Spring 2021 Social Media Marketing Trends

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Social media platforms introduce new features and change their algorithms frequently throughout the year. As marketers, we have to keep up with the trends and continuously update our strategies to ensure they stay effective. 

As we make our way into the spring and summer season, here are 5 trends to watch out for and to take into consideration as you evaluate your strategies. 

1. Live Streams Stay Prominent 

As we’re all aware, last year forced many businesses to turn to online meetings, conferences, etc. Naturally, there was a large uptick in the use of live streaming features on social media as well. While the situation continues to evolve throughout 2021, people have gotten used to interacting with their favorite celebrities, influencers and brands without even having to leave their houses. According to a recent report from Sprout Social, 40% of consumers want to actually see more live video from brands. Which is why live streaming will continue to stay prominent and should be a part of your overall social media marketing strategy this spring. 

2. Augmented Reality Growing in Popularity

Augmented reality experiences are inherently interactive and highly effective for engagement on social media. Brands have started adopting this trend by creating AR filters to promote new products or encourage followers to interact. This keeps audience members engaged and entertained and could even help you attract new customers. As the Sprout Social Report also found that this is a content type that helps a brand’s social presence stand out. 

3. Stories Remain a Key Content Type 

500 million users interact with Instagram Stories daily. Stories have been a dominant form of content for some time now, but they’re definitely not going away anytime soon. In fact, this type of content may even start to outperform standard feed posts. A SocialInsider study found that images in Stories have a 5.65% higher tap-forward rate than videos. This is why it’s encouraged for brands to take a more organized approach and regularly plan stories into their content calendars. 

4. Social Commerce Continues to Grow

Social media platforms are constantly adapting and upgrading features to enhance their user experience. Recently we’ve seen a growing number of tools to support quick and easy shopping right from the platform. For example, Instagram now allows you to add product tags and enable easy checkout without ever leaving the app. And on Facebook you can set up a Shop that allows users to browse and make purchases right from the platform. 

If you have yet to capitalize on these tools, now is definitely the time. Why? 54% of social media users research products on social media and social media referrals can influence the purchase decision of 71% of users. You could be losing out on a whole range of prospective customers if you haven’t set up social media storefronts. 

5. The Importance of Inclusivity, Authenticity and Transparency 

Consumers are putting more pressure on brands than ever to make a meaningful effort to be inclusive, authentic and transparent in both their business operations and marketing. Audiences are aware that when it comes to making purchases, they have plenty of options. So they want to put their money behind companies that show investment in the communities and issues they are also passionate about. 

Brands can no longer stay silent and passive on issues that are important to their target audiences. However, audiences are also increasingly aware of performative activism that looks more like a marketing play rather than meaningful initiatives. If you are joining in on a conversation, it’s essential that your content is well-informed, relevant, meaningful and has actionable initiatives behind it. 

Similarly, consumers want brands to be completely authentic and transparent about their products and operation. A great way to do this is through social media. When mistakes are made and your audience is upset, social media is a great way to apologize, answer questions and connect with them. 

Final Thoughts

Anticipating the latest social media trends is essential to building a stronger presence, making connections with users and growing your brand. One way to ensure your stay on top of the trends is by working with professionals. At Onimod Global, we’re experts in Social Media Marketing and knowing how to connect our clients with their consumers in the places they’re engaging. If you’re interested in becoming a client and helping your brand reach its full potential, contact us today. 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

How to Utilize Instagram at Every Step of the Sales Journey

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Instagram continues to be a valuable marketing tool for many brands, especially as the popularity around influencer marketing continues to grow as well. However, not many businesses use their own profile to build a complimentary marketing channel to create a more effective sales journey for their customers. 

With that being said, here are tips to utilize your Instagram profile at every step of the sales journey. 

Step 1 (Top of the Funnel): Post engaging stories 

Stories continue to be an increasingly effective marketing channel, especially with Instagram’s most recent update and the ability to include clickable links within the frame. 

One of the most valuable story features being “swipe-up.” This can be added to the bottom frame of a story and allows users to swipe up to be redirected to a brand’s website or a specific landing page. Because of the nature of this feature, it’s generally highly-converting. The only downside is not everyone has access to it. To qualify for the feature, your profile has to have at least 10,000 followers and be verified. While this takes some work, it’s still very attainable. 

