Social media advertising is becoming increasingly popular among businesses who now realize that free advertising methods only bring some results. To really ramp up traffic, conversions and overall engagement, it is important to take advantage of social media advertising, which many networks now offer. With Facebook and Twitter joining the IPO club and other social networks bound to follow suit, the major social platforms are always looking for more ways to monetize their services; and social media advertising is a great way to monetize any social service. Case and point, Facebook and Twitter advertising have joined the ranks of Google’s Adwords as pay-per-click networks to consider as major factions of your online marketing campaign. To get the most out of these social media ads, here are a few important lessons to show you how it’s done.
The world’s number one social network makes social media advertising easy by placing an Ads Manager button right on your Facebook page’s Admin Panel. If you have a personal account but you don’t yet have a business page, create a business page and then click that Ads Manager button. Here you can set your daily budget – such as $5, $10 or $20 per day for an estimated amount of Likes – as well as create your first ad.
Creating Your Facebook Ad
The shorter your social media advertising messages, the better. Facebook allows you 25 characters for your headlines and 90 characters for your ad’s body text. You can also add a photo, and you are encouraged to, as visual ads tend to receive more conversions than text-only social media ads.
Facebook will provide a thumbnail of your business as a default photo if you don’t add one, but you can add any images you wish (provided that they fall within the platform’s established terms and conditions).
Keep in mind that you will need to establish a payment source prior to your ads going live. Once you create your ads and decide on all of their parameters, click submit and you’re good to go. Your ads will go live almost immediately.
The world’s second most popular social network has also made it easy to engage in social media advertising. When you are logged into your Twitter account (or after you have created a new Twitter profile), click on the gear icon near the top of your screen and select Twitter Ads.
You will be asked a series of simple questions before you are taken to the ads preference page, where you will set your social media advertising location and budget. Twitter recommends that you begin with a minimum bid of $1.50, but keep in mind that the higher you bid the higher the chances that your tweets will be seen above your competitors’ tweets.
Next you will select the tweets to promote. It is recommended that you promote tweets that advertise your products and services, as well as those that refer to your website and blog.
Twitter will then ask you to join another program to help you gain more followers. By setting a minimum bid, your profile will be shown on the Twitter home page’s Who to Follow box. Again, the higher you bid, the more likely it is for your profile to be seen.
As with Facebook, once you create your social media ads and establish your preferences, your Twitter ads will go live almost immediately.
To get started with LinkedIn social media advertising, you will first need to set up a company page. Once you do, you will likely receive an email from the platform offering you free social media ad credits. This allows you to get started with almost no money down, depending on the goals you set for yourself.
LinkedIn ads work just like Facebook ads, so the process of creating social media ads should feel familiar to you. The platform will then ask you to set your bids. You can choose between pay-per-click or pay-per-impression conversions, whereby you will be charged $2 minimum per CPC ad and $2 minimum for every 1000 impressions for CPM ads. Keep in mind that the minimum daily budget is $10 and that new users must pay a one-time activation fee of $5 to get started.
Conclusion
You now have several options to help you begin your foray into social media advertising. Start off with low budgets and slowly scale upwards; test your ad headlines, text and images for higher conversions and keep analyzing your results and altering your approach accordingly to maximize your success. Social media advertising is the avenue online business winners pursue. You only have to select one of the world’s most popular networks like the ones above to get started.
Image Source: Mark Smiciklas on Flickr
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