My Social Media Story

What value do you see in tools like the Facebook and Twitter ad tools where you can quickly determine a market?

Social targeting allows marketers to reduce wasted ad dollars and focus content more closely to a related audience. I definitely think it revolutionizes the way we as advertisers, but also as people interact with ads. Now my ads are personalized to my interested and make shopping much more focused.

Did your market size surprise you at all?

My market sizes were surprisingly big for the price I was budgeting. You can reach like five thousand people a day with just $10 on Twitter or Facebook, which is pretty cheap compared to TV or print ads.

Did doing a market analysis change your perspective on the appropriate messaging?

I think learning about the different audiences and how different platforms work was very helpful in deciding which direction to take each ad. I know Twitter is primarily a news and humor site, while Facebook is more about emotion and connection with others. This helps create messaging that can be organically shared throughout a platform.

How would you evaluate the effectiveness of a social media advertisement campaign? What is success?

I would say rise in clicks or followers is the best way to measure the effectiveness of social media. A success would be if you increased your engagement and follower more than 10%.

How do the affordances and limitations of social media design (character limits, types or artwork) change your design process?

The character limitations are the most tough. It's difficult to naturally get across your point without being too factual or boring. Social media is so cluttered with content that brands really have to get creative to stand out of the crowd. You also have a much smaller area of screen to work with and most platforms are sized differently meaning that each ad must be designed specifically for that platform.

Here is the draft of a Facebook ad I came up with based on these principles: