How to Retarget Your Audience

How to Retarget Your Audience 

Are you getting a different type of audience to your Instagram or Facebook pages than you actually want? Has your brand has changed a bit, and you need to readjust your target audience? No matter the reason, there’s a way to retarget your audience by using a tool called Facebook Custom Audiences.

This is something that Facebook rolled out early in 2017 to test out Instagram retargeting. It’s now being used worldwide. If you haven’t tried this tool yet, Virtual Market Advantage will now go over the basics and show you how to get started.

What are Facebook Custom Audiences?

Facebook Custom Audiences include a few different groups, including people:

• you already know.
• who have visited or engaged with your app or website.
• who have engaged with either your Facebook or Instagram pages and/or ads.
• who have interacted with your business or store through offline channels.

Once you have created and established these lists of people, you can then start targeting then with your Facebook and Instagram ads. This lets you spend your advertising money more wisely!

What is Retargeting?

Retargeting is the process of targeting your online ads to reach the people who have already visited your website or engaged with your social media posts. They are already in your database as a potential lead or as a customer, rather than a completely random person.

There are a few simple ways that you can retarget your Instagram audience by creating these Custom Audiences through Facebook:

Retarget the people who watched your Instagram videos. You can create a list of people who have:

• viewed at least 3 seconds of your Instagram videos.
• viewed at least 10 seconds of your Instagram videos.
• watched 25% of your Instagram videos.
• watched 50% of your Instagram videos.
• watched 75% to 90% of your Instagram videos.

To create these custom audiences, just login to your Business Manager or Facebook Ads Manager account. Look for the audiences tab and click on ‘Create New Custom Audience.’ You will then want to click on the 'Engagement’ option at the bottom.

After this step, the video retargeting option is the first thing you’ll see. Once you select this, you need to pick your preferred watched/viewed time to target the particular Instagram videos whose viewers you will want to retarget towards.

Retarget Instagram users who engaged with your lead generation ads. You can also target and retarget users who have:

• opened your Instagram lead generation forms.
• opened and submitted an Instagram lead generation form.
• opened but did not submit your lead form on Instagram.

This process is similar to how you create the Instagram video retargeting list, just remember that if you want to retarget only Instagram leads, you do need to select the lead forms that you have used in Instagram ads.

Retarget users who engaged with your Instagram profile, posts, or ads. These are all the other types of retargeting lists you can create under your business profile section, including:

• everyone who has engaged with your Instagram pages, posts and ads.
• people who visited your Instagram business profile.
• people who engaged with your posts or ads on Instagram.
• people who sent you an Instagram message.
• people who have saved any of your Instagram posts or ads.

What’s the Next Step?

Once you have gone through and created all your Instagram retargeted audiences and lists, you can then access them in your 'Assets’ library under the 'Audiences’ tab.

If you want to also target people similar to those who engaged with your page, posts, and ads, you can create a 'Lookalike Audience’ as well. If you want to use these retargeted audiences in future advertisements, you can find and select them in the 'Audiences’ section whenever you create a new set of ads.

Get Insights about People Who Engage with your Instagram

While the limitations of the Instagram audience insights can get frustrating, the use of the Facebook Audience Insights tool can help with that. This tool is often overlooked but can give you a wealth of information, from demographic to behavioral data of your custom audience. If you want more information on Facebook Insights, check out VMA’s blog here!

Once you’ve created this target audience, you can use it to gain information on who exactly the people are who are engaging with your Instagram and Facebook profiles. You can see where they are located, their online behavior, and even their interests.

There’s so much potential in the Facebook Custom Audience tool for both retargeting traffic and analytics. If you haven’t yet jumped in to see what it’s all about, you should take the time to do so! This tool can help your business grow by helping you better understand your audience and what exactly they are looking for from your product.

How to Teach Kids to Code

How to Teach Kids to Code 

In a world that’s headed towards being run more by computers and technology than people, it’s time to make sure that our children are learning the necessary skills to succeed in that future. This includes teaching them to code from an earlier age. Coding creates computer software, allows electronics to function, and is a trade that all kids should learn a bit about, even if they don’t end up becoming software engineers. Software programmers are in high demand, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Learning to code is similar to learning a spoken language. As such, kids can really benefit from starting to learn to code as early as possible. Below, Virtual Market Advantage will show you some great resources you can use to help your child engage in learning code. These programs make learning into a game while helping kids understand how to make those computers work!

