is key to building loyalty and improving operations. Link Delivery from SOCi Surveys makes it easier than ever to gather feedback in real time. In just two clicks, you can generate a survey link and share it across any channel—receipts, social media, emails, and more.

Where Link Delivery Shines:

• On-the-spot feedback after in-person interactions
• QR codes at registers or exits for instant responses
• Receipt surveys that make feedback as easy as checking out
• CRM emails and social posts that engage your audience right where they are

Link Delivery helps you connect with customers where they are, boosting engagement and driving real-time action.

Learn more about Surveys and Link Delivery!

Reviews

Get More Local Reviews

SOCi just leveled up the game—offering third-party review solicitation! Get Reviews lets you actively request reviews on key networks—excluding Yelp— boosting your local search visibility with fresh, relevant reviews  that are critical for ranking higher and standing out.

With this new feature, SOCi users can:

• Streamline review collection by sending bulk review requests across multiple locations
• Drive customer action with targeted CTAs that can point to review networks
• Boost online visibility by showcasing reviews directly on your local Pages

Already using Genius Reviews? You’re in for a double win: more reviews = more AI-suggested responses, putting your reputation management on autopilot. Get ready to crush the competition by turning reviews into real results.

Interested? Learn more about Get Reviews.

Genius Auto Respond

Genius Auto Respond, a feature of Genius Reviews, now enables users to automate responses using the best templates from pre-approved libraries. When a review matches your auto-respond rule, Genius analyzes it and selects a fitting response, ensuring it hasn’t been used in the last five replies. With Genius Auto Respond you can:

• Automate responses to save time.
• Use relevant, pre-approved responses.
• Prioritize important reviews.
• Ensure compliant responses (specifically for Financial Services and other Regulated Industries).

Chat

Google Business Messages Deprecation

Google has deprecated Google Business Messages, which is no longer supported by SOCi Chat.

As of July 31st, chat functionality ended, so users no longer receive messages natively or within the SOCi platform.

Partnerships & Integrations

MoxiWorks Integration

Social media places agents directly in the feeds of potential buyers and sellers. But while it’s the #1 channel for customer acquisition, not everyone’s making the most of it because agents have limited time in the day to prioritize.

SOCi and MoxiWorks are partnering to automate real estate home listing posts for agents. This powerful enhancement to our Genius Social solution leverages automation to create relevant and engaging social content, boosting lead generation.

Learn more here.

Digimind

SOCi’s partnership with Digimind enables marketers to activate social media monitoring insights for more effective and impactful local marketing efforts when paired with SOCi’s search, reputation, and social tools. By dissecting keywords and trends from external conversations, marketers can use this information to make more informed marketing decisions.

Digimind is an intelligence software that helps you fully understand consumer insights, your competitive environment, and market trends.

With a mission to help their customers understand the world as it is, Digimind offers social listening, intelligence solutions, and brand reputation services to transform social and web data into actionable insights, helping customers make informed decisions that drive their strategies.

See the latest releases & updates in action

Discover how our Fall 2024 updates can streamline your operations and boost your brand’s performance. Get a demo today!

Want to stand out in local searches? Our 2024 SOCi Local Visibility Index reveals the top brands’ strategies! Don’t miss out on $54 billion in revenue opportunities. Learn how to improve your local visibility and grow your business!

The post SOCi Fall ‘24 Release Notes appeared first on SOCi.

✨ Spotlight: Genius Search

A Revolutionary Approach to Local Search

This groundbreaking and innovative addition to SOCi’s CoMarketing Cloud transcends traditional listings management by delivering a revolutionary new approach to local search—unlike anything on the market.

Genius Search is powered by our advanced AI, which analyzes various data sources, offering an in-depth look into search behaviors and trends of local consumers. This intelligence shapes Genius Search’s approach, with AI acting as a data scientist and trained marketer for every single location, to continuously optimize listings so they resonate with each unique location and keep businesses one step ahead in the local search game.

With Genius Search, you get:

• World-Class Listings Management
• PLUS Real-Time Local Data Analysis
• PLUSProactive Optimization Recommendations
• PLUSOne-Click Task Automation

To learn more about Genius Search and why it’s a must for your brand, request a personalized demo today!

Platform

SOCi Shield
We are excited to announce the launch of SOCi Shield, a comprehensive protective layer within our CoMarketing Cloud. SOCi Shield is designed to deliver robust compliance and brand protection solutions tailored for multi-location businesses.

By integrating marketing and compliance tools into a single platform, SOCi Shield boosts productivity, reduces IT costs, and ensures local marketing efforts remain within compliance guidelines across all channels. With automatic responses to policy violations, SOCi Shield provides real-time alerts and feedback, making correction adjustments and approval workflows seamless and efficient.

Whether content is created by corporate teams, agents, or AI, SOCi Shield guarantees that all social media posts, engagements, listings, and local page content adhere to regulatory requirements and brand standards. You can now confidently manage your brand’s online presence, knowing that non-compliant content will never slip through the cracks.

Identity Access Management | Role-Based Notifications

Role-based notifications improve organizational efficiency by reducing information overload and accuracy and ensuring important alerts are not missed. Previously, notifications in SOCi were configured at the account or individual user level. Now, Role-based Notifications empower users to configure notifications for specific Roles, allowing for scalable and precise notification settings for hundreds or even thousands of users. Individual users can still view and modify their own notification settings for further personalization.

Pages

Local Pages Modernization

This July 15, 2024, release marks the culmination of a major, multi-year investment toward laying the foundation for the future of local SEO. We’ve modernized how local pages are built to leverage the latest advances in search optimization technology fully. With this release, SOCi Pages now includes new tools to automate content and data management, making it easier than ever to mass deploy truly localized, high-performing landing pages. Product enhancements include:

Full Integration into the CoMarketing Cloud
SOCi Pages is now fully built and supported within the CoMarketing Cloud, unlocking full integration and unified data across all of SOCi’s solutions and all the benefits of the SOCi platform from SSO, to Roles and User Management, compliance features, and more.

Improved Performance & Reliability
We’ve invested in significantly expanding and modernizing the technology that powers locators and local pages behind the scenes.

Forms Powered by SOCi Surveys
Organically collect leads and customer feedback with embedded Forms powered by SOCi Surveys. SOCi Pages now includes the option to add a built-in “Contact Us” form, access to a customizable survey builder, and instant email notifications for completed forms.

Events Locator 
Feature upcoming events on your locator and local pages. No manual updates needed.

Approval Management
Ensure accuracy and compliance with our streamlined SOCi Pages approval workflow, designed to facilitate swift content edits and reviews.

File Import & Export 
Automate bulk updates to your location data in SOCi and everywhere the data is used, from Listings to Local Pages and more, with an easy, DIY file import and export tool.

Automated Directory Pages
SOCi Pages automatically creates and updates directory pages as you add and remove local pages, saving steps and bolstering SEO.

Auto-Resize Images
Pre-set specific image size and dimensions, and SOCi Pages will automatically crop and resize images added by users.

Staging Environment & Page Preview
Save and test updates in a controlled staging environment, then preview staged changes to local pages and locators in SOCi Pages before taking them live.

Territory Locator 
Help consumers find an agent, dealer, or service provider by zip code, city, county, or state.

Etailer Locator 
Distributor brands can now add a directory of online retailers to their locator to direct consumers to ecommerce sites where they can purchase their products in addition to brick-and-mortar locations.

Reviews

New Case Study: Southern Rock Restaurants
Discover how Southern Rock Restaurants transformed their guest engagement strategy using SOCi Genius Reviews. This case study highlights the significant improvements in customer loyalty and operational efficiency achieved through our cutting-edge technology. Learn from their success and see how your business can also benefit from prioritizing customer engagement with SOCi. Read the full story here.

Surveys

Survey Notifications
Stay informed and responsive—now, survey notifications come complete with the entire survey form included. Get all the vital information right at your fingertips as soon as responses roll in. This upgrade ensures you’re always in the loop, making it easier than ever to manage feedback and act on insights promptly.

SOCi Chat

SOCi SmartBot is now SOCi Chat
Introducing SOCi Chat, an updated AI-powered chatbot designed to revolutionize customer interactions for multi-location businesses. This enhanced version of our previous SmartBot delivers immediate, localized responses across key digital touchpoints with a single corporate setup.

• Omnichannel Chatbot: Deploy SOCi Chat across all locations for immediate, AI-powered responses on Facebook Messenger, SMS, and local pages.
• Authentic Conversations: Combine AI and localized data to create natural, personalized, and engaging interactions with customers.
• Dynamic, Location-Specific Responses: Provide location-specific answers with one chatbot setup using dynamic fields.
• Unified Customer Experience on SOCi: Seamlessly integrate SOCi Chat with other SOCi products like Pages and Surveys for a more brand-aligned, impactful, and efficient experience.

Learn more on how to transform your customer interactions and improve operational efficiency with SOCi Chat, or get a personalized demo today!

SOCi Chat for Pages
Embed SOCi Chat’s customizable widget on SOCi Pages and local websites for localized responses and lead capture while consumers browse your pages. With a single setup, deploy the chat widget across all locations, welcoming visitors with a greeting message and maintaining brand consistency with your colors and logo.

Social

Genius Social Enhancements
The team is continuously making enhancements to our recently released Genius Social product.

