I'm proud to be one of the writers for MamaTribe's features and this month I have created a hierarchy for how to prioritise your digital marketing channels. Here is a quick overview of the steps: 

1// Get your website structure and content right, making sure you are mobile first.

2// Focus on Search Engine Optimisation by researching keywords and adding them to your title tags, headings, descriptions, URLs and image ALT tags. 

3// Introduce basic email automation for important emails and make sure they are on brand.

4// Establish yourself on social media, remembering that it is better to excel at one or two social networks rather than spreading your time too thinly.

5// Dabble with social media advertising to increase your social reach and utilise social network pixels.

6// Up your email marketing ante with an email template and regular newsletters.

7// Get serious with your digital advertising across both social media and search platforms. 

8// And then add the rest, such as affiliate, content and influencer marketing.

To read my advice on prioritising your digital marketing channels in full you can find the MamaTribe feature here. 

When it began, Facebook advertising was so sweet... cheap to run, high engagement rates and high conversion rates. Now all that is changing, but you can still achieve good results if you take the time to plan your campaigns and analyse the results you see.

Here is my quick guide to setting up your Facebook ads via the 'Guided Creation' feature.

Take time to plan your advertising

• First and foremost, having a plan for your ads will help you make the most of that advertising spend. Think about different audience variations you want to try, as well as different ad content and formats. This could become complicated very quickly, so remember what works best for your organic content and start there.

Choose your campaign objective

• This is what the Facebook algorithm will optimise your activity towards, i.e. if you choose traffic, the ad that is getting the most click throughs will win. The standard objective here is generating traffic to your website.

Create an ad set

• Each Facebook ad set allows you to target ads in different ways within the same campaign. What you need to be aware of here is that the ad sets compete against each other, so if, for example, you want to target 2 different audiences equally, then you would be better to create a different campaign for each audience.
• If you use ad sets to split test your campaigns make sure that all variables aside from what is being tested stay the same. It's just like GCSE chemistry experiments!

Choose your target audience

• Select the people you want to show your Facebook ad to, narrowing down the field first by basic demographics and then by looking through the detailed demographic options.
• As you add in filters you'll be able to see the audience size you're targeting. You want this to sit about halfway on Facebook's specific to broad barometer, unless you are using some custom audiences (i.e. for retargeting or lookalike campaigns), when the audience is likely to be more specific.
• I would recommend not selecting a language if you are targeting that country's mother tongue - i.e. don't select 'English' for the UK - because not everyone sets their language and this could limit your audience in a needless way.

Choose where your ads will be shown

• I would recommend editing this to just feeds or stories, depending on the ad format you want to try. Each placement type will effect your ad content, so it is better to be specific and tailor your ad to that format. 

Create your ad

• Again, you can choose to have one or more advert to test and these compete against each other within the ad set. It's a good idea to test different formats, messaging and imagery to the same audience in order to find out what they respond to best. You could trial your most popular posts to start with, perhaps adding a more explicit call to action then you would have used for your organic content.
  
• As you design your ads make sure to check how they appear in the different placements and amend the design if necessary.
  
• Make sure you add tracking to your links, this is vital to be able to track the traffic effectively in your analytics platform. At the end of the ad campaign you want to compare how the ads performed on facebook and compare that to the quality of traffic the ads drove to your website. I would also highly recommend adding the facebook pixel to your site so that you can see conversion data, it's really easy to do and definitely worthwhile.

There are lots of different options that Facebook offers you along the path of this journey, which can make the ad platform seem daunting and overly complicated. Don't feel like you have to take every option and try and stick to the basic principles outlined above. Once you have done it a few times you'll get the hang of it.

Of course, if you need help building out your campaigns then I am always here to help. Please do get in touch with any questions or cries for help!

The question I get asked the most by small businesses using Instagram is how to use hashtags correctly. It is one of the most important things to grow your reach, but like anything in digital marketing, the answer is constantly evolving (pesky algorithms).

However, there are some simple guidelines to follow:

1. Keep hashtags relevant - Don't stick in lots of hashtags to try and gain reach, but that have no affinity to what you are talking about. You will be penalised by the algorithm for that.
   
   
2. Change the hashtags you use every time - This follows on from keeping hashtags relevant; none of your posts are the same and your hashtags shouldn't be either. 
   
   
3. Do your research on which hashtags to use - Spend time playing with different hashtags' search results and looking at hashtags your competitors and, most importantly, your target audience. What appears on these hashtags and does your content match it.
   
   
4. Include a mixture of highly and less used hashtags - When you are checking your hashtags you can see how popular it is. Hugely popular will mean lots of eyes are on it, but you will quickly get lost. Less popular will mean you are more likely to be found by users who are really interested.

And here are my top tips for making your hashtagging life a little easier:

• Keep a list of your most used hashtags to paste into your post every time and then edit around; deleting some, adding others. That way hashtagging doesn't have to become a time consuming blackhole.
  
  
• Click into a hashtag to check that the content being posted on it is relevant to you and then you will see ideas of other hashtags related to it, make sure to include these in your research.
  
  
• Use the hashtag finder when you are typing your caption to look for alternative spellings and variations of your chosen hashtags.
  
  
• Instagram will let you see the hashtags your audience follow; go to the profiles of your highest engaged audience members, click into 'Following' and select hashtags. Checking these is a must to make sure you haven't missed something.
  
  
• Remember that Instagram does ban some hashtags - and these can be popular i.e. #valentinesday - steer clear of these to avoid being penalised. You will notice if a hashtag you are looking at is banned because there is a notice when you click into it, or have a quick Google for hashtags to avoid.​