Teaching Older Kids to Code

There are a lot of programs out there that aim to help make computer coding fun for kids to learn. Some are good for kids of all ages, but many are better for older kids. Let’s look over a few programs that may help your older child gain an interest and understanding in code:

Scratch

Scratch is a free programming language developed by MIT. It has great learning resources and tools such as getting-started tutorials, a large user community that’s willing to help, and even instructions for parents.

This program uses a building block visual interface to create an easier user experience for kids. You can stack together programming components like actions, operators, and events. Each block has a shape that will only allow it to be combined with a compatible object. This program can be used to make real animations and games and can even be used with or without Internet access. Suggested age for Scratch is 8 to 16 years old.

Alice

Alice is a free 3-D programming tool that’s designed to teach the concepts of object-oriented programming languages like C++. It uses the familiarity of building blocks to allow children to create games and animations by programming camera motions, 3-D models, and scenes. The website may not look as inviting as Scratch, and the program is still being developed and researched, but it’s still a great free resource for older kids. The suggested age for this program is 10+ years.

Swift Playgrounds

Swift Playgrounds is a programming language used to build iOS apps. It is an iPad game that’s designed to teach kids how to program in Swift. It’s a free download and doesn’t require prior coding knowledge.

This app contains many tutorials on different commands that are designed to move a character named Byte along a 3-D world. While no programming knowledge is required, your child will need to know how to read the tutorials and have some drive to problem-solve. The drag-and-drop code helps eliminate typos, but Swift Playgrounds does not use the interlocking block interface that some of the other resources use. Suggested age for this program is 10+ years.

Teaching Younger Kids to Code

There are some great apps out there to help younger kids get in on learning the basics of coding, all while making it fun. Many of the better apps are centered on graphics and simple animations rather than the actual code. While most of these games, like educational apps, are geared at kids ages 8+, if your child can read and has a basic understanding of cause and effect, some of these apps can be introduced as early as pre-k. VMA will take a closer look at a couple of the better apps below:

Daisy the Dinosaur

Daisy the Dinosaur is an app that prompts kids to manipulate a character, Daisy, through challenges that involve loops, events, and other programming basics. It’s a very simple and basic program, which is a big plus for younger kids.

There’s also a free-play version inside the app, so the kids are able make Daisy jump or walk backwards at will. Suggested ages for this app are 8+ years, but can easily be used by younger kids who have a longer attention span.

Move the Turtle

Move the Turtle is an app that’s similar to Daisy the Dinosaur. Move the Turtle teaches the basics of programming concepts by manipulating one graphical object (the Turtle) through a certain set of challenges.

Both of these apps are based on single-task bases, but they both teach a great deal of logical programming concepts. Again, this app is suggested for ages 8+ years, but could easily be used by younger kids who have a longer attention span.

Hands-On Coding

First of all, you should always encourage hands-on play. There are more and more toys hitting the market that teach the building blocks of coding. A couple of good examples of these types of toys are the robot called Dot and building blocks called Little Bits.

You can also create more real-life coding experiences for you kids. Many cities host Maker Faires where all eyes are on robotics and computer engineering. It’s basically a science fair with hands-on exhibits and activities.

Make sure you check out the online resources, games, and apps listed above. These plus many others are great tools for both you and your child to learn the basics of computer programming and coding. This could easily become something you learn together! There are so many websites that offer help with coding other than what we talked about above, such as Code.org and Made with Code. Take the time to find out what’s best for your child to start learning code!

If your kids become more interested in coding than you are able to help with, you can always seek out a coding mentor. There are many STEM mentors out there on the internet. Women@NASA and Engineer Girl help all kids, but with a focus on girls, which is a great way to get girls more interested in STEM careers early. They help you and your kid create a personal connection with engineers, giving kids the ability to ask questions and make connections that can be beneficial for years.

With technology at the forefront of many appealing jobs that are available these days, it’s important to introduce the world of computer programming and coding to your child early and help foster the interest in it if they show some. There are many resources out there to help you start the journey with your child. So dive in and start coding!