In Q2, we made the following improvements:

• Bulk Approve Content: Group approvals streamline the content review process. Users can quickly view, edit, reject, and approve content across their assigned groups.
• Email & In-App Notifications: New & improvised email & in-app notifications throughout the month to remind admins and local users of the actions needed to maximize Genius Social’s success. This includes reminders for asset collection, content review, and approval.
• Genius Calendar Insights: Access insights to understand top-performing content created by Genius and the metrics behind them.

LinkedIn Mentions
SOCi enhances visibility and engagement on LinkedIn by enabling businesses to tag specific users in posts. This targeted approach ensures that followers see and engage with relevant content.

Partnerships

MoxiWorks Integration (Coming Soon)
Social media places agents directly in the feeds of potential buyers and sellers. But while it’s the #1 channel for customer acquisition, not everyone’s making the most of it because agents have limited time in the day to prioritize. Enhancing our Social product line, SOCi is integrating with MoxiWorks to automate real estate home listing posts the moment they hit the market.

Digimind (Coming Q3)
SOCi is joining forces with Digimind, a global leader in social listening, market, and competitive intelligence solutions to take multi-location social media strategy to the next level.

More to come in Q3 – stay tuned!

See the latest releases & updates in action

Discover how our Summer 2024 updates can streamline your operations and boost your brand’s performance. Get a demo today!

Interested in learning how Genius Search can help you stay competitive in digital channels? Download our whitepaper now to equip yourself with the knowledge and strategies you need to thrive in the age of genAI-powered local SEO.

The post SOCi Summer ‘24 Release Notes appeared first on SOCi.

In the Spring ’24 Release, SOCi enhances the CoMarketing Cloud with Genius Social, leveraging AI automation grounded by data to fill monthly content creation and generate engagement replies. This release also brings a much-anticipated listings accuracy tool, expands your reach through TikTok, a custom report builder, and improved platform control with new roles and user management features. This suite of enhancements is designed to streamline operations, boost efficiency, and enhance your marketing impact.

Platform

Identity & Access Management  | Roles & User Management

Whether you’re an enterprise brand or a financial services firm, or just looking for tighter control over your SOCi platform interactions, these new role and user management features provide an added layer of protection. Key updates include:

• Create and define Custom Roles
  Choose to use predefined roles or create your own.

• Grant SOCi solution access by Role
  Choose which parts of the SOCi platform each user role can access. For example, if you use SOCi for Listings, Pages, Reviews, and Social but only want certain users to access the Social, you can customize this easily.

• View-Only Permissions
  By popular demand, we’re introducing view-only access. This ensures that users can only see the content without making edits, enhancing security and maintaining data consistency.

• Expanded Approvals
  Previously, only Admins could approve content. Now, you can assign approval capabilities to various roles, decentralizing the process and speeding up operations.

• Field-Level Controls
  Different roles can now have distinct access levels to edit SOCi Listings and SOCi Pages data fields.

Ready to put Roles into action, but not sure where to start? Check out this blog: Maximizing Ease and Efficiency: Best Practices for Leveraging Your Multi-Location Business Software’s Custom Roles and Workflows 

Location Table | Search Enhancement

Thanks to the latest updates to search functionality within the Location Table, it’s now even easier to find exactly what you need in SOCi. 

• Search by Remote ID or Address, providing more flexibility in how you search for locations in SOCi. 
• Customizable Display Options: Choose to display the Remote ID and Address columns directly in the Location Table for quick access to the information that matters most to you. Your selection will be saved, keeping your preferred view ready for your next visit. 

This update is all about giving you more control and efficiency in how you manage and navigate your locations.

Reporting

Report Builder

SOCi Insights provides a bird’s-eye view of multi-location brand’s reputation, search, and social performance down to the location level.  The Report Builder further enables brands to dive even deeper into their data by creating custom reports tailored to their unique business needs. You can now. Learn more.

Listings

Listings Health

We launched our highly anticipated listings accuracy tool, Listings Health, a game-changer for managing your business listings errors and offering unparalleled visibility and automation directly at your fingertips.

As a part of our SOCi Listings product, Listings Health lets you gain access to a powerful dashboard that works around the clock to keep your listings as accurate and consistent as possible across major platforms like Google, Facebook, Yelp, Bing, and Apple. By proactively scanning for discrepancies daily, auto-syncing your location data upon detection of a mismatch, and providing detailed insights to any mismatches that require your attention, Listings Health makes maintaining the accuracy of your listings easier than ever, helping you build stronger customer trust and enhance engagement.

Pages

Content Management

It’s now even easier to craft a locally unique page in SOCi.

• HTML & Visual Editor For Page Fields
  Add HTML source code, format text, or insert an image directly into a page field.

• Automate Page Creation
  When you create a new location, you can have a set of pages that are automatically created for that location as a default. If you need to skip that step, you can now unselect any auto pages before you create the location.

• Flexible Content Modules
  In SOCi Pages, Modules are blocks of content you can localize with dynamic fields and insert on multiple pages. Leverage Modules for any content shared across several locations, such as page sections highlighting products, FAQs, services, or offers. Now, you can assign content modules to specific locations or groups of locations as you build them. Once a change is made, all the pages linked to that module are also updated.

Approval Management

• More Ways To Manage
  Admins automatically have permission to assign approvals, but others can assign approvals if this permission is granted for their Role.

• Better UI
  Quickly identify when an approver needs to be assigned to a change. If the approval has already been assigned, you will now see a very obvious green indicator.

• More Controls
  Determine if updates to content with nested fields or multiple inputs can be approved as a group or if you want each field and/or input to require its own approval.

Product UI Enhancements

• Clearer Field View
  When editing both Pages and Modules, you can now expand and collapse all fields in a data group or all child fields of a parent field.

• Special Hours
  View any special hours set for the location in addition to normal business hours when editing a page via the Page dialog. Previously, only normal hours were displayed.

Social

Genius Social

We shared a groundbreaking step in multi-location marketing with the launch of the second product in the company’s Genius line of next generation autonomous marketing products. 

With Genius Social, you can bring AI automation to your local social strategy. Our innovative AI combines local data from every channel and uses best practices to automatically fill monthly, hyper-localized content calendars and on-brand engagement replies. 

Interested in learning more? Request a demo today or learn more on our blog.

TikTok

SOCi Social has added TikTok to its platform, providing a scalable solution for video posting, scheduling and performance measurement. This integration allows multi-location enterprises to boost their visibility and engagement effectively on TikTok, a leading social media platform globally.

Ads & Boost

Updated Objectives

To align with Meta’s Outcome Driven Ad Experience initiative to simplify and reduce the number of paid ad campaign objectives, SOCi took this as an opportunity to create more parity between our Ads and Boost offerings.

• Ads Plus: Consolidated ad objectives from 13 to 5 objectives: Awareness, Engagement, Traffic, Leads and Sales

• Boost Plus: Available objectives available are Awareness, Engagement, Traffic (new), and Sales (new – pixel required)

• Ads & Boost: More comprehensive ad controls with conversion and optimization goals   

Surveys

New Integration: Yardi

 The Yardi Integration represents a significant enhancement to our SOCi Surveys product. This integration enables the automatic sending of surveys in response to specific triggered events (move-in, move-out, maintenance, renewal) occurring within a customer’s Yardi instance. By leveraging data and events from Yardi, a leading property management software, SOCi Surveys makes resident feedback collection more timely and effective for property management companies.

• What makes this integration great? Set it & forget it. After the initial setup, property managers can rest assured that surveys are asking the right questions, at the right time, to the right residents — without additional effort.

• Bonus! All property customers will have access to expertly crafted out-of-the-box templates for all eligible events to make getting started, quick and easy.

Reviews

Two-Decimal Review Reporting for Deeper Insight

Enhanced review reporting now includes two decimal places, providing deeper and more accurate insights into your data. This refinement allows for a more precise understanding of your performance metrics, enabling better-informed decision-making.

New FTP Exports for Review Data Access

Our Reviews product now offers an FTP Export feature, enabling users to set up scheduled file exports of their review data. This enhancement enables seamless integration of reviews into any system that accepts FTP — opening up new possibilities for further analysis, archiving, and more.

SmartBot

Dynamic Business Hours

Automatically sync your chatbot with SOCi Listings to provide the end user with accurate, up-to-date business and special hours for each location with dynamic text.

Partnerships

Talkwalker

We are thrilled to announce a partnership with Talkwalker, a leading consumer intelligence and social listening company. Our partnership makes it easy for marketers to activate social listening insights for more effective and impactful local marketing through SOCi’s search, reputation, and social tools. Read more about this partnership here. 

See the latest releases & updates in action

Discover how our Spring 2024 updates can streamline your operations and boost your brand’s performance. Get a demo today! 

Interested in learning what practices and preferences consumers prefer when interacting on and offline with local business? Download these exclusive insights that will guide you to nurturing lasting customer connections. 

The post SOCi Spring ‘24 Release Notes appeared first on SOCi.

Platform

Goals & Tasks V1

We launched the first version of our Goals & Tasks dashboard to applicable customers.

• Goals promotes a simple, seamless experience with the SOCi platform by providing an easy-to-use control center that lets you set, track, and execute your digital marketing goals in social media management and reputation management.
• Tasks delivers clear guidance to local managers on actions that can be taken in the platform, based on preset goals chosen by corporate. This ensures that with each login, as soon as a manager enters SOCi, they’ll know within seconds what needs to get done – driving efficiency, platform adoption, and increased productivity.

Reporting

Social Benchmarking

Optimize social media efforts by comparing current data with historical trends to identify trends and offer insights across the account, groups, location and user level. This assists local teams in setting achievable goals, accurately measuring ROI, and optimizing overall social media strategies for better outcomes.

