Just got to grips with how to use social media for business? Good. Well, now there’s a ‘new’ social media tool you need to start playing with: social media advertising.
It probably goes against the grain for anyone who jumped on the social media bandwagon for all that lovely “free” publicity. But advertising is an increasingly useful and sometimes even essential tool in any social marketing strategy.
As you’d expect there are nearly as many different advertising platforms as there are social networks, here are some of the big ones:
Facebook Ads
The giant of the social sphere has an advertising platform of its own, Facebook Ads, offering advertisers sponsored slots on their site.
How does it work?
Facebook works on either a cost per click (CPC) or CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis. So whether you are aiming to send more traffic to your website/Facebook page or simply want to get your brand name out there, there’s a pricing model for you.
You can target users based on everything from their birthday to their favourite films – with any and every variation in between.
Why use Facebook Ads?
750 million members, half a billion users logging in on just one day, do we really need to explain why you should be using Facebook Ads?
In case you don’t get it, Facebook’s USP is the huge amount of data that they have at their fingertips. You can get super specific with your targeting; helping to keep your advertising costs low and your response rate high.
Are there any downsides?
Facebook ads look like display ads, and so they suffer from ad blindness experienced by other websites, however good your targeting is.
Not as simple as this these days!
LinkedIn Ads
The professionals’ Facebook with 120 million users worldwide, offering advertising through their platform LinkedIn Ads.
How does it work?
Like Facebook, you can either pay for clicks (traffic to your site) or impressions (views of your advert). You can target users based on job title, area and more, however due to the nature of the social network you won’t get the laser targeting that Facebook allows.
Why use LinkedIn Ads?
If you work in a b2b (that’s business to business) industry, Facebook ads are not for you, but LinkedIn can provide interesting opportunities. You have the option to target just decision makers in an organisation, so you know your advertising spend is all going on people who might make the leap and become customers.
Are there any downsides?
The space for LinkedIn ads is minimal and indistinct from any other area of the site. Potentially this means they avoid the “banner blindness” issue, but it also makes it harder to create adverts with real impact.
Advertising on Twitter
Twitter joined the advertising party in 2010, offering a platform with several different services: Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts.
How does it work?
Promoted Tweets are charged on a cost-per-engagement basis – with charges for every time a user retweets, replies to, clicks or favourites a Promoted Tweet. Promoted Tweets can appear in the timeline of any user, and at the top of relevant searches on twitter.com.
Why use Promoted Tweets?
The jury’s still out over whether you should be using Promoted Tweets or not. Without the targeting of Facebook or the guarantee of a long-term place in front of potential customers eyes, its effectiveness is still up for debate.
Are there any upsides?
Do you have a compelling message that’s just begging to be retweeted? Potentially a promoted tweet will push your message in front of eager eyes. However, initial reports suggest that advertising on Twitter is expensive compared to the returns it brings.
So, there’s your introduction to some of the biggest social media ad platforms around, tune into part 2 to find out more.
Katie Saxon is a Certified Google AdWords Consultant working for Boom Online Marketing, follow her on Twitter @ksaxoninternet.
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