198 - A Key Guide to Basic Social Media Advertising
Jun 19 2014

A Key Guide to Basic Social Media Advertising

When it comes to increasing your social media presence, it can be a case of trial and error. There are many things you can do or alter to try and improve your likes, engagement or interaction, but it’s a lot easier said than done.

 

Another way you can boost your online brand is advertising. Here’s the inside track of what works, and what doesn’t.

 

Here is some information on social media advertising and how it can be beneficial to your business.

 

Benefits of social media marketing are:

 

  • You can target a specific audience
  • You can set a budget that works for you
  • You can conduct A/B testing to aid future strategy
  • You can fully control the campaign in the way you want

FACEBOOK ADVERTISING

 

On Facebook, there are a few different ways you can advertise. You can choose to either:

 

  • Promote your whole business page
  • Boost an individual post

Both options allow you to target the audience by country, age, gender or interests.

 

The promote page option allows you to advertise the company page as a whole, whereas if you have a particular update (like a link to a new website for example) that you want more people to see, you can boost the individual post for up to a week.

 

The cost of your ads is entirely up to you, and it goes without saying, that the more you pay, the further and more effective your campaigns will be.

 

 

Facebook advertising results

We found the boosted posts resulted in:

 

  • More engagements (likes, comments, shares)
  • More reach (the number of people your advert was served to)
  • More impressions (the number of times your advert was served)

Whereas we found the promoted page resulted in:

 

  • More page likes (kinda obvious really!)
  • More clicks

 

TWITTER ADVERTISING

 

Twitter advertising works similarly to Facebook. You have the option of promoting an account or an individual tweet.

 

Advertising your Twitter account is a great way to:

 

  • Build up a community
  • Gain more followers
  • Reach more people
  • Get more engagement

Promoting an individual Tweet allows you to reach your current followers, as well as potential ones by appearing in users timelines and search results.

 

With Twitter adverts, you pay when you gain a follower via your promoted account and a small amount when users engage. (Click on a tweet, retweet, replies, favourites and follows)

 

You can also select relevant keywords or other Twitter accounts to help tailor your audiences.

 

Twitter advertising results

 

Promoted post results:

 

  • More engagement
  • Female users provided more engagement

Promoted Twitter account results:

 

  • More follows
  • More impressions
  • Female users followed more

 

LINKEDIN ADVERTISING

 

On LinkedIn you can create an ad to help reach your target audience, or you can sponsor an update. These ads can be text, images or videos. You can create up to 15 ad variations so if there are a few different ways you want to say things, you can!

 

LinkedIn advertising lets you choose the demographics of the target audience and you can exclude certain job titles, skills, industries or other aspect if you wish.

 

You set yourself a daily budget, with a minimum of £8.00, and then you can select duration for the advert.

 

LinkedIn advertising results

 

LinkedIn advert

  • More impressions

LinkedIn sponsored updates

  • More clicks
  • Better CTR (click through ratio)
  • More social actions

 

On the whole, from our recent findings on social media advertising, we definitely gained more followers and likes, while also achieving a higher number of clicks through to our website.

 

We found that some options were better than others, but depending on what your end goal is, there is something for any business, of any size.

 

Have you conducted any social media advertising? Or do you plan to? Let us know in the comments below!

 

In the meantime, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn for more hints and tips!

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EC 150x150 - A Key Guide to Basic Social Media Advertising
Elly Cattermole

Our marketing and creative demon - Elly is here to keep you updated on any new developments in the industry. Her keen eye for social media updates (they happen more than you think!) and new ideas to market your business means she’s in the know for all things content.

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