Search

SOCi Pages | Content Manager

Empower franchisees and on-site teams to make updates right from SOCi with the new Content Manager for local pages and locators built with SOCi Pages.

Location Data Management

Add new locations and create new Local Pages, Locator updates and SOCi Listings with just a few clicks. SOCi Pages locators and local pages pull from the same location database as SOCi Listings. Realize incredible time savings when you add, remove or update a location from one screen in SOCi.

Bulk Updates

Advanced grouping and filtering tools help you save even more time keeping your local pages and locator up to date. Filter by page type, location city, state, zip, or any field on your pages to group and apply changes in bulk.

Page Preview

Want to see how something will look before it goes live? Page editors can now choose to review a staging site before pushing changes live.

Role-Based Permissions

SOCi Pages now includes user permission controls by Role down to the individual field level.

SOCi Pages | Forms powered by SOCi Surveys

Replace generic Contact Us forms with corporate-approved and locally relevant forms powered by SOCi Surveys that directly feed leads and customer feedback into the SOCi platform.

SOCi Pages |Embedded Reviews powered by SOCi Reviews

Proudly display customer feedback from SOCi Reviews and Forms powered by SOCi Surveys on your local pages. Reviews add credibility and help influence purchase decisions. Plus, the fresh and relevant user-generated content gives your SOCi Pages an SEO edge. Fully custom designs ensure reviews look great featured on any local page.

Social

Genius Social Beta Waitlist

We shared a groundbreaking step in multi-location marketing, the launch of our Beta Waitlist for SOCi’s second CoMarketing Cloud product, Genius Social. Genius Social isn’t just a tool, it’s a data scientist and trained marketer at every location, aggregating local data from every channel and using best practices to automatically create AI-generated hyper-localized content calendars and on-brand engagement responses.

Read about it in the news | Learn more on our blog

TikTok

SOCi Social has added TikTok to its platform, providing a scalable solution for video posting, scheduling and performance measurement. This integration allows multi-location enterprises to boost their visibility and engagement effectively on TikTok, a leading social media platform globally.

IG Stories

Expand your brand reach by publishing and  reporting on  Instagram Stories across every location.

Enhanced Inbox

A new, dedicated inbox tab for all new, unresolved, and unresponded engagements, enabling efficient response management and enhanced visibility.

Ads & Boost

New Paid Insights

Enhanced ad analysis with a comprehensive overview of all ad performances within a chosen timeframe through the customizable New Ads Performance table. It offers unrestricted insight independent of ad account limitations and integrates metrics and new breakdowns into the SOCi Reporting Suite for in-depth analysis.

Surveys

SMS Surveys Now Available to All

Great news! SMS surveys have moved out of beta and are now available to all SOCi Surveys customers. You can now create and send surveys directly to your audience’s phones via SMS, offering a convenient and immediate way to gather feedback.

Schedule Your Survey Campaigns for Maximum Impact

Gain more control over your survey campaigns with our new scheduling feature. You can now plan ahead and send your surveys via email or SMS* at the perfect time for your audience. This feature helps in achieving consistent delivery, better planning, and potentially higher response rates. Plus, with Quiet Hours, you can ensure SMS surveys are sent only during legal hours based on the recipient’s local timezone.

Customize Your Survey Response Emails

This update allows SOCi Survey users to personalize response emails sent to customers following their survey feedback. You can now add your unique touch with styling and text adjustments, and even include additional recipients for enhanced collaboration and information dissemination.

Engaging Survey Experiences with Emojis

Make your Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys more engaging! Now, you can use familiar emojis like Stars and Smileys, enhancing the user experience and encouraging more responses from your survey participants.

Verify Your Email for Trustworthy Surveys

Introducing a new UI for email and domain verification in SOCi! By verifying your email credentials, you authorize SOCi to send emails on your behalf, significantly boosting their credibility. This step is vital in ensuring your surveys and responses are recognized as genuine by email providers, and not mistaken for spam.

Enhanced Security with 64-Bit Contact Encryption in CRM

We’ve upgraded our CRM contact encryption to a more secure 64-bit scheme, ensuring sensitive data is better protected. All existing client contacts have been seamlessly transitioned to this new, robust encryption standard.

PII Censoring in Outgoing Survey Emails for Enhanced Privacy

In our commitment to maintaining the highest privacy standards, we’ve implemented automatic censoring of Personal Identification Information (PII) in all survey response emails and email notifications. This new feature ensures that sensitive information remains confidential, safeguarding your customers’ privacy and compliance with data protection regulations.

Reviews

Save Time with Auto-Respond for Reviews

Introducing Auto-Respond for reviews: a time-saving feature that lets you automatically reply to simple reviews, like those without text, based on preset criteria. This feature selects a response template from a chosen library, allowing you to focus on more complex reviews. Auto-Respond ensures that every customer receives attention, while you concentrate on the reviews needing a personal touch.

New Network: Apple App Store

We’re thrilled to add the Apple App Store to our review network directory. As a SOCi Reviews customer, you can now manage Apple App Store reviews alongside other networks, all from one platform. This includes viewing, responding to reviews, setting notifications, and analyzing insights. For Genius customers, you also get AI-suggested response options.

Expansion of Directives for Genius Reviews

Take your Genius review responses to the next level with up to 20 customizable directives. This expansion allows you to have even more control over the reviewer name, tone, and response length, removing several default directives from our SOCi prompt to give you more customization power.

Showcase Review Responses in the Review Widget

We’re excited to announce an enhancement to our Review Widget: you can now include your responses to reviews directly within the widget display on any website or local page. Plus, this feature is fully compatible with our Genius generated responses, making it easy to display your engagement with customers’ feedback.

Boost Your Social Proof with More Reviews in Your Widget

You can now display up to 10 or 20 of the most recent reviews in your Review Widget. More reviews mean more fresh, compelling social proof on your websites and local pages, enhancing your credibility and potentially driving more conversions.

Refine Your Review Display with Tag Filtering

Gain precise control over which reviews show up in your Review Widget with our new tag filtering feature. This is particularly handy if legal or regulatory concerns affect which reviews can be displayed. Use “Required Tags” to show only reviews with specific tags or “Exclude Tags” to hide reviews with certain tags. This ensures that only the most appropriate reviews are visible in your widget.

Set a Delay for Displaying Reviews in Review Widgets

Customers can choose a specific number of days before a review appears in their Review Widget. This enhancement gives customers more control over which reviews are displayed and when by: 

• Avoiding Spam: If you’re dealing with spam reviews, this delay gives time for these reviews to be identified and removed by the publishers before they show up in your widget.
• Time to Respond: Want to respond to reviews before they go public? This delay ensures you have time to craft thoughtful responses to customer feedback before it’s displayed on your widget.

New Network: Olo Engage Surveys

We’re excited to announce the integration of Olo Engage Surveys into SOCi Reviews, strengthening our partnership with Olo as their preferred Reviews partner. Now, as a SOCi Reviews user, you can bring Olo Surveys directly to our platform. This integration brings seamless review management, combined with AI-driven response suggestions for Genius customers, elevating your customer feedback experience.

SmartBot

Inbox & Reporting Enhancements

A new unified view of all chatbot conversations across every network, with enhanced filters and sorting options for prioritizing key conversations. Plus, enhanced insights that identify top keywords and the ability to create new topics based on trending data.

See the latest releases & updates in action

Discover how our Winter 2023 updates can streamline your operations and boost your brand’s performance. Get a demo today! 

Interested in learning what practices and preferences consumers prefer when interacting on and offline with local business? Download these exclusive insights that will guide you to nurturing lasting customer connections.

The post SOCi Winter ‘23 Release Notes appeared first on SOCi.

Platform

SOCi & AWS Marketplace

The SOCi CoMarketing Cloud is now more accessible to AWS customers, helping multi-location enterprises increase local visibility across digital channels. AWS customers can now purchase SOCi through AWS Marketplace, which offers several benefits, including:  

• Consolidated cloud spend with one bill for vendor management, increased negotiating power, and flexible invoicing terms  
• Access to AWS discounting mechanics 
• Accelerated purchasing with pre-negotiated contracts  

Visit our partnership page or Marketplace listing to learn more about SOCi in AWS Marketplace.

Reporting

Reputation Performance Report by Rating

SOCi Reviews customers will now have the ability to view the reputation performance report by rating (1-5 stars). Previously, SOCi Reviews customers could only view the Reputation Performance Report by sentiment (Positive, Neutral, Negative). 

Social

Genius Social | Engagements Beta Waitlist

Expanding on our proven Engagements product, the Genius enhancement leverages AI to generate quick, brand-aligned social media engagement responses. 

SOCi is excited to announce an exclusive opportunity for our Social customers! Step into the next level of personalized social media interaction and secure your spot on the SOCi Genius Social | Engagements Beta Waitlist* at meetsoci.com/beta-waitlist/.

*Limited seats available for SOCi Social customers.

Manual placements

SOCi understands the importance of brand safety. With the manual placements enhancement, users are now able to set specific preferences and avoid running ads in content categories or platforms that don’t align with their brand values. 

With manual placements in SOCi, users gain greater control over where their ads appear on Facebook and Instagram, empowering them to achieve their campaign goals. By controlling where ads appear, users can protect their brand’s reputation and ensure a consistent and positive customer experience. Automatic placements remain available for those who prefer a streamlined approach. 

