Advernation is a social media marketing agency in New York City. We manage a business’s social accounts, which means planning what gets posted, making it, posting it and answering the people who respond, and we run paid campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. We develop, maintain and engage the customers who are interested in what you sell. The aim is the same as in everything else we do: our business is getting you business.
Social media is not search. Nobody opens Instagram looking for an electrician. People open it to see what their friends, their neighborhood and the accounts they follow are up to. A business earns a place there by being worth a second of attention, and it turns that attention into customers by being easy to reach when the need comes up. This page explains how we do both, what the networks themselves say about who sees a post or an ad, and what we will not promise.
Advernation was started on New Year’s Eve 2007 in Flushing, Queens, by Christopher Maddaloni, a former electrician, and has been in Manhattan since 2016. This page is written for local businesses: trades, shops, practices and service companies whose customers live within a few miles.
Not sure whether social media is worth paying for in your business? Call us, or use the contact page, and we will tell you plainly.
What social media marketing is, and what it is not
Social media marketing is two different jobs that share an account. Organic social is what you post for free: it reaches people who follow you and whoever the network decides to recommend you to. Paid social is advertising: you pay the network to show an ad to people you choose, whether they follow you or not.
Organic work builds trust with people who have already heard of you. A homeowner who got your name from a neighbor looks you up, sees last week’s finished job and a reply to a customer, and calls. Paid work reaches people who have not heard of you yet. Most local businesses need some of each, and need less of both than an agency selling by the post would like.
What it is not is a count of followers and likes. Those are easy to grow and easy to fake, and they do not pay anyone. We count what comes after: messages, calls, form requests, visits to your website and sales.
Organic social media management, month by month
The first month: set up and plan
- We go through the accounts you have: the names, the profile text, the links, the hours, the address and phone number. They should say exactly what your website and your Google listing say.
- We decide with you which networks are worth your time. Two kept up well are worth more than five left to go stale.
- We learn the business the way we do for SEO and PPC: what you sell, who buys it, what they ask before they buy, and what your competitors post.
- We agree a plan for the month ahead: the jobs, products, people and offers worth showing, and who approves a post before it goes out.
Every month: make, post, answer
- Content creation. The best material is yours: a finished job, the crew at work, the shop, a customer who agrees to be shown. We ask for your pictures and video first and turn them into posts, short videos and stories with the words written for you.
- Posting. Posts go out on the schedule we agreed, in the format each network favors.
- Maintenance. Profiles, hours, services and links are kept current, so that a customer never finds an old phone number.
- Engagement. Comments and messages get an answer, from us where we can give one and from you where the customer needs the business itself.
- Reporting. Social media traffic is part of the report we send every month, beside organic, paid, referral and direct traffic, with the calls and lead submissions that followed.
How the networks decide who sees a post
No single formula decides it, and nobody outside the networks can guarantee reach. Instagram has explained its own ranking: it does not have one algorithm, and each part of the app, Feed, Stories, Explore, Reels and Search, uses its own, built around how people use that part.
For Feed, Instagram lists the signals that matter most, roughly in order: the viewer’s own activity, such as posts they have liked, shared, saved or commented on; information about the post, including how popular it is, when it was posted and any location attached to it; information about the account that posted it; and the viewer’s history of interacting with that account. Explore works differently. It is made of photos and videos from accounts the viewer does not follow yet, and there the popularity of the post counts for much more.
For a business that comes down to something plain. A post that the people who follow you react to is shown to more of them. A post nobody reacts to is shown to fewer. So we spend the effort on posts your customers have a reason to respond to, tag the place where it helps, and mix formats because each part of the app is its own way of being found.
Paid social: Facebook and Instagram ads
Facebook and Instagram ads are bought through Meta, and they are the quickest way to put a local business in front of people who have never heard of it. Depending on the objective, Meta says the ads can appear on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads and its Audience Network.
