Alexis Kestler
While there are many ways to advertise your company’s good and services on social media, some advertising techniques are undoubtedly better than others. Following is an overview of the top ten social media advertising techniques for your reference.
Choose the Right Social Media Sites
The first step in social advertising is to choose your advertising venues. Advertising technique examples abound to support this. Pinterest, for instance, is ideal for companies selling products for women but is not the best advertising venue for companies selling chain saws and drills. LinkedIn is ideal for wholesale companies but not companies retailing goods to the general public.
However, there are certain social media sites that every single company could benefit from. These are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google +. A company blog is also a must.
Use Video
Google’s recent and sometimes chaos-inducing algorithm updates have not affected YouTube. Video marketing is and will probably continue to be one of the best advertising methods to drive traffic to your site.
YouTube is owned by Google and so properly optimized YouTube content can easily earn a high search engine ranking. You can create a how-to video explaining how to use your products, offer industry-related information, provide a free webinar or simply create a funny video showcasing something related to your company. After creating and uploading the video, you simply need to add keyword-related tags and your company URL in the video description field.
Use Pictures and Infographics
Business Insider recently noted that photos make up over 90% of the most engaging posts on Facebook. While it is important to offer various types of social media content (links, videos, audio files, text, etc.) the importance of using photos and infographics should not be underestimated. People remember these highly visual posts better than other posts and are more likely to share them with others, making them a highly effective advertising technique.
Offer Discount Coupons without Asking for Promotion in Return
Most people (besides senior citizens) turn to the internet to look for discount coupons. Make your coupons appealing to a young audience and post the coupon codes on your blog, Facebook page, Twitter account and other business social media pages. However, do not try to manipulate people into doing something for you in order to gain access to the coupon. Offers such as “Get 5% off if you retweet this message/like us on Facebook/leave a positive review” are cheesy and will do your company reputation more harm than good.
Network with Others and use Cross-Promotion
Cross-promotion is one of the few advertising techniques that works just as well online as it does offline. For example, a company selling children’s toys could team up with an ice-cream shop to offer 5% ice cream discount coupons to anyone who buys one or more toys. Guest-posting on other blogs (and allowing selected individuals to guest-post on your blog) is also effective.
Schedule Your Posts
Your followers want to know when they can expect to hear from you. Scheduling your posts on any social media site is not difficult, as this task can be automated using the right software program. Choose a posting schedule that is realistic for you and then stick to it. (read: Top 10 Social Media Management Tools to Help Simplify Your Marketing Strategy)
Blog Regularly
Forbes recently noted that content marketing is set to become bigger than ever in 2014 and the years following. Offering unique, relevant, high quality content on a regular basis will boost your search engine ranking and show potential customers that you are an authority in your industry.
Engage Your Audience
Social media is meant to be social. This means that you should not only talk but also listen. In fact, you should actively solicit a response from those who read your posts. You may not like everything you hear, but failing to listen to your customers will bring about the downfall of your business faster than almost anything else.
Make Sure Your Landing Page is Enticing, Fully Functional and Easy to Use
While your website is not a social media site, many of your social media posts will probably link to it. No matter how effective your social advertising techniques are, a poorly made landing page will render them completely useless.
Keep Track of Stats
Social media is changing all the time and you need to change with it. You need to keep track of not only how many people are coming to your site via social media but also how many of these people are turning into customers. You should also note how much the average customer is spending on your site. Gaining insight into your target demographics’ spending habits will enable you to tweak your social advertising techniques and make them even more effective.