Dynamic custom URL support (Group)

Experience enhanced engagement with your group posts! By scheduling posts with Dynamic links, you can now preview the source URL right at the location level scheduler. This not only elevates the visual appeal of your link posts but also boosts their impact. Your audience can instantly view the URL’s preview image and headline, enticing them to click through to the referenced website. Elevate your posts, captivate your audience.

Dynamic custom URL preview in post

Users scheduling group posts that contain dynamic links are now able to see the source URL preview at the location level scheduler, making their link posts more visual, impactful, and dynamic. With this enhancement, audience members can not only view a preview image and headline for the URL but also click through to the linked website.

Local social onboarding workflow

SOCi is thrilled to introduce an innovative approach that enhances our social onboarding strategy. This strategy seamlessly connects local users with brand content while simplifying scheduling through intuitive templates. Automation ensures efficiency, freeing up time for strategic planning.

Scaling user onboarding is made easier with this powerful user signup flow. New users experience seamless guidance, reducing the brand’s workload. Plus, our strategy offers powerful insights, providing access to key metrics for informed decisions.

The social onboarding workflow is a game-changer, connecting local users with brand content, streamlining scheduling, enhancing user onboarding, and offering valuable insights for brand growth.

The onboarding workflow allows users to enjoy the following benefits:

• Templated Content Strategies: Connect local users with content and automate scheduling with easy-to-use templates
• User Onboarding at Scale: Significantly improve the onboarding experience while reducing the burden on the brand
• Powerful Insights: Single view access to user adoption and other powerful metrics

Mandatory Marketing API upgrade

Experience the power of our enhanced Marketing API designed with your performance in mind. Enjoy streamlined error feedback with refined error codes, ensuring faster diagnosis and uninterrupted operations. By removing Instant articles as a placement, we’re enabling you to focus more on impactful channels that truly drive results. Additionally, we’ve introduced changes to simplify and enhance the accuracy of engagement metrics collection, offering you deeper insights into audience behavior. 

Surveys

SOCi Surveys

We’re proud to introduce SOCi Surveys, the most powerful survey tool for local marketers. SOCi Surveys is revolutionizing how businesses gather continuous first-party customer feedback for personalized experiences. This tool offers real-time insights to measure customer sentiment, aiding multi-location enterprises in understanding and satisfying their customers better. By leveraging exclusive first-party data, SOCi Surveys provides invaluable insights that enhance customer satisfaction, retention, and a competitive edge in the market.

• Effortless Surveys: SOCi Surveys provides easy survey creation with templates and custom options, empowering marketers for impactful customer engagement.
• Multichannel Reach: Marketers can deploy surveys across preferred customer channels like email, SMS (beta), and online forms.
• Real-time Interaction: SOCi Surveys enables real-time customer interactions, personalization, and follow-up questions for deeper insights.
• Actionable Insights: Transforming feedback into valuable insights, SOCi Surveys helps enterprises improve satisfaction and identify trends.
• Own Your Data: Marketers can collect and own their first-party data, gaining a competitive edge.

“SOCi has been a game-changer for our company. It has allowed us to improve our communication with customers, increase our brand awareness, and reduce the amount of time it takes to respond to customer feedback.” – Dan Sokolik, VP of Marketing, Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken | case study

Reviews

New Review Networks – Grubhub and Zillow

Grubhub and Zillow have been added to our review network directory and are now available for all SOCi Reviews customers. These networks expand our growing review network directory in an effort to continue enabling users to manage customer reviews on multiple networks from one platform. With Grubhub and Zillow now integrated, SOCi Reviews customers can: 

• Monitor reviews from Grubhub and Zillow from SOCi
• Generate AI review response suggestions for reviews on Grubhub and Zillow
• Include review on Grubhub and Zillow in SOCi Reputation Reporting

Improved Review Summary Notifications

This enhancement to our review notifications allows customers to set automatic daily or weekly emails that include responded and unresponsed reviews received in the chosen time period. We have also added a review breakdown report, including the number of reviews, average rating, and star rating breakdown.

Reputation Performance Report by Rating

SOCi Reviews customers will now have the ability to view the reputation performance report by rating (1-5 stars). Previously, SOCi Reviews customers could only view the Reputation Performance Report by sentiment (Positive, Neutral, Negative). 

Emailable Sentiment Report

SOCi Reviews users can now easily share Reputation Sentiment reports via email, offering the flexibility to send them immediately or schedule for later. This simplifies access to vital sentiment insights within the platform and facilitates efficient distribution to recipients. Users can still print the report by emailing the report to themselves, clicking the link to view it from their inbox, and then print that page from their browser. 

SmartBot

Topic Pause

Prefer humans to handle certain conversations? Use SOCi’s Topic Pause to strategically pause the SmartBot, letting humans step in for specific topics.

• Topic-specific pause: Customize your workflow by pausing SmartBot for certain topics.
• Pause messaging: Make the experience smoother for your consumers by enabling an additional response message when the bot is paused.

To enable the Topic Pause feature, visit SmartBot > Topics. Select a topic, and in the edit modal, find the “Pause Bot” toggle button at the bottom.

See the latest releases & updates in action

Discover how our Winter 2023 updates can streamline your operations and boost your brand’s performance. Get a demo today! 

Interested in learning what practices and preferences consumers prefer when interacting on and offline with local business? Download these exclusive insights that will guide you to nurturing lasting customer connections.

The post SOCi Fall ‘23 Release Notes appeared first on SOCi.

Nearly three out of four American adults use social media. Today, it’s difficult for brands to get noticed organically by social media users as they scroll through their feeds. That’s why so many businesses and brands have turned to social advertising.

Social advertising, also known as social media advertising, is a type of digital marketing that uses social media platforms and networks to deliver paid advertisements to a specific target audience.

In the U.S., ad spending on social advertising is projected to reach $76.4 billion, with an annual growth rate of 5.6% over the next five years. Why are so many companies spending on social advertising? Because it’s worth the investment. 50% of Gen Z and 58% of millennials in the U.S. stated that social media advertising had influenced previous purchase decisions. 

Multi-location businesses use social advertising campaigns to build brand awareness, generate new leads, improve conversion rates, and gain in-depth social media insights and analytics and a better understanding of their target audience.

In this blog, we’ll explain all of the different types of social advertising your multi-location business can leverage. We’ll also give you key social advertising strategies and tactics your business can implement to maximize your ad spend.

Benefits of Social Advertising

While we briefly mentioned some of social advertising’s benefits, let’s dive deeper into the four main benefits of social advertising and why it’s a valuable investment for your multi-location business.

1. Build Brand Awareness

With organic social content, it’s easy for your posts to get lost in a crowded field of competitors. However, social advertisements can help you reach target consumers who might not have been aware that your business existed. A well-designed social ad will push consumers to turn to you for a solution. 

Social advertisements are often promoting your business, products, or services. This self-promotion inherently increases brand awareness because you’re sharing your brand name and offerings with a vast number of social media users. The more a potential consumer sees your ads, the more your multi-location brand will stay fresh in their mind.

2. Improve Conversion Rates

More than 67% of U.S. consumers have purchased a product they saw in a brand’s social media post. This number is so significant because many social media platforms provide the ability to create customized target audiences. 

You can devise detailed audiences and targeting metrics for your ad campaign on every major social platform. By creating these target audiences, you’re ensuring that your social advertisements reach consumers who are more likely to want what your business offers. You can also create retargeting social media campaigns to re-engage leads and develop your lead generation process. 

3. Gain In-Depth Analytics

With social advertisements, multi-location marketers also have access to a wealth of data and analytics. You can often see how your campaigns perform throughout their lifespan and after they finish. These analytics can improve future campaigns and help enhance your general and local social media advertising strategy.

They can also improve other areas of your multi-location business. You might better understand your ideal customer profile, brand sentiment, or ways to improve your customer experience marketing strategy. 

4. Receive a High ROI on Low Costs

Generally, traditional advertising costs much more than social advertising. For instance, it costs approximately $75 to reach an audience of 2,000 people via a social advertising campaign. In contrast, advertising to 2,000 people by mail costs $900 and approximately $250 via a newspaper. Moreover, with traditional advertising, you have less control over your target audience than in social advertising. With social advertising, you can also quickly assess and optimize ad performance and target audiences.

Social Media Platforms and Their Advertising Capabilities

Next, we’ll discuss some of the most popular social media platforms and their social advertising capabilities. We’ll also cover how your multi-location business can leverage these capabilities from both a general and local perspective. 

Note that if your multi-location business doesn’t already have local social pages for each business location across key platforms, that’s the first place to start.

Facebook and Instagram

Since Facebook purchased Instagram in 2012, the two have become more and more alike. When Facebook, Inc. became part of Meta in October of 2021, Meta started integrating Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network — particularly their advertising abilities. You can now manage Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger advertisements on Meta’s Ads Manager.

Facebook is the most popular social media platform worldwide, with more than three billion monthly active users. Instagram falls closely behind with two billion monthly active users. To help your ads reach the right consumers, Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger allow you to choose your objective, target audience (including location), format, and placement. Let’s take a closer look.

Objectives

Currently, there are 11 objectives you can choose from in Ads Manager. However, Meta is in the process of updating its Ads Manager objectives. Once launched, you’ll be able to choose from a list of six consolidated objectives that most closely align with your business goals. 