How Meta chooses which ad to show
Meta runs an auction each time there is a chance to show someone an ad, and the highest bid does not simply win. In Meta’s words, the winner is the ad with the highest total value, which combines three things: the bid, the estimated action rates, meaning how likely this person is to do what the advertiser wants, and the quality of the ad. Because of that, Meta says, an ad that is more relevant to a person can win against ads with higher bids. A good ad to the right audience costs less than a poor ad to everyone.
Boosted posts and real campaigns
The Boost button is the simplest way to pay for reach, and Meta is open about its limits: boosted posts do not have as many customization and detailed targeting options as an ad built in Ads Manager. A boosted post may be optimized for likes, comments and shares, while an Ads Manager campaign can be optimized for website conversions, shop orders and more. We build campaigns in Ads Manager, and we boost a post only when reach among your own neighbors is the whole point.
Leads, forms and tracking
- Lead ads. Meta’s lead ads can collect a request three ways: by a call, by an instant form the person fills in without leaving the app, or by opening a conversation in Messenger, Instagram or WhatsApp. Form leads can be downloaded or sent straight to your customer system.
- The Meta Pixel. This is a piece of code on your website that lets Meta measure what people do there after seeing an ad. It also builds the audiences used for re-targeting, so that an ad can follow up with people who visited a page and did not call.
- The Conversions API. This makes a direct connection between your own data, from your website, your app or your customer system, and Meta’s ad systems. It is what lets a campaign learn from the leads that became customers.
- Location. Meta lets us reach people who live in, have recently spent time in or often go to a city or a postal code. It also says that complete accuracy cannot be guaranteed, so we check where the leads really come from.
The learning phase
A new campaign does not perform evenly from the first day. Meta calls the first stretch the learning phase: the period when its delivery system is still working out how to deliver an ad set. An ad set usually leaves it after about 50 results in the week following its last significant edit. During it, Meta says, results are less stable and usually cost more, and an edit resets the learning. Two things follow. The budget has to be large enough to reach that many results, and the account is not to be fiddled with every afternoon.
Search advertising works differently, because there the customer is already looking. That side is on our Google Ads and PPC management page, and the way the paid channels fit together is on our advertising agency NYC page.
Organic or paid: which one you need
| Organic management | Paid social | |
|---|---|---|
| Who sees it | People who follow you, and people the network recommends you to | People you choose by place, age and interest, and people who visited your website |
| What you pay for | The work of planning, making, posting and answering | The work of managing the campaigns, plus the ad budget paid to Meta |
| How soon it shows | Slowly. It rewards months of regular posting | As soon as the ads are approved, with a learning phase first |
| Good for | Trust: showing that the business is real, busy and answers people | Reach: offers, openings, events and services people do not search for |
| Its limit | It rarely reaches people who have never heard of you | It stops when the budget stops |
Which networks we manage
We manage Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and we choose among them by where your customers already are. Facebook is where local recommendations, neighborhood groups and reviews live, so it suits trades and service businesses. Instagram is pictures and short video, so it suits anything whose work can be shown: a renovation, a restaurant, a shop. YouTube holds the longer explanation, the how-to and the walk-through, and a video there can still be found through search long after it was posted.
What social media marketing costs
Social media management is priced by the month, with no contract, and the price is given to you up front. A paid campaign has two costs: our work managing it, and the ad budget, which goes to Meta.
We quote monthly social media management plans after the free audit, with no contract. Get a quote.
What moves the price is the amount of work: how many networks we keep up, how often we post, whether video is edited, whether we answer comments and messages, and whether there are ad campaigns to run. Prices for our other services are on the pricing page.
How long it takes
Organic social is slow and paid social is quick, and neither is instant. An account that posts something worth seeing every week builds a following over months, not days. An ad campaign begins to deliver once Meta approves the ads, and then spends its first stretch in the learning phase described above. We do not promise a number of followers, a number of leads or a date.
What we need from you
- Access to your pages and your ad account. You stay the owner. We work in them with access that you grant and can take away.
- Pictures and video of real work, and a way to send us new ones as jobs finish.
- One person who can approve a post or answer a question the same day.
