4.5 Meta

Meta, previously Facebook, primarily owns and operates Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat and WhatsApp.

Instagram

Instagram is a visual montage of events, beer gardens, food, water slides, etc. As a social media platform, Instagram is intuitive and user-friendly. Images and reels are at the heart of Instagram focusing every post.

According to a Sprout Social Demographics report, the majority of Instagram users are between the “largest age group of 18-24 (30.8%) with 25-34 close behind (30.4%)” (Zote, J. 2024)^[1]. This makes Instagram a very attractive tool for businesses who are looking to connect with Millennials and Gen Z.

There are so many features available for businesses in today’s Instagram app: Stories, Reels, Live, IGTV (for longer videos), Guides and of course posts (ads or organic).

A lot of businesses use Instagram as a backbone for their social media strategy – posting in and out of TikTok, Facebook and Twitch. It is a great place for A/B testing and featuring collaborations with content creators. Often different companies have other businesses to work with and invite them to post on their account. Getting the first 10,000 followers is very hard and takes time. It does get easier with consistency and added-value content.

The development of Instagram is prioritized as a mobile app and now more recently as a mobile website. The UX (User Experience) for Instagram is enhanced for display on the smallest screens using responsive design.

From its inception in March of 2010, Instagram went from a small team of four employees to a full-fledged department. Instagram was purchased by Facebook, now Meta, for USD $1 Billion in 2012 with over 27 million users. Instagram has well over 1 billion active users^[2].

There are some reasons why Instagram is one of the fastest growing social media applications. The app ensures you are locked in even if you click out to a linked website: The ability to keep users in the app while feeding them external content ensures that users stay online (in Instagram) longer.

In Instagram, users can post multiple photos and videos. Using filter effects and layout controls^[3], users can easily control how a post will look. Brands, like Airbnb^[4] and Madewell^[5] are model businesses for using Instagram effectively to create a strong following of potential and current customers.

These businesses harness embedded links within their Instagram images to direct individuals to their product/service e-commerce websites creating conversions that eventually lead to sales. Using attractive imagery and innovative product tips and details, companies can create a frenzy of interest on Instagram.

Instagram Business Page

It is very easy to create a business Facebook and Instagram account. You can add call, text, message, email, and add custom pages right to your Instagram account, making it very easy for your customers to connect with you. The analytics in Instagram can also give you insights into the most effective actions, areas where you are not excelling in your campaigns, and content you should keep focusing on. You can further your reach by adding hashtags, tags in the caption of your photos, and hash-tagging the location as well. These simple tricks can greatly increase your visibility on this platform. Make sure that the caption under your photo adds context to the photo, too. For accessibility all Hashtags should be written in CamelCase

Update your name to a search friendly-keyword, add a high quality photo for your logo, in your bio state what value you offer and what you offer.

Mix it up – add a boomerang (loops back and forward) short video, layout, or multiple photos in what’s referred to as a story, to make the content more diverse. Go live on Instagram to highlight what your business is doing at the moment (it will stay “live” as a story even after you’re done). As a business, you can then use stories to target users in your area, or get featured in something like your city’s story.

Reels for growth and organic reach, stories for personal connect and Live streams for collaboration and engagement. Reaching new people. Stories make the connect a little deeper.

On the section below the profile is where you can activate guides – specific and robust tips are good ideas. Check out Natasha Samuel’s @ShineWithNatasha‘s excellent use of guides. They can be an added benefit to your profile.

An Instagram strategy is often very different in terms or organic and paid messages. What is the actual message you want to see? How are you going to showcase your brand authentically? Do you have a story to tell? Can you let customers know the experience they are going to have with your brand? All of these questions can help to determine which type of post you should create.

Facebook for Business

Skim the Facebook Ads Manager^[6] paying close attention to the type of advertisement you might be interested in creating for your project business. With your business in mind, while reading the Facebook Ad Manager Step-by-Step guide^[7], answer these questions to help you focus and reflect on information provided:

1. What ad objective makes the most sense for your business?
2. What format would be most effective for the ad objective?
3. Would the target audience be the same for this ad as you identified in your SM plan?

Facebook gives businesses plenty of options to create and target advertisements to potential customers. Facebook will walk you through forms to help you identify a marketing objective: awareness (brand recognition, raising the overall profile of your brand), consideration (traffic, engagement, video views, etc), or conversions (click through to purchase). Deciding this step up-front is part of creating a micro-action for your marketing campaign.

Each statistic can be customized through the tools available during the creation of the advertisement. When setting up a campaign, you create a unique ad account within the campaign which is slightly convoluted but helps tracking.

Arguably, the most important setting of your ad is determining a target audience: people who you think will be interested in your product/service.

Detailed targeting can help a business narrow the range of the ad to a more ideal potential reach^[8]. For example, targeting traffic further, based on their behaviours.