When it comes to stories, it’s important to not only post sales content. This is a good way to lose followers quickly. Instead, focus on being engaging and incorporate soft-sales when it feels natural. You can add polls, quizzes and Q&A’s to stories to make it easier for your audience to engage with you. The more people have engaged with a brand at the top of the sales funnel, the easier it will be to move them to the next step. 

Step 2 (Middle of the Funnel): Curate and display social proof 

This is the stage of the journey where a customer decides whether to leave or give your brand a chance. Social proof can be a big factor in this decision. Many retail brands have started to use regular customers’ Instagram posts, showcasing them in their products on their website. This shows that real people have purchased your product, increases engagement and can help build a more loyal community.

If you go about this strategy and incorporate customers’ content yourself, be sure to ask for their permission first. This can be as simple as commenting on their original post, or just direct messaging them. 

Step 3 (Bottom of the Funnel): Retargeting 

Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, they have the same retargeting abilities when it comes to ads. Facebook enables businesses to target both Facebook and Instagram ads to people who have visited your site and performed a specific action in the past. Even more valuable, you can retarget those who have abandoned their shopping cart without completing their purchase, making it easier to boost your sales funnel performance and trigger more action at the bottom of it. 

Final Thoughts

Instagram can be a powerful tool to add to your marketing mix, especially when it’s used to its fullest potential. 

Looking for an agency to increase Instagram engagement and turn your Instagram business into a customer converting machine? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

The Clubhouse App: What Marketers Need to Know

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Clubhouse has been steadily gaining traction since it first launched in 2020. This app has an entirely different concept than any other social media platform, creating a brand new opportunity for marketers. Here’s what businesses need to know about Clubhouse and some ways it may be relevant for you and your customers. 

What is Clubhouse? 

Clubhouse is a free, voice-based social media app. Users can listen in to conversations, interviews and discussion between people on various topics. It has been described as listening to a live podcast with an added layer of exclusivity. Currently, Clubhouse is invite-only. Meaning not everyone can download it off the app store. 

For those that have been invited to join, you first select topics off of interest, like tech, books, business, health, etc. The more information you give the app about your interests, the more conversation rooms and individuals the app will recommend you to follow or join. The rooms resemble a conference room where some are talking and others are just listening in. Once the conversation is over, the room closes and disappears. 

How can you use Clubhouse for your business? 

The biggest benefit from Clubhouse is the ability to connect with prominent business leaders, entrepreneurs, others in your industry and potential customers. You can also position yourself as a thought leader in your industry. As more people join the app, it can have a large payoff to have spent time positioning yourself as an expert and start gaining followers early. 

The voice-note aspect of Clubhouse also allows a new way to humanize your business to others. It can help make interactions feel more personal, allowing you to convey more emotion and have real conversations with other users. 

There is also a new development of an influencer program. This program will only be open to 40 top users on Clubhouse and will allow business to tap into those with a large number of followers. 

How can you get an invite? 

To join, an existing Clubhouse user has to send an entire from their app, giving you access to set up the account. When you’re invited you’ll get a link through a text message. Users can’t invite anyone, though. They only get two available invitations at first. 

Final Thoughts 

As Clubhouse continues to scale, the number of audio creators is growing. Their impact on the broader influencer economy is just beginning. Some members of the pilot program have begun contemplating brand deals and cross-platform promotion. Others have begun to form creator collectives, like those started by prominent users on TikTok. Overall, this could be a good future opportunity for many businesses.

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Tips for Measuring LinkedIn Campaign Success

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If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. This is especially true when it comes to marketing campaigns. The extent to which we’re able to measure the impact of our campaigns determines the quality of our insights, the effectiveness of our optimization strategy and the clarity of our results. For this reason, LinkedIn offers a robust suite of measurement tools, and just released a 6-point checklist for getting the most out of these tools and our campaigns. 

1. Identify key metrics according to your marketing goal. 

To keep your campaign on track with your desired outcomes, LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager uses an objective-based framework where your ultimate goal stays on top. Then the specific metrics you measure will ladder back to your objective, no matter what it may be. 

