In August 2015, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, announced that for the first time the social media site had 1 billion users login on a single day. Fast forward to November, where they now experience 1.01 billion active users per day. On Twitter, video views have increased by 150X in the last year, and 90% happen on mobile.
If as an owner of a storage facility you are ignoring this overwhelming area of digital growth, you are missing out on a major opportunity to reach and interact with customers. It is important to understand the role these platforms can play to help your business and stay on top of your competition.
It’s also important to realize that Twitter and Facebook are constantly changing and providing new services. What was new a few months ago may have been replaced by something else, and that thing could be even better for your specific goals.
Let’s Start With Twitter
There are two notable features that have been added on Twitter:
- Polls
- Moments
Twitter Polls allow users to vote on a certain topic. Instead of relying on the old method of pitting retweets versus favorites (now called “likes”), a user can create a two-answer poll for others to respond to. This is a great way to understand your audience’s thoughts on a particular matter.
For example, you could ask, “Do you use self storage primarily for decluttering your home or when moving?” Then, for a certain amount of time, the public can choose between the two. Twitter will keep track of the results in real-time and update everyone with the final results when the poll ends.
Moments is a section that was just recently added. The goal of this feature is largely to get people used to how Twitter works. Instead of users searching hashtags and curating content that way, this feature does it for you and puts together a filtered timeline of posts from the start of a moment to the end of it.
A tragic event, a meteor shower, or the release of a movie could all become a moment within this new feature. It’s a simple and concise way to understand an event.
Moving Over To Facebook
Facebook’s advertising is making moves to help out not only the advertiser, but the consumer as well. Three recent changes are making that happen:
- Lead Ads
- Slideshow Ads
- Clicks Ads
Lead ads are a pretty big deal if you are looking for a simple way to grow your facility’s email list. These ads appear in newsfeeds just like any other ad, but when they are clicked in the app they open up a sign-up page within the app itself. It also populates certain information like the users email address, so all they have to do is submit it to you. Once they do, you have their information to use in your future digital marketing. There is no need for you to create a separate landing page, and there are a lot fewer steps between connecting you and your audience.
Slideshow ads are a simpler and cheaper alternative to video ads. This ad format allows advertisers to upload three to seven photos which will then auto-play in a sequenced slideshow. It’s really as simple as that. Facebook will create transitions between the images, and you can easily choose how fast you want the images to rotate. The total length can be anywhere between five and fifteen seconds.
If you run a smaller self storage business, you may not be able to spend a lot of money on quality video production. However, with this ad format you can still create an appealing and dynamic ad.
For consumers, the file sizes can be as much as 5X smaller than videos, which means they don’t use up as much data, and will load much faster.
Clicks ads have now been changed so that you don’t have to pay every time someone likes, shares, or comments on your ad. Instead, you only have to pay when someone actually clicks a button that takes the user to another site or allows them to perform a certain task (e.g. downloading an app). However, you are still able to choose the old method. This additional pricing option allows more choices to track how well and exactly what your ad is doing.
Facebook and Twitter are spending a lot of time trying to provide a positive experience for the user and more options to advertisers. While some of these options may not make sense for your business, it is still important to keep up with new trends, so when something that is relevant to your business comes along, you’ll be ready to take advantage.
