Friday 25 May 2012

Social Media Advertising – Which Sites Should I Target?

With millions internet users of all ages logging onto social network sites every single day, it is no wonder that social media advertising has exploded over the last few years. It can form an integral part of any business’ marketing strategy and be an extremely cost effective way to sell your brand and image to a mass audience. The question is then, which sites should a company target?

In short, the answer is that it entirely depends on the type of company, its target audience and the style of advert it wishes to run. Internet marketing companies often specialise in social media advertising and to make the most out of the tool you may want to consider enlisting their help. Meanwhile, here are some of the most popular social networking sites and why they might be suitable for your company’s advertising campaign.




Facebook

The largest social networking site on the internet is Facebook, boasting over 900 million active members worldwide. Its users range from as young as 13 years old to over 100, meaning almost every possible demographic is represented on the site.

The adverts are either based on a cost per impression basis or cost per click, meaning you can choose to improve your company’s brand awareness or increase sales. There is also a tool to control how much you spend on advertising each day, meaning you can carefully monitor your budget and how effective the advert is.

One of the beauties of Facebook is that adverts can be tailored to specifically target an individual audience as niche as the football team they support. Also, by building up a community around your business page, you can quickly develop a completely free fan base with whom to share your company’s good news, promotions and special offers.

Youtube

 Youtube is another fantastic place to advertise your business. Uploading videos is completely free whilst the cost of monitoring them can be carefully managed. Anyone on the internet can watch your videos making the potential audience gigantic.

The site offer a service called ‘TrueView’ that, coupled with Google’s Adwords system, means you can specifically target an audience with your videos and advertisements. The TrueView tool means you only pay for the videos that are watched by your specified target audience!

By regularly uploading advertisements, press releases and other videos from your company to YouTube you can quickly establish a following. If a video becomes popular, users will quickly share it across the internet meaning it will be seen by millions of viewers in a matter of days or even hours.

LinkedIn

Finally, LinkedIn is a social networking site aimed at professionals and those seeking professional positions within a whole host of different industries. It is much more suited for more serious advertising campaigns although, with 150 million users worldwide, LinkedIn is still home to a huge number of potential target audiences.

Companies also use the site to advertise job vacancies due to the nature of its demographic. Nevertheless, it can be an excellent place to commercially advertise your brand or product.

Once again, advertising can be paid for on a cost per click or cost per impression basis.

These are just three of the many social networking sites around and an internet marketing strategy should certainly at least entertain the idea of advertising in at least one or two of these locations.

If you are aiming for a comprehensive marketing package, establishing a relationship with one of the internet marketing companies around is certainly the best way to go. Be sure to ask them about their social media policies before you sign up.

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