The next step in the ad process is deciding the placement of the ads and allocating a daily/weekly budget for the campaign.

One approach for setting a target audience is to start broad with a campaign ad and then see who clicks on it. Use the analytics from the ads to dictate the next target audience, narrowing the scope each time until you are consistently reaching an audience that engages with your product or service. While you can use the basis of the persona you created for your social media plan to guide your reach, you will also want your ads to be flexible, to maximize reach if the persona is too limiting.

Facebook Community Standards

Facebook Community Standards^[9] outlines what you can and CANNOT do on their platform. Brands and individuals must follow these rules or risk having their posts removed or entire accounts deleted. The rules range from restricting dangerous organizations, to removing hate speech, and what to do when a business closes.

Moderating Content

Facebook’s use of moderation has come under criticism repeatedly. For example after the leak of over 100 internal Facebook training manuals, The Guardian released a report on their investigative findings from these documents in an article entitled: Revealed: Facebook’s internal rulebook on sex, terrorism and violence.^[10] (WARNING: The report quotes hate speech and is explicit – not required reading).

In short, the internal algorithm that assesses what content is considered legitimate according to the Facebook Community Standards seems to have some flaws.  When “training” the algorithm to identify who are subsets of vulnerable individuals that need protection on the site, for example, white men were selected above black children. The ethical consequences of Facebook’s moderation of content have a lot of businesses and individuals worried about the racial inclinations of Facebook itself.

Note When logged into Facebook individuals may feel like they are browsing in privacy on their personal computer looking at their emails, other websites, and images. However, interacting with an online application like Facebook leaves you open to being tracked. Cookies are actively tracking any website you go to that has a Facebook “like” button on it.

Written in Pen

Everything published on the internet is “written in pen”, as the expression goes, not erasable pencil. It is permanently stored even when you yourself can no longer see it, as you can never be sure that it has actually been erased. Post with care. If you are representing a business and posting online using your business account, use particular care. There are some individuals on the Internet who screen-shot posts to ensure that they can be discussed in future, even if they are deleted by the account. Assume nothing on the Internet is really ever deleted.

Get Verified

Businesses should consider taking the extra steps to get what Facebook calls a verified profile. The gray verification badge lets people know that a Page for a business or organization is considered authentic. Read more on the Facebook Help section of Page Verification^[11].

Gain traction

With over 2.9 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2022^[12], Facebook is an extremely viable platform for businesses to connect with individuals. It is so popular, that Facebook has created a complete website and manual dedicated to helping businesses succeed in social media marketing on Facebook^[13]. Of these, there are a few top tricks of the trade that have been learned through trial and error by numerous businesses engaging in marketing through social media, that we will cover briefly here.

Note This list is limited to a few of the possible approaches to ensuring that your organic posts (not paid advertisements) are visible online.

Earned social media marketing often requires posting regularly in what is often called organic (not paid) posts. Getting an organic post to be shared and liked is essential:

Providing value to your audience is the best way to promote your business. What information or tips can you provide your Facebook audience that will get them talking? What fun activities or promotions would they want to tell their friends about?

Create a successful Facebook Company Page

Beyond all of the best practices that we discussed in previous lessons, such as being authentic, scheduling posts, creating actionable micro-actions, etc. the most important on Facebook is to create a clean and clear Company Page. You should take advantage of the cover photo area and insert an enticing introduction video or a large attractive (C.R.A.P.) image, create tabs on the page to direct individuals to the various parts of your FB account that you want to showcase, and most importantly if your company sells products online you will want to set up a Facebook Shop. It is advisable that you create a full business page profile on Facebook with a detailed “about” page which links to your website. If you want to have individuals follow your page, provide them with a reason to do so. For example, you provide product comparisons.

Paid vs. Organic Advertising

Don’t only use social media to sell. As we discussed, provide added value. If you continuously post only campaign or sale-sy ads on Facebook without paying for ads, Facebook will lower your visibility. Facebook is a business. Its primary source of revenue is advertisements created by brands using the platform to connect with future customers. While it is free, Facebook is not structured to allow businesses to reach their full potential through organic posts alone. Organic posts will never get the same reach as paid targeted advertisements. In fact, if you continuously only post promotional posts on SM, individuals will begin to consciously and subconsciously ignore your brand because you are only in it to sell.

This article by Post Planner succinctly lists some very important SM tips for companies seeking to make an impact on Facebook: How Facebook Pages Succeed with 13 Simple Best Practices.

Beyond Imitation

There are many examples of successful brands that are leveraging Facebook to effectively market and promote their brand. One important thing to remember, however, is that once you get comfortable and established on SM don’t feel like you need to keep emulating successful companies in a way that limits your unique brand. Feel free to be different, to branch out and be even more authentic. To stand out in Social Media, you need to feel like it is ok for the posts and messages that you write and create online to be “your words” and not borrow or copy from others.