For now, you can still create, edit, and duplicate your existing campaigns with the old objectives through the end of 2022. For reference, here’s a list of the six new objectives:

• Awareness
• Traffic
• Engagement
• App promotion
• Leads
• Sales 

Audience and Targeting

Meta Ads Manager has three distinct audiences for Facebook and Instagram. You can add further customizations within these audiences. Here are the three primary audiences.

• Core Audiences: Adjust your audience on criteria like age, interest, geography, and more
• Custom Audiences: Contact lists, site visitors, or app users who’ve shown interest in your business
• Lookalike Audiences: You can reach new consumers whose interests are similar to those of your best customers

For multi-location businesses, we recommend setting up core audiences first and then creating custom and lookalike audiences after your initial campaigns. Within core audiences, you can customize based on the following criteria:

• Location: Advertise in specific countries, cities, or communities
• Demographics: Choose an audience based on age, gender, education, job title, and more
• Interests: Facebook has nine main interest groups with dozens of interests within each group. In total, there are over six million interests you can choose from
• Behavior: Based on consumer’s prior purchases and device usage
• Connections: Include people who are connected to your Facebook Page, or exclude them, which broadens your audiences

Source: Facebook

Facebook and Instagram Ad Types and Formats

There are eight Facebook ad types or formats that you can choose to place your ads on. You can reuse images, video content, and other enticing content for these various ad types.

Photo ads help you increase brand awareness with unique photos that contain inspiring imagery and engaging copy.

Video ads can run from 5 seconds to 10 minutes long and can be played in-stream, on feeds, or in stories. Facebook recommends most videos last a maximum of 15 seconds.

Story ads last up to 20 seconds in length and immerse people in your brand and community.

Messenger ads are direct messages to consumers’ inboxes on Meta’s Messenger; they help show off products or answer questions.

Carousel ads showcase up to 10 images or videos in a single ad with links to each one. Best for showing different products or telling a brand story. 

Source: Buffer

Slideshow ads are more video-like ads that mix motion, sound, and text.

Collection ads allow consumers to tap and learn more about a specific product.

Source: Facebook introduces a new ad format TechCrunch

Playable ads are an interactive preview of a game that starts with a lead-in video, allows for a game demo, and ends with a call to action to install the app.

Source: Most 2414

Facebook and Instagram Shop ads are part of your Facebook and Instagram shops. Within Facebook or Instagram shops, you can create ads that contain product tags. These ads with product tags allow users to see a specific product and purchase it directly on Instagram as if they were on your company’s shopping page.

Source: TechCrunch

X (Formerly Twitter)

X has over 611 million active monthly users, and is a popular and interactive app that often drives national news or is the first place to check for breaking news. X is a great platform to announce product releases or new offerings. Here’s a breakdown of what social advertising capabilities you have with X.

Objectives

X has three main objectives you can choose from in X Ads Manager. These objectives are Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. Within each objective, there are even more specific goals. For instance, Awareness has a “reach”  goal while Conversion has an “app re-engagements” goal. Within Consideration, there are six additional goals. You can learn more about X’s three primary objectives and their individual goals here.

Audience and Targeting

One of X’s main advertising goals is to show its users ads that align with their interests. To achieve this alignment, X has three main targeting groups, Demographics, Audience types, and Your audiences. Each targeting group has specific targeting capabilities you can build by yourself or with the help of X’s API. Here’s a list of the main targeting groups and the capabilities within each one.

Demographics:

• Location targeting
• Language targeting
• Device, platform, and Wi-Fi targeting 
• Age targeting
• Gender targeting

Audience types:

• Conversion targeting
• Event targeting
• Tweet engager targeting
• Keyword targeting
• Movies and TV targeting
• Interest targeting
• Follower look-alikes targeting

Your audiences:

• Follower targeting
• Custom audiences

These targeting groups and capabilities help your ads get to niche audiences that are likely to engage with your content. Visit X’s business page for an in-depth look into each target group and their capabilities.

X Ad Types and Formats

Promoted Ads are X’s main ad format. You can share Promoted Ads in five media formats, which we explain below. Other ad formats are also available, from increasing followers to going live. Learn about all of X’s ad formats here.

Image ads are best for promoting a product or service with a single photo.

Video ads can create more interest in a product or announcement and are often more engaging and interactive than image ads.

Carousel ads give advertisers up to six swipeable images or videos. These are best for showcasing multiple products. 

Source: X

Moment ads allow you to curate a collection of tweets. They’re best for longer-form content that tells an intriguing story or creating conversation around your brand.

Text ads contain all of the elements of a standard tweet. They’re simple but can be helpful when making impactful statements.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform. The platform has one billion users, and its mission is to “connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.”

Objectives

According to LinkedIn, the main purpose of social advertising on its platform is to “generate leads, drive website traffic, and build brand awareness with LinkedIn ads.”

LinkedIn’s not only used for connecting working professionals; it’s also geared towards connecting businesses and those making business decisions. Therefore, your content on LinkedIn should include updates about your internal team, products and service updates, or new partnerships. You can also post thought-leadership content to build your brand awareness.

Audience and Targeting

LinkedIn has three main audience options, Company Targeting, Contact Targeting, and Retargeting. You can set up and target these three audience options similarly on LinkedIn. Here’s more information about each audience.

Company Targeting allows you to upload a CSV file of up to 300,000 company names and create an audience based on your list of accounts. 

Contact Targeting is similar to LinkedIn’s company targeting feature but uses a contact list containing email addresses, first and last names, and mobile IDs. After uploading your contact lists, you can create separate audiences in LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager.

Retargeting on LinkedIn allows you to create personalized content and retarget your audiences based on actions they’ve taken with your brand. You can then choose to retarget video ads, lead gen forms, or events.

LinkedIn Ad Types and Formats

LinkedIn’s ad platform has four main ad types. Most ad types appear on or near a LinkedIn user’s newsfeed, while one acts similar to email marketing. Read on for more details:

Sponsored content are image, video, carousel, or event ads that appear in your target audience’s LinkedIn newsfeed.

Sponsored messaging utilizes LinkedIn’s messaging solution where you can send unique and attention-grabbing messages directly to a user’s LinkedIn inbox. These come in either Message ads or Conversation ads.

Text ads are small text ads that often feature your company logo and a CTA and are displayed alongside a user’s newsfeed. 

Source: Text Ads tips LinkedIn

Dynamic ads are personalized ads tailored to someone’s LinkedIn profile. You can personalize your ads with profile data, photos, company names, job titles, and more.

Social Advertising Best Practices and Tips

Now that you know how to advertise on the top social networks, it’s time to discuss some of the best social advertising practices.

1. Decide on Business Objectives

Ideally, each social advertisement or ad campaign will be tied to a specific business objective, such as raising brand awareness or increasing lead generation. For instance, if you’re a multi-location restaurant brand with new restaurants opening up, you might deploy local social ads in geo-targeted areas to promote your restaurants. 

2. Devise and Use a Social Advertising Budget

As expected, having a defined social advertising budget will help you make better business decisions. Generally, your social advertising budget will be a part of your overall localized marketing budget and your social media calendar. Also, your budget will be tied to business objectives. 

We recommend setting your entire social advertising budget each quarter, testing which social ads perform best on which platforms, and optimizing based on performance monthly or quarterly. Lastly, when budgeting for 2023 and beyond, take into account social advertising without cookies.

3. Create Brand Guidelines

Multi-location businesses must create and adhere to brand guidelines. You want unity and consistency across your social ads regardless of the product, service, or business location they’re promoting. It’s best if a corporate team creates and adjusts these brand guidelines and then passes them to local teams.

If a potential consumer sees one of your ads for a business location in Austin, Texas and another for a location in New York City, they should be able to make the connection that the ads are for the same brand.

4. Measure Results and Optimize

As mentioned previously, anytime you conduct a social ad campaign, you must measure its results and compare them to previous campaigns. You want to determine which type of content and which platform gets the best results depending on its business objectives. For instance, is your cost-per-click less on LinkedIn? And where are you getting the most conversions? These are questions to consider. 

You also want to test localized content among target audiences to see what performs best in each market. You can then compare campaigns with similar target audiences and optimize your content accordingly. 

5. Be Mobile Friendly

In 2019, Insider Intelligence forecasted that 52.7% of US social network users would be mobile-only. Therefore, nearly all major social media platforms’ APIs give you the option to optimize your content for mobile devices or will automatically do it for you. 

That being said, you still want to keep mobile users in mind when designing social ads. Ensure your branding has large enough text with eye-catching graphics and products that are easy to see. 

Multi-location businesses can implement geofencing marketing strategies to target mobile users in a specific geographic area. Geofencing marketing often results in immediate action and drives mobile users to your business listings. 

Use the Right Social Advertising Tools

The social media platforms mentioned in this blog have fantastic advertising and analytic capabilities. However, they’re not built for multi-location businesses — especially for paid social advertising at the local level. SOCi Ads & Boost can help fill this need.

SOCi Ads & Boost lets you create and deploy highly customized and targeted local ads across 100s or 1,000s of business locations from one ad creative. For instance, you can deploy a single ad that will auto-populate with local text and images across your locations.

In addition, you can easily maintain a record of what was spent on each ad and track the campaign’s performance at the individual location level. For more information on SOCi’s social advertising capabilities and how it can help your multi-location business crush its advertising goals, request a demo today!

The post What is Social Advertising? Everything You Need to Know appeared first on SOCi.

Platform

Smart Groups

Simplify and automate your group creation process. With Smart Group by Filters, you can easily create groups based on specific criteria like locations in a certain state or zip code. Once created, these groups are automatically updated, providing ongoing accuracy and efficiency without the need for manual updates.