2. Set up the Insight Tag. 

Conversion tracking is essential no matter what platform you run your campaign from. This allows you to gain a deep and comprehensive look at ad performance. When you pair this with the Insights Tag on LinkedIn, you’ll be able to see how many downloads, sign-ups, purchases or other conversions are being driven by your campaigns, even after the user clicks out of LinkedIn to your website. 

3. Set up Lead Generation Forms. 

Lead Gen Forms make everything easier from both a marketer and user perspective. These are pre-filled forms based on the user’s profile, which removes the need to complete a bunch of fields in order to access the content or register for an event. On the marketer’s side, we receive accurate and actionable lead data. We also have the ability to centrally track key lower-funnel campaign metrics such as cost per lead, lead form fill rate and the number of leads from a specific professional audience segment. 

4. Conduct weekly analytical assessments. 

It can be a mistake to measure ROI too soon in a campaign. It usually takes some time to see the full impact of a campaign, given the complexity of today’s buyer journey. That also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t begin measuring your campaign quickly and tracking results continuously. Best practices include conducting weekly analysis after the initial launch of the campaign, focusing on what can be tweaked and improved. 

5. Use Campaign Demographics to see which audiences respond best to your ads. 

The Campaign Demographics feature on LinkedIn helps marketers see exactly who is interacting with their ads, based on key professional identifiers. These include job title/function/seniority, company size, location and more. This feature is beneficial because, while it’s nice seeing your ads getting high impression numbers, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re coming from the right people. Once you identify who is seeing your ads, you can make any necessary adjustments. 

6. Use performance insights for recommendations to improve bigs and budget. 

Obviously, we don’t want to be spending money in the wrong places. On LinkedIn you can access campaign insights that give recommendations for how to improve bids and budgets. 

Final Thoughts 

According to recent research from LinkedIn, only 37% of digital marketers describe themselves as “very” confident in their ROI metrics. Improving your ability to measure, analyze and improve your campaigns offers a large opportunity for competitive advantage in today’s marketing space. At Onimod Global, we’re experts in both social media marketing and analytics. We make digital decisions driven by data and have advanced analytics and reporting capabilities. If you’re looking for assistance in LinkedIn marketing or on any platform, contact us today. 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

6 Customer Loyalty Tips To Drive Local Search Traffic

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When dreaming up ways to improve search engine results, it makes sense to consider the customer loyalty factor. Why you ask? Customer loyalty plays a very crucial role in marketing for a company. Whether it may be more trusted customer reviews on your site or user-generated content produced by loyal customers, it is clear that customer loyalty is important to also driving you to the top of search page results. So how can you work to build customer loyalty online? Onimod Global specialists are here to break down 6 top tips on maintaining loyal customers.

6 Customer Loyalty Tips

The search engine optimization specialists from Onimod Global are here to offer several simple ways in which you can develop better customer loyalty within your own organization. The following 6 tips are based off of an article with Search Engine Land:

  1. Social Loyalty: Social media has grown to wield an impressive amount of influence over any given company. Facebook is a top platform that appeals to users looking for recommendations regarding any number of products or services. This feature allows other users to weigh in on the topic and recommend businesses that they find relevant to their friend’s search. This word-of-mouth by proxy through Facebook is significant because it disrupts typical search engine procedures.
  2. Narrative Control: As mentioned with the example of Amazon, online reviews carry an incredible amount of power. Make sure that you are giving customers a way to express their loyalty via online platforms such as Facebook and Yelp. You can even use this information as a testimonial to the benefits that your company offers.
  3. Forever Loyal: Truly loyal customers will seek out a preferred business no matter what the odds. Young used the example of Chick-Fil-A to represent this ideal. He noted that no matter where he goes, he can find a line out the door of Chick-Fil-A, even when other area fast food restaurants have no wait at all.
  4. Loyalty Economics: It can be difficult to track down truly loyal customers. Typically, a company’s marketing efforts toward new clients are much more expensive than if the company were to simply continue marketing toward dissatisfied customers. For this reason, it may be worth considering ways in which you can better the experience of existing customers rather than solely focusing on new customer leads.
  5. Loyalty Database: Data is an invaluable resource for any business. Data regarding repeat customers is even more essential to promoting growth and prosperity. Once you are able to gain information about current loyal customers, you will be more easily able to locate new ones, which cuts out a lot of wasted ad dollar being used in search engine marketing.
  6. Determining Improvements: Even if a company’s customer satisfaction ratings are high, there is usually significant room for improvement. This issue points back to the loyalty database and what insights it can provide to your business. By going back over the numbers you can begin to paint a much clearer picture for both current and potential customers about your business and why it is the right choice for them to purchase goods and services from.