- Your offers, your busy and slow times of year, and the services you want more of.
- Access to your website for the tracking code, if we are running ads.
- Someone who answers the messages and calls the campaigns bring in.
Social media for a New York business
In New York a business is local to a neighborhood before it is local to the city. The followers who matter to a contractor in Queens or a shop in Brooklyn are the ones within reach, so the posts name the neighborhood where a job was done and the ads are aimed at the postal codes the business actually serves.
Three kinds of New York advertiser need to know one Meta rule before they spend anything. Ads about housing, employment and financial products and services must be declared as a Special Ad Category, and for them Meta limits or removes audience options that other advertisers take for granted, including age, gender and ZIP code. A real estate broker, a recruiter or a lender cannot aim an ad the way a restaurant can, and a campaign built without declaring the category can be rejected.
Our office is at 1115 Broadway in Manhattan, and the agency began in Queens. For a shop or a storefront that wants people through the door, see also the mobile app advertising section of our PPC page. For being found when people do search, see New York SEO and local SEO.
What we will not do
- Buy followers, likes or views. A Federal Trade Commission rule prohibits selling or buying fake indicators of social media influence, such as followers or views generated by a bot or a hijacked account.
- Write reviews or testimonials for you. The same rule prohibits fake reviews and paying for reviews on condition that they are positive.
- Guarantee that a post goes viral, or promise a follower count by a date.
- Post for the sake of posting. If there is nothing worth showing this week, we would rather make one good post than five empty ones.
Where social has been part of our results
We do not have a case study in which social media did the work alone, and we would be wary of an agency that says it has many. The honest example is Medlin Ramps, which sells yard ramps. In 2016 it was getting very few leads a day, if any. A website redesign together with SEO, PPC, social media and YouTube brought it to 3 to 10 leads a day on a consistent basis. Social media was one part of that, and that is how we usually recommend it: beside a website that converts, search that brings people in and ads that are counted. All of our studies are on the case studies page.
A social campaign sends people to a website, and a slow or confusing one wastes the click. If yours needs work, see web design. To have the site itself checked, ask for the free website audit.
Show us your accounts and tell us what a new customer is worth to you. Call us, or use the contact page.
Questions people ask
What does a social media marketing agency do?
It runs a business’s social accounts and its social advertising. For us that means planning the month, making the posts from your own pictures and video, posting them, keeping profiles current, answering comments and messages, running Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns, and reporting the traffic, calls and leads that follow.
How much does social media marketing cost in New York?
It depends on the work: how many networks we manage, how often we post, whether video is edited, whether we answer messages and whether we run ads. Management is priced by the month with no contract, and the price is given up front. An ad budget is separate and is paid to Meta.
Which social networks should my business be on?
The ones your customers already use, and no more than you can keep up. For most local businesses that is Facebook and Instagram, with YouTube for longer video. Two accounts kept current are worth more than five left to go stale.
What is the difference between boosting a post and running an ad?
A boosted post is an ad made from something you already posted. Meta says boosted posts do not have as many customization and detailed targeting options as ads built in Ads Manager, which can be optimized for website conversions, shop orders and more. We build campaigns in Ads Manager and boost only when simple local reach is the goal.
How long before social media brings in customers?
Paid campaigns can bring leads soon after the ads are approved, though Meta’s learning phase comes first and results are less stable during it. Organic posting works over months. We do not promise a number or a date for either.
Do you guarantee followers or likes?
No. Followers can be bought and are worth nothing when they are, and a Federal Trade Commission rule prohibits buying or selling fake indicators of social media influence. We count messages, calls, form requests and sales.
Can you run Facebook ads for apartments, jobs or loans?
Yes, within Meta’s rules. Ads about housing, employment and financial products and services have to be declared as a Special Ad Category, and Meta then limits or removes options such as age, gender and ZIP code. The campaign is built differently from the start.
Who owns the social media accounts?
You do. We work in your pages and your ad account with access that you grant and can take away. If we stop working together, the accounts, the followers and the ad history stay with you.