Admins can navigate to the Groups page at the account level, click “Add Group,” and then select “Create Smart Group by Filter” to open a pop-up where they can set filter criteria.

Reporting

Permissions & Configurations

Account admins can now grant local users access to our Reporting Suite, empowering local managers to take ownership of their marketing strategies and gain valuable insights into their location(s) performance. 

Additionally, admins can now configure Reporting Suite dashboards at all levels to reduce clutter and ensure each user sees the most relevant reports.

Learn more on how to enable these features here.

Social

Google Offer & Event Posts

Boost your local brand presence with Google Offer and Event Posts. Through Dynamic URLs and UTM parameters in CTAs, you can pinpoint and measure customer engagement with precision. Direct coupon codes and redemption links act as compelling incentives, driving local interest and conversions. With custom URLs and tailored CTA button labels, you can craft unique, localized messages that resonate deeply. All of these elements work in harmony to ensure your brand not only reaches but truly connects with the local audience, driving tangible results. 

Ad Account Management & Page Access

Managing local social pages and ad accounts has never been more streamlined. With the ability to create new business managers in Meta, businesses can efficiently delegate and share ad account access, ensuring each account has a valid payment method. Beyond that, users can seamlessly link social pages to accounts, share access effortlessly, and proactively monitor page statuses to preemptively address issues. This enhancement is not just about features; it’s about ensuring fluidity, oversight, and proactive management for your brand’s online presence. 

Reviews

Genius Reviews

We’re thrilled to announce Genius Reviews, the first product available in SOCi’s comarketing solution—SOCi Genius. SOCi Genius not only makes highly intelligent marketing decisions but also automates laborious tasks at scale, catapulting campaign efficiencies and empowering marketers with its intellect to make game-changing marketing decisions. Genius Reviews is trained to automatically aggregate and respond to reviews in an authentic and on-brand voice, increasing reputation and brand visibility. To learn more about how SOCi Genius leverages AI, drives efficiency, automates workflows, and maximizes ROI, visit www.soci.ai/genius-ai//.  

Genius Reviews is demonstrated to:

• Improve speed of responses by 64%
• Improve response rates by 19%
• Improve ratings for new reviews by 0.67 stars or 17%
• Improve overall average ratings by 0.13 stars or 3.7%

Improvements to Review Notifications

Building on our previously launched rating-based email notifications, users can now expand their reach by including both users and non-users in notifications. Additionally, they can personalize email notification subjects and set up notifications triggered by specific keywords within reviews.

Editable Review Responses

SOCi Reviews introduced a new workflow for identifying and managing updated reviews. SOCi Review users now have the capability to edit and revise previously submitted review responses, ensuring that their responses remain accurate and pertinent to evolving review content. This enhancement empowers users to maintain the relevance and precision of their responses as reviews evolve over time.

Listings

Google Owner Q&A Enhancements

With the newest enhancements to Google Owner Q&A, customers can:

• Edit published Q&As for all locations or selected locations
• Monitor the progress of adding or deleting Owner Q&A’s for your locations with a quick-view progress bar.

Start publishing your own Google Q&As by going to Listings > Google Q&A and selecting ‘Add Q&A’.

See the latest releases & updates in action

Discover how our Winter 2023 updates can streamline your operations and boost your brand’s performance. Get a demo today! 

Interested in learning what practices and preferences consumers prefer when interacting on and offline with local business? Download these exclusive insights that will guide you to nurturing lasting customer connections.

The post SOCi Summer ’23 Release Notes appeared first on SOCi.

Platform 

Punchh Partnership

SOCi’s integration with Punchh, the leader in innovative digital marketing products for physical retailers across the restaurant, convenience store, and grocery verticals, provides mutual SOCi and Punchh customers with one solution to manage their localized listings and review management strategies.

SOCi’s Punchh partnership allows users to:

• Automatically sync SOCi location data to the Punchh platform and keep business information up-to-date.
• Gain visibility into Punchh reviews and ratings data that is pulled into the SOCi platform.

Reporting

Customizable Report Tables*

Choose which metrics are displayed in the report tables and show the metrics that matter most to your business, reducing clutter and enhancing clarity. 

• Search, select, and reorder the metrics you want to highlight 
• Share reports externally with only the selected metrics shown.
• Set default metrics seen in tables for all users

*Available for all Reporting Suite report tables. Only available for product dashboard tables in Social, SmartBot, Listening, and Listings products.

Reputation Reporting Enhancements*

SOCi’s Reporting Suite now provides users enhanced insights into review data the two reputation performance reports:

• Filter reports by individual networks and specific review sentiments 
• View tables at a more granular level with the addition of network insights

*Only available for Reputation Performance Report and Review Management Report

Benchmarking Enhancements*

The newest benchmarking enhancements make it easier to compare and analyze data:

• Choose which dates you’d like to benchmark with the new calendar view, saving you time when pulling reputation performance reports.
• Compare performance in real-time and across other points in time – now available to download in Excel format. 

*Only available for Reputation Performance Report and Review Management Report

Daily Email Schedule Enhancement*

You can now schedule reports in SOCi’s Reporting Suite to be sent daily, ensuring you receive timely updates on crucial metrics and reducing the time between reports.

*Available for all reports in the Reporting Suite

Social

Social Compliance

By enhancing corporate oversight, we ensure on-brand content that deeply connects with local audiences. Our automated keyword policies identify and address potential issues efficiently, streamlining operations and reducing risks. We equip local agents with tailored content, facilitating genuine interactions with their specific audiences. Moreover, all social media activities are securely archived in a centralized location, guaranteeing protection for both business and agents.

Reviews

Review Rules

Reviews customers can configure rules, an automated system to identify and prioritize important reviews based on criteria such as ratings, network source, and keywords. This functionality ensures that essential feedback is promptly brought to the attention of the relevant team members, reducing the chance of overlooking critical input and expediting the review response process.

Review: Direct Mention

SOCi Review users can now enhance their internal collaboration while handling reviews by @ mentioning other users on reviews that require attention from specific users. This update eliminates the challenges of isolated workflows, fostering improved productivity and visibility. As a result, users will be better equipped to respond effectively to customer reviews and ensure a more seamless and efficient review management process within their organization.

Rating-Based Email Notifications

This update to our Review notifications allows users to receive email notifications based on star ratings for new reviews and sentiment for response approvals. This level of customization ensures that relevant individuals receive timely alerts that match their specific responsibilities, ultimately enhancing the efficiency of review management by delivering the right information to the right recipients at the right moment.

New Review Inbox Filters

We’ve added additional review filtering options within our Reviews Inbox, enabling users to search for reviews based on specific text criteria and identify updated reviews. This feature enhances productivity by swiftly pinpointing the exact reviews users are seeking, saving time and simplifying the review management process.

Listings

Google Owner Q&A

Publish and manage your own Google Q&As across the account, group, and location level. Proactively publish your most important FAQs on your Google Profile to garner trust and ensure accurate information about your businesses is communicated.

Start publishing your own Google Q&As by going to Listings > Google Q&A and selecting ‘Add Q&A’.

Want to learn how you to build a Google Q&A strategy for multi-location businesses? Click here.

Google Owner Q&A Digest

Stay on top of each Google Owner Q&A created with email notifications to:

• Stay informed when Local Managers create new Google Owner Q&As 
• Ensure new Q&As are accurate and on brand.
• Local users can also stay informed when Corporate creates new Google Owner Q&As for their location(s).

To enable this, users can access their Account Settings, click on the Notifications tab, and check the Google Q&A checkbox under Listings.

Expanded Bulk Edits

SOCi’s newly improved Bulk Edits feature eliminates any trade-off between saving time and ensuring accuracy in SOCi Listings with a seamless solution to update critical business information across all locations with just a few clicks — adding simplicity, speed, and accuracy to how users update their multi-location business data.

The expanded Bulk Edits enhancement offers several benefits:

• Easily add, update, or remove critical business information across 100s and 1000s of locations at one time.
• Quickly view fields with matching values across selected locations.
• Reduce the likelihood of any accidental updates by reviewing and confirming all updates in the Summary Page before they are applied across the selected locations. 
• Restrict access to who and what users can bulk edit via permissioning.

GeoRank

SOCi is proud to introduce GeoRank, the only map view of Google search rankings at the corporate, regional, and local level. 

GeoRank helps ensure a successful SEO strategy by monitoring and tracking how their business locations rank for local searches across a given geographical area, giving a more complete picture of search performance.

In addition, GeoRank, combined with SOCi Listings and the SOCi platform, will allow users to see how changes to their local business listings, reviews, social content, and engagements impact search rankings all in one central place – helping to increase digital brand visibility while driving increased local traffic and sales.

GeoRank’s easily consumable visual map helps users to:

• Uncover blind spots in SEO strategy by monitoring local keyword search performance and how competitors rank against each location. 
• Make better informed local SEO decisions with reporting and analytics.

Visit our Listings product page or schedule a demo to learn more about GeoRank in SOCi Listings.

See the latest releases & updates in action

Discover how our Winter 2023 updates can streamline your operations and boost your brand’s performance. Get a demo today! 

Interested in learning what practices and preferences consumers prefer when interacting on and offline with local business? Download these exclusive insights that will guide you to nurturing lasting customer connections.

The post SOCi Spring ’23 Release Notes appeared first on SOCi.

Before we talk about strategies for boosting posts, let’s clarify what they are, where they appear, and the difference between boosted posts and paid ads.