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global is looking forward to the future and helping your business reach your full digital potential. Interested in growing your digital presence for your company? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

What Will Influencer Marketing Look Like in 2021

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It’s fairly safe to say that 2020 was a tough year for us all, in personal and professional life. We have all needed to adjust to the new normal. One industry that was heavily impacted was influencer marketing, where they saw a sharp decline in the value of their content as people moved indoors and grappled with the loss that the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed on the world. What does this mean for the future of influencer marketing in 2021? Experts at Onimod Global took a deep dive into the topic to help you decide when it’s appropriate to use an influencer, and how that will change in the upcoming decade.

Where influencer marketing began

Initially, before brands used celebrity endorsements, they used characters to evoke empathy from consumers such as Santa Claus for Coca Cola and Tony the Tiger for Kellogg’s cereals. The next wave included all sorts of celebrity and public figure endorsements. This helped brands to get their consumers to connect the dots between brand, trust, and recommendations by public figures.

Then entered the influencer era: where celebrity endorsements are still popular, but now they have to compete with “normal” personalities. Influencers are similar to characters in the sense that they still perform the role of someone in an ad on social media but they are, and very well could be, your neighbors; just with hundreds of thousands of followers online. Influencer marketing has boomed in popularity over the last years, especially in the fashion and lifestyle industries. Consumers that would once shop based on cool advertising and customer reviews, have changed their ways and will buy based on a raving review from their favorite influencer. Today, influencer marketing is worth a reported $10 billion dollars, and now every social platform has been involved in some way.

Impact of microinfluencers

While the influencers and celebrities with an established audience of hundreds of thousands of followers can make a significant impact on your overall sales, they can also take a massive toll on your company’s wallet. This is why brands also opt for “microinfluencers”, or social media personalities with a lower follower count.

Their content is usually centered around a very niche passion or community, some examples being health & beauty, trucking & logistics, or travel. The most incredible USP about microinfluencers is that they can have an engagement rate of nearly 60% versus that of a celebrity doing something similar. While being a cost effective option for a brand that wants to get involved in influencer marketing, they are also seen as very trustworthy source of information.

The future of influencer marketing

What’s up next for the future of influencer marketing? The first change we’ve seen thus far is influencers beginning to charge for exclusive content on Instagram and other platforms. Some charge a monthly fee to become a “Close Friend” on Instagram, while others are trialling WeChat’s new paywalls. In effect, content quality is becoming a focus.

However, this has the potential to also be a benefit for brands. If the influencers they work with are more invested in producing high quality content, they could be more likely to develop stronger partnerships with a select number of brands. “It will enable influencers to avoid having ‘one night stands’ with brands and rather focus on creating long-term ambassadorships with brands that are truly authentic to their lifestyle,” says Krishna Subramanian, CEO of influencer marketing and branded content firm Captiv8.

Private fan subscriptions are just one of many changes we predict will happen in the next decade, and Onimod Global experts will be sure to keep you up to date on all new influencer marketing news.

More from Onimod Global

Onimod Global is looking forward to the future and helping your business reach your full digital potential. Interested in growing your digital presence for your company? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

How to Maximize Lead Generation via Facebook Posts and Ads

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With billions of people using Facebook each month, the opportunity for lead generation is endless. Facebook recently shared tips on how to maximize lead generation via Facebook posts and ads to help businesses boost the performance of their Facebook marketing efforts. These tips cover the four critical elements of effective lead generation, intending to help marketers formulate a better strategy for reaching and connecting with potential customers. 

1. Lead Capture

According to Facebook, one of the keys to capturing leads is ensuring that your audience clearly understands what they’re signing up for. They should also clearly understand what makes your product or service worthy of giving their personal email address or other information. Being upfront and having clear communication from the get-go helps ensure that those that are converting are a part of your target audience. 