Is Your Social Media Strategy Working?

Is Your Social Media Strategy Working? 

If you have your own business, social media is no longer just a fun thing to be a part of and use to keep up with your friends. Business owners should take social media strategy very seriously. Many brands have found a great deal of success using social media by building communities and finding leads.

However, it’s difficult for up-and-coming businesses to gain success from the use of social media, because it’s hard for a business to accurately measure the results. This leads them not investing in social media, because they feel like they’re taking a gamble on their return on investment. (For more information on how to track RoI, check out Virtual Market Advantage’s blog here.)

Because of this, it’s important to accurately track your social media strategies and results. That way, you can see whether or not your social media strategy is working, and have something to show to those picky investors!

Ways Social Media Can Work for You

Before you get into all the ways your social media strategy can work, you must first understand that not every strategy works for every business. Just because one strategy works for one business, it does not mean that it will work for you. This is something that you must test out for your business, look at the results, and work it out from there.

Success comes in all shapes and sizes when it comes to social media strategies, but usually comes down to one of the keys ideas listed below:

Traffic. Having a site that’s capable of generating revenue means that any traffic you get is valuable. This idea makes good sense, and in general, you can tie your social media success to just how much traffic it generates for your website.

Revenue. Not all traffic you generate will make you money. If social media traffic comes to your site but does not take action once there, this will not return money to your brand. If this seems to be happening to you, consider measuring conversions that start with your social media site, try to see where they fall off, and use that information to gauge your next step.

Visibility. While revenue is the ultimate bottom line for most businesses, it’s not the only indicator of success. Using social media helps for building a brand and increasing its visibility. This can lead to more loyal customer relationships that will ultimately increase your revenue, doing more than just creating short-term conversions.

Followers. The larger your list of followers, the larger and more active of a base you have for distributing your content and business promotions. This is an important step for startups that need help gaining that initial audience and customer base.

Common Traps with Social Media Strategy

While some strategies work on social media, some are just a trap that waste your time when used incorrectly. This can happen if you start to spend too much time focusing on one specific social media strategy. Remember to always step back and take a look at every aspect of your social media marketing to make sure you do not miss something that could ultimately be a big help to your business.

Followers. Having a long list of followers is great and indicates that you have a wider range of eyes on your product. Having more followers increases the potential reach of all of your content. A large follower count can also look great to potential investors into your business, who may use your follower count to seek popularity or influence. What the count does not tell you is how active those followers actually are and whether or not they are genuinely interested in your brand.

Traffic. While traffic is a valuable way to measure success, it does not mean anything by itself. You need something to measure it against to see just how valuable those visitors are. Not everyone who comes across your site will buy something, and not every visitor will return to buy something later.

Impressions. Social media platforms will sometimes give you insight as to how many impressions each of your posts have received. This is helpful, yes, but it doesn’t give you the entire picture, since it can’t tell you what those people are doing after they see your content.

Better Metrics to Use to Measure Social Media Strategy

Now that you’ve seen some ways to help your social media presence and you’ve seen some ways to fall into traps, what you need to look at are ways to better gauge the effectiveness of your campaign.

Conversions. You can measure conversions by setting up goals on Google Analytics to help you determine how many social media users are taking meaningful action on your website. Meaningful is defined by you and your business’s needs, and you can even assign a value to it on the site. This is important, because it allows you to actually see what percentage of your social media traffic is actually spending time on your website and taking action while there, along with what kind of value that action will create.

Engagements. Don’t always just look at how many followers you have, take a look at how many engagements you are getting from those followers. This includes things like shares, likes, and comments. This shows that people are not just glancing over your post, they are actively interested in what you are sharing and posting about.

On-Site Behavior. Go in and take a look at your social specific traffic inside Google Analytics. This will tell you how traffic is flowing on your page. Which pages are they visiting? How interested are they in the content on that page? If you notice those visitors are leaving quickly after visiting a single page, it may tell you that you are targeting the wrong audience.

Using any social media strategy can be tricky and stressful. If you just take the time for trial and error and find what works best for you and your business, you will eventually find your target audience and the best social media strategy!