What is a Boosted Post? 

 You can boost posts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media platforms. In this article, we’ll focus on boosting posts on Facebook and Instagram as part of your Facebook advertising strategy. 

A boosted post is a type of social media advertisement. According to Facebook, “A boosted post is a post to your Page’s timeline that you can apply money to in order to boost it to an audience of your choosing. “ 

You can boost a post in two ways: 

• You can pay to boost an existing post to a wider audience beyond just the people who like or follow your social profile(s).
• You can create a new post and immediately boost it to a wider audience.

Where Do Boosted Posts Appear?

Boosted posts can appear on your audience’s Facebook and Instagram Feeds or in Messenger so long as your three accounts are connected. You can also choose to boost a post to only one of the platforms. 

For Facebook and Instagram ads’ design, text, and other technical recommendations visit Meta’s Ads Guide.

What’s the Difference Between Boosted Posts and Ads?

The most noticeable difference between boosted posts and ads is the ease of use. You can get a boosted post up and running with just a few clicks. Note that you can spend more time customizing your boosted posts, which we’ll explain how to do later.

On the other hand, setting up an ad campaign requires you to work within Meta Ads Manager and choose more variables than when boosting a post. Facebook and Instagram ads are often more tedious to set up.

Another difference is in audience targeting capabilities. Compared to boosted posts, targeted ads provide more sophisticated features to reach a local audience on social media. You can create fairly targeted boosted posts but don’t have the ability to A/B test, select as many ad placements (Messenger, marketplace, apps, sites, etc.), or as many formatting options. Both types of paid content appear on users’ Feeds with a “Sponsored” tag.

You spend a lot of time creating content to share with your local communities on Facebook and Instagram, so let’s talk about how to use boosted posts to get that content in front of your target audience.

How to Boost a Post and Boosting Capabilities 

Meta allows for more customization to boosted posts than when they were initially released. Below, we’ll walk you through your different capabilities your PMC can leverage when creating a boosted post.

Start Boosting a Post

To boost an existing post on Facebook, you must be signed in to your PMC’s Facebook account or your personal profile with admin privileges. Then, click the blue “Boost post”  button in the bottom right corner.

Select a Goal

Facebook will pre-program your boosted post’s goal to “automatic,” which sets the most relevant goals based on your other settings. We recommend not going with automatic and selecting one of the other primary goals: Get more messages, engagement, leads, website visitors, or calls. 

Selecting a goal will give improve your ads’ overall ROI since it’s more specific.

Choose Your Button

Next, you can select the call-to-action button or CTA that will appear on the boosted post. For PMCs, we recommend using book now, learn more, sign up, send message, or call now.

The button you choose will depend on the type of post you boost and its goal. For instance, if you have an event or promotion at one of your properties, include the “book now” button. 

If you’re showing off available units, use the “learn more” or “sign up” buttons so prospective renters get more information and you can obtain their contact info. 

Consider Ad Categories

Most businesses won’t use an ad category. However, PMCs can sometimes use the “housing” ad category, especially if you’re boosting one of your property’s listings. Read Facebook’s policies for more information on what qualifies under the housing ad category.

Define Your Audience

As noted earlier, boosted posts have fairly in-depth audience capabilities. You can edit the following:

• Gender
• Age
• Location within a 15-50 mile radius of a dropped pin, address, or city
• Hundreds of interests, including but not limited to apartments, Apartment List, Apartment Guide, condominium, home, house, real estate

Note that for boosted posts, some detailed targeting options, which may include demographics, behaviors, or interests, are unavailable. You must also include all detailed targeting selections. For these detailed targeting options, you’d have to create a Facebook or Instagram ad.

Include Duration, Budget, and Placement

Now, it’s time to select your boosted post’s duration and budget. Your audience reach will depend on the duration and amount of money you put towards your boosted post each day — along with the other factors listed above. 

Finally, you can choose whether your boosted post will appear on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and/or Meta Pixel, or multiple platforms.

Types of Content PMCs Should Boost

Because it costs money to boost posts, PMCs want to boost posts that already get a lot of traction. When choosing which content to boost, consider the post’s original intent; was it to increase awareness around a local property, advance a promotion, or obtain more residents?

With intent in mind, consider boosting these types of posts:

• New in-unit and property amenities
• Updates to a property 
• Available units
• Events such as property tours or upcoming deals
• Positive online reviews or high-quality user-generated content (UGC).

We also recommend boosting higher engaging content when possible. Interactive photos like carousel photos or videos like Stories and Reels often receive the most attention and engagement. 

Our Secrets of Facebook Post Engagements report that on Facebook, posts with videos have twice the correlation with engagement as posts with photos. We also discovered that boosted posts on average earn 10x as many clicks and engage 10x as many users as non-boosted posts.

The Dos and Don’ts of Boosting on Facebook and Instagram

Now that you have a better understanding of what boosted posts are and how to create them, we’ll walk you through some of the best and worst boosting practices.

Do: Experiment Often to Maximize Your Budget

The more you experiment with different variables in your boosted posts, the better you’ll understand which audience targeting parameters, image or video styles, and copy will get you the most engagement for your dollars.

Here’s one example of how to test different audiences to maximize your budget:

Let’s say you’re a student housing company, and you want to spend 10 dollars per day to boost posts to an audience of “people who like your page and people similar to them.” You might get 3,000 impressions from this post, but only 25 clicks on your CTA button.  

Alternatively, you could spend five dollars per day to boost your post to an audience of “19 to 21-year-olds in Ann Arbor” whose interests are “apartment, real estate, and Apartment List.” Your impressions might drop to 1,000 because of the lower budget and narrowed audience parameters, but that audience could earn you 50 clicks, twice the engagement, for half the cost.

More experimentation means more historical data for you to learn from and leverage. Check out our blog post for more advice on optimizing your boosted posts!

Do: Boost Localized Content Across Multiple Pages

Localized content — for those who aren’t familiar — is content that’s specifically crafted to engage your local community of customers. Localized content is particularly important for those in the property management industry.

Anyone managing social pages for multiple business locations should pay close attention to the shift in how localized content draws audiences. According to one of our research reports, localized content receives 12x the engagement rate of more general or “non-localized content.”

If you need help determining your comprehensive localized social marketing strategy and social advertising goals, download our Localized Social Content Guide For Student Housing, Senior Living, and Multifamily PMCs.

Don’t: Boost Without Clear and Measurable Goals

Boosting posts can cost as little as $1 per day, but you’re wasting that dollar if you don’t identify clear goals for your boost campaigns. When determining which posts to boost, consider the types of posts that align with quantifiable business goals, such as website visits, lead form fills, and others.

Remember, you can select the goal of your ad to be:

• Automatic (Facebook selects the most relevant goal based on your settings)
• Get more messages
• Get more engagement
• Get more leads
• Get more website visitors
• Get more calls

You can also choose what your CTA button label is. Remember to match your goal and button label. For example, it doesn’t make sense to select “get more messages” as your lead and then choose “call now” as your button. 

Once you’ve determined your goals, it’s important to measure them. Did your boosted post get as many CTA clicks as expected? How did it perform compared to other boosted content? These questions can help you make optimizations for future boosted posts.

Don’t: Boost Without Seeing Which Posts Already Perform Well

Boosting content is game-changing because it allows you to put your social media advertising budget behind posts that are already doing well organically. 

You can boost posts that already have positive engagement numbers. You can then increase their reach by boosting these top-performing posts, which results in improved lead generation.

Similarly, boosted posts that perform well and have a high ROI can influence your other social advertising campaigns. For instance, if a boost post does well and surpasses its goals with a specific target audience you can re-create that target audience and publish a similar social ad on Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger. 

Don’t: Automatically Boost

We mentioned this before, but if possible, don’t automatically boost, also referred to as auto boosting. Auto boosting means letting Facebook select the most relevant goal based on your settings. 

Auto boosting is a short-term fix you can use early on if you’re low on resources. We do highly recommend creating your own target audiences and A/B testing your boosted posts to gain a better understanding of:

• Who your ideal target audience is
• Which types of boosted content perform best
• If you need to increase or decrease your budget, schedule, and/or placement
• Which button label and goal has the highest ROI

Do: Use SOCi as your Multi-Location Marketing Platform

As discussed in our webinar, The Do’s and Don’ts of Boosted Posts, organic reach has dropped 20x since Facebook’s algorithm change. Furthermore, boosted posts on Facebook see 35x the reach and 40x more impressions than non-boosted posts.

The best way to get your content in front of your audience is by boosting posts, but clicking on every post to boost across all of your property locations can be time-consuming. You can make the process more efficient by using a social media marketing software like SOCi Ads PLUS and SOCi Boost PLUS. 

SOCi Boost PLUS makes it easy to boost multiple posts across 100s or 1,000s of properties in just a matter of clicks. You can also analyze post-performance and compare audience reach and engagement levels. You’ll even get recommendations on which posts to boost — thus taking some guesswork out of boosting. For more information, request a demo today!

The post The Dos and Don’ts of Boosting Posts for Property Management Companies appeared first on SOCi.

Stanley Steemer Leverages Local Boosting to Strengthen Online Visibility

With over 2.8 billion active users per month, Facebook remains the most prominent online social platform. As multi-location marketers, having a robust local presence on Facebook is a must. While organic posting is cost-effective, it can’t compare with local boosting’s mass reach and engagement power on this key platform. 