2. Lead Magnets 

Facebook’s second tip is that brands should adopt the “give before asking” mentality by offering users something in return for their information. This could be a one-sheeter, eBook, discount code, free trial, newsletter, webinar, etc. By providing value upfront you establish trust and a connection with your audience, leading to a better relationship and more brand-loyalty in the future.

3. Landing Page 

Landing pages are a critical element to ads. It’s important that once you get a user to click through your post or ad, that your landing page matches what you’ve explained. It’s also important that it has a quality design and effectively collects the information you need. Facebook advises brands to test different versions of landing pages to see which have the high click-through and conversion rates. They also suggest that you should consider setting up a custom audience to then retarget those who have clicked through, but not yet converted. 

4. Lead Scoring

Facebook’s final tip is to create a lead scoring matrix in order to better customize their outreach efforts and prioritize leads based on past engagement. For example, downloading a white paper is worth more points than unsubscribing from your email list. This can help you save time and effort by only contacting the leads that are more likely to convert first. The way you go about establishing your lead scoring table will vary, depending on your offer and goals. But the idea is that by segmenting each of your leads will allow you to better focus the outreach for each of your strategies. 

Final Thoughts 

Lead generation is key to maximizing your Facebook marketing efforts. The more insights you can gather, the better you can hone in on where the right people are for every campaign. Either by focusing on groups directly or using them for Lookalike’s to expand your research. At Onimod Global, we’re experts in digital marketing, specializing in Facebook Ads. If you need additional assistance in the Facebook ad space, or any area of digital marketing, we can help. At Onimod Global we’re experts in all areas of social media and digital marketing. Learn more about who we are and what we do, and contact us here today. 

We also release the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here.

How to Use Instagram’s New Keyword Search to Grow Your Brand in 2021

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Instagram’s recent update came with several new features. While this one may not seem like the most exciting, it’s extremely useful for brands. As marketers, we’re always working to get our content found easier online and on social platforms. Instagram’s keyword search tool now allows posts to get found, even without using specific hashtags. 

Here are three ways to utilize this new Instagram feature to help grow your profile and your brand in 2021. 

1. Customer Engagement and Profile Growth 

One of the biggest opportunities from Instagram keyword search is brands being able to identify and engage with customers. Today, frequently engaging with your audience on social media is essential for organic growth. With this new feature, you can now search for posts by using the words and phrases your ideal customers are known to use in their captions. 

You can then spark conversations with these users and build stronger relationships with them on social media. This growth method requires really getting to know your audience, their interests and pain points, in order to identify the correct keywords and phrases to search. 

The tool also helps you find brand mentions that you may have missed prior because the user didn’t tag you or use a branded hashtag. 

2. Market Research and Competitive Analysis 

Social listening is critical for social media growth, as it enables brands to conduct competitor analysis and get into the mind of their ideal customers. With Instagram’s keyword search tool, brands can now look up competitor keywords to see what their audience is saying about them. Brands can also now see if users are speaking about pain points that their products or service solve. 

These insights ultimately help with creating better content that resonates with your ideal audience, in turn, boosting your Instagram presence. 

3. Get Discovered Easier 

One of the biggest benefits of Instagram keyword search is that it makes it much easier for users to find you, ultimately enabling you to grow faster as well. Be sure to use highly trafficked and relevant keywords in the captions of all your posts.

Final Thoughts

Despite this new tool seeming like a very underwhelming update, the opportunities for brands are huge. 

Looking for an agency to increase Instagram engagement and turn your Instagram business into a customer converting machine? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

4 Steps to Create a Successful Paid Social Campaign

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With the holiday season upon us, eCommerce spend is set to hit new records. With people online shopping now more than ever, reaching out through social should be on the agenda for your brand. 

If you’re looking to refine your approach to paid social ads this season, here are 4 simple tips to create a winning campaign. 

Step 1: Define Your Goals

The first step to any winning campaign is defining your campaign goals, KPIs, parameters, plan and strategy. The easiest way to to do this is by creating a checklist with a variety of questions, such as: 

  • What is your campaign objective? 
  • Why does this matter? What’s your ultimate business goal? 
  • How will you measure success? 
  • What is your budget? 
  • Who is your target audience? 
  • How far through the funnel are they? 
  • What is your ideal audience reach? 
  • Which platforms best reach your target audience? 

Step 2: Design Ads 

When creating your ads, you should be guided by your audience data, social style guide and social listening tools. You should also craft multiple versions of the same ad to avoid creative fatigue. Best practices include designing 3-5 creative options for your ad visuals and writing multiple captions for each. Asking questions in the copy is also a good way to help boost engagement on the ad. 

It’s also important to incorporate different types of ad formats to test what performs best. This includes carousels, stories, video, ect. When doing this it’s important to make sure your creative is within specs and renders properly across all ad formats. 

Lastly, make sure your ad creative and copy are both on-brand and compliment whatever organic content you’re posting at the same time. Also ask for feedback to identify which creative assets are your best. 

Step 3: Build Ad Sets 

To get started on this step, build target audiences and upload your creative assets to your chosen social platforms. 

When building your target audiences you want to create multiple segments such as prospective, lookalike, retargeting, ABM, etc. Here are a few tips for building multiple segments: 

  • To build an audience of prospective customers, use platform offerings. 
  • For lookalike audiences, utilize your company’s first part data. 
  • Create retargeting audiences from your site tracking pixels. 
  • Use platform target parameters to suppress and exclude those you don’t want to reach.

Once you’ve completed these steps be sure to take advantage of custom tracking links to collect data and measure your success. You want to be granular but don’t go too narrow with your targeting.  

You should also be sure to install tracking links and that your conversion tracking pixels are placed correctly on your site. Utilize custom tracking links to collect your data and ultimately measure your success. 

Lastly, bid strategically. Implement automated rules and cost/bid caps to avoid high ad costs. Since there are so many brands running ads during the holiday season, it can be easy for costs to get high. 

Step 4: Launch Campaign

Once you’ve launched your campaign, A/B testing is essential. Learn what resonates better with your audiences and monitor your progress frequently. We recommend running ads for about 1-2 weeks before making any changes. 

Continue to go back and review your goals and KPIs when measuring your success. If there are ads you notice aren’t performing as well, pause them and don’t be afraid to increase spend on the ones that are. 

More from Onimod Global 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Why Your Small Business Ads Are Getting Blocked By Facebook

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Facebook, one of the largest social and advertising platforms in the world, is increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to monitor the platform. If your small business ads are continuously getting blocked on Facebook, there may be another reason besides errors in your ads.

Bloomberg stated in a report that errors made by AI algorithms looking to remove offensive ads from Facebook’s platform have caused already struggling small businesses to miss out on online sales opportunities.

As helpful as Facebook ads have been for all business in general, there are several drawbacks to the platform that have made it increasingly difficult to find success in some situations. Drawbacks include problems with the company’s content-moderation software, limited options for customer support and lack of transparency about how to fix problems.

Interviewed by Fortune, New York-based businesswoman Ruth Harrigan selling honey in souvenir shops has had to rely heavily on Facebook ads  for sales during the coronavirus period. Her business was abruptly stopped due to Facebook blocking her ads account due to policy violations. Harrigan is one of millions of small business advertisers who have come to rely on Facebook Inc. because the coronavirus has shut down many traditional retail channels.

Facebook’s human moderators have been focusing on the US election and Covid-19 misinformation this year, so the company has leaned more on artificial intelligence algorithms to monitor other areas of the platform. That’s left many small businesses caught in Facebook’s automated filters, unable to advertise through the service and frustrated because they don’t know why and can’t reach adequate support to fix the issue.

A Facebook rep interviewed by the Post says, “We know it can be frustrating to experience any type of business disruption, especially at such a critical time of the year. While we offer free support for all businesses, we regularly work to improve our tools and systems, and to make the support we offer easier to use and access. We apologize for any inconvenience recent disruptions may have caused.”

Appealing these often-automated decisions has also become a lot harder. “Due to a temporary reduction in our review capacity as a result of Covid-19, we could not always offer our users the option to appeal,” Facebook wrote in its third-quarter report.

More from Onimod Global

Looking for an agency to help your small business with your paid social media, specifically running Facebook ads? Reach out to us here!

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.