Within this blog, we’ll dive into the importance of local boosting and how a huge franchise brand, Stanley Steemer, was able to leverage boosting to take its localized marketing strategy to the next level. Read on for a recap of a recent webinar with Stanley Steemer. You’ll also get exclusive tips on how to incorporate local boosting into your local social efforts.

Local Boosting: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?

A boosted post is simply an existing organic social post that you pay to have distributed or seen by a larger and more targeted audience. While you can boost posts on various social platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, when we refer to boosting posts in this blog, we’ll be referring to Facebook specifically. When you boost a post, it will still appear in your audience’s Facebook newsfeed and say “sponsored” on the post. While both boosted posts and ads say sponsored on Facebook, boosting a post is a much more manageable form of advertising. Ad campaigns take a lot longer to set up, provide more ad placement options, and have an expanded list of ad objectives. 

When looking at boosted content vs. ad campaigns, various benefits come with both ad types. However, with boosting,, you can deploy a boosted post within seconds, allowing you to quickly reach more of the right people. Local boosting will enable you to extend your reach and access analytics so you can track the effectiveness of your boosted posts. If you’re still not convinced of the power of local boosting, Stanley Steemer’s experience with local boosting may help. 

How Stanley  Steemer Incorporated Local Boosting

When looking at brand engagements, three out of four happen at the local page level, not at the national level. Before deciding to revamp their local social efforts, Stanley Steemer created social content from the corporate level that would trickle down to its local social pages. Once Stanley Steemer realized the value in localized content, they adjusted their local social efforts and found that local content immediately resonated with their target audience. Stanley Steemer’s localized content received five times the engagement when compared to general corporate content. 

After seeing how well local content performed, Stanley Steemer decided to test local boosting as well. Boosting posts at the local level empowered Stanley Steemer to reach more of their target audience with a relatively small budget. In one specific case, a Stanley Steemer location in Knoxville, Tennessee had a reach of 20 pre-boosting. After Stanley Steemer boosted the post, the reach expanded to 10,513. On average, when boosting, the reach increased by 200x the amount of non-boosted content, and engagement increased by 13x. Stanley Steemer plans to continue with local boosting to expand their reach further and increase online visibility. 

Stanley Steemer’s Tips for Local Boosting

Since Stanley Steemer’s local boosting efforts were so successful, they came up with a list of tips for other multi-location marketers to use when leveraging local boosting. Some of the essential tips Stanley Steemer provided in the webinar include: 

• Setting up multiple tests when boosting to see what works and what doesn’t. Is there a specific type of content that works best? What time of day or day of the week gets the most extensive reach and engagement? These are factors you can track with testing. 
• Giving yourself time to build audiences. Think about who your business is trying to reach with local boosting, and set your targeting accordingly. 
• Setting clear goals and reporting requirements. Before boosting posts, determine what you would consider successful and develop ways to track the success of your boosted posts. 
• Capturing and creating engaging local content that can be used for boosted posts. If you don’t have interesting local content, you won’t have anything to promote in the first place. 

It’s also crucial for multi-location businesses to educate their local marketing teams on the importance of local boosting. If all of your business locations are on board, the payoff will be worth the effort. 

Get Started on Your Local Boosting Journey

Now that you understand the impact local boosting can have on your social strategy, it’s time to get started. If your multi-location business has already begun using local boosting, good for you! Try some of the tips mentioned above to see if you can improve your local boosting reach and engagement. If your multi-location business hasn’t tested local boosting, now is the time to start. While boosting across 100s or 1,000s of business locations can be nearly impossible, SOCi is here to help you scale. 

SOCi’s Ads solution empowers you to boost unlimited, custom social posts for multiple pages in less than 30 seconds. SOCi Ads PLUS also provides flexibility in how you fund your boost campaigns. Choose to evenly distribute your social boosting budget across all of your locations or customize the spend for each post, all through one centralized tool. Stanley Steemer uses SOCi for their local boosting efforts and found that it’s easy to use for all of their business locations. 

If your multi-location business is looking for other ways to strengthen your local social efforts, SOCi’s Social solution can provide extra support. SOCi’s Social solution enables multi-location companies to manage and deploy localized content at scale while maintaining brand consistency at both the enterprise and local levels. With SOCi’s Social solution, you can easily create the localized content your multi-location business needs for local boosting. For more information on how SOCi can help you level up your local social efforts and other aspects of your localized marketing strategy, request a demo today!

The post Stanley Steemer Leverages Local Boosting to Strengthen Online Visibility appeared first on SOCi.

Localized advertising targets local audiences based on proximity and interests and includes a customized message to resonate. With the increasing need of providing a customized, local experience for consumers, localized social advertising is a must for your multi-family business. 

Localized Advertising Campaigns 

There are a variety of advertising campaigns that your property management company can test to see which is most effective when engaging your target audience. Using location-specific targeting with any of the following campaigns will boost relevance for your audience.

• Pay-per-Click Campaigns

Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are common when it comes to advertising on both search and social platforms. A PPC campaign only spends money when your advertisement is clicked. For instance, if you create a PPC campaign on Google, your ad will appear in relevant search results. You will only pay though if someone clicks on your ad – views are free. 

If you’re having difficulty deciding where you should spend your money on PPC campaigns, consider these platforms: 

• Facebook
• Yelp
• Google
• Twitter
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

It might seem like the obvious option to use a PPC campaign when planning out your marketing strategy, but there are a few things to consider. While PPC campaigns only cost money when someone clicks on your ad, converting users from your ad to signing a lease can be a lengthy process, which can lead to many clicks from the same potential resident. In addition, you must ensure that the targeting options on your campaign are reaching the correct audience. Many industry keywords for apartment-related searches can be pricey, so being selective on the audience and the area can help cut down on some costs. 

When setting up PPC campaigns you can select your target audience for the campaign based on age, gender, location, demographics, and more! Location is key. If you’re promoting an apartment complex in Austin, TX you want to make sure that the audience that is seeing your ad lives in the area. 

• Remarketing Campaigns

Remarketing campaigns are also a great way to target potential residents and win more leases. You have probably been on the receiving end of remarketing campaigns more often than you realize. Have you ever searched a certain property online and then started receiving ads about the same property? If so, that’s an example of a remarketing campaign working its magic. Remarketing campaigns are used to show ads to people who have visited your website or social pages.

Remarketing campaigns are easy to set up. Google allows you to create remarketing campaigns that can run across multiple websites. When using remarketing on Google, you can also choose the audiences based on location. Facebook and Twitter have similar retargeting options. 

While you can target based on location, it’s important to remember that you are also targeting people who have already seen your content. Data has found that remarketing conversion rates increase over time. The more times a potential resident sees an ad in a remarketing campaign, the more likely they are to convert. 

• Boosted Content

If your property management company hasn’t tested localized advertising campaigns yet, boosted content is a great way to get your feet wet. Boosting a post doesn’t require setting up an entire campaign. Through boosted posts, you have the ability to put money behind specific content that is already performing well organically and further increase its reach. 

While boosted posts aren’t yet available on platforms such as Google My Business (GMB) or Yelp, it does look like it will be an option in the near future. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram already have boosting features available. 

After selecting which type of content you want to boost, you can then choose the target audience. For instance, if your post is highlighting a leasing special at a specific property location, you can set the target audience to ensure that the boosted post is only being shown to those located around a radius of the property.

• Display Ads

With display advertising, you attract the audiences of a website, social media, or other digital mediums to take a specific action. Display ads can promote your multi-family business through localized imagery when people are browsing online or scrolling through social media. If you’ve ever been on a website and a visual ad pops up at the top or right-hand side of the page, that’s a display ad. Display ads also appear similarly when you’re on a social platform. 

The beauty of display ads is that you can customize your imagery, copy, and targeting to more efficiently engage with local audiences. For instance, if you’re running a campaign in New York, your display ad might contain an iconic image of New York or a property located in the city. Local and customized imagery showcasing the local properties or communities tends to resonate better among local audiences when compared to a generic stock image of an apartment complex. 

Most display ads are charged on a cost-per-click basis, similar to the PPC campaigns mentioned above. Display ads can also be used for remarketing campaigns. It’s clear that display ads can be versatile – coming in many shapes and sizes – and should test imagery and copy based on location. 

Tracking your Success 

Whether you’ve decided to incorporate PPC, remarketing, boosted content, or display ads into your strategy, it’s important to be able to measure your success. Before launching your campaigns, you must decide what goals you have, what metrics to track, and what would make your campaigns successful. Are you wanting to increase community visibility of new or recently acquired properties? Are there a certain number of leases that you want as a result of your campaign? 

Once you have an idea of what would be considered a successful campaign, you can start tracking its progress and make optimizations along the way. Most platforms have the capability to track the success of your campaigns natively. For instance, Facebook has Facebook Business Manager, which will provide you with information on your campaign’s performance like cost per lead, cost per click, number of impressions, and more! Platforms like GMB, Twitter, and LinkedIn provide similar options. 

Start Winning More Leases

Once you determine which types of campaigns work best for your property’s localized marketing strategy you will be on the path to winning more leases. While localized ads can boost your property’s visibility online, there are other tactics that should be incorporated into your marketing strategy as well. 

To manage your social content, reviews, and ads across 100s or 1,000s of properties on a single platform – SOCi can help! SOCi is the only platform built to address the three critical areas of localized marketing. For more information on how SOCi can help your property management company manage all of its properties and win more leases, request a demo today!

The post How Localized Ads Can Boost Your Property’s Visibility Online to Win More Leases appeared first on SOCi.