Advertising on social media

VIEW TRANSCRIPT Hey! Wondering if there’s anything more you can be doing now you have your social media plan up and running? Well, the answer is often yes, and many social networks offer paid advertising opportunities that can give you access to very specific audiences and get your message out there. Let’s jump into it. We’ll use the vintage clothing store as our example. Perhaps you’ve noticed that your best customers seem to come from certain demographics… let’s say women, aged about 20 to 35. Wouldn’t it be great if you could focus your advertising on people who fit this profile and are more likely to become your customer? Well, social media sites can help you do this and more. That’s because social media sites often know a lot about their users. Think about your Facebook or Google+ page, for example. Have you included your age or gender on your personal social media pages? Many people do, and that’s why social media sites are able to offer businesses the ability to reach such specific groups. Sounds pretty good so far, right? Well, it gets better. Not all women aged 20-35 are going to be interested in vintage clothing. So if we can avoid spending money advertising to people who aren’t interested in vintage clothing, that’s a win. Luckily, social media sites can help you narrow down your audience even more. For example, you could target women aged 20-35 who are interested in a certain fashion designer. Or who have posted about vintage fashion in the past. That would be a great way to focus your advertising only on the people who are most likely to be interested in your shop. And we can take that even further. Like other online advertising channels, you can also target your ads to a specific geographic area. That means, you could use social networks to advertise to women, aged 20-35, within 25 miles of your shop, who are interested a specific fashion designer that you care about. Pretty cool, right? Social media sites provide great options for targeting ads or content to very specific audiences, and that’s a great way to make sure we’re investing our marketing budget wisely. Now, let’s talk about how paying to promote your messages to social network users can complement your other efforts on social. Building up your presence on social networks is usually a gradual process. Over time, you post interesting, unique content, and gain more and more visibility. But what if you want to accelerate that process? That’s another great reason to try paid advertising on social networks. Say you’ve got a Twitter page with a few hundreds of “followers” so far. What if you wanted to reach a lot more people - people who aren’t necessarily following you yet? You could try a “Promoted Tweet.” This is a way for you to get your shop in front of potential customers - fast! For example, your Promoted Tweet could be shown to people who have “tweeted” about vintage fashion in the past, or people who follow an influential designer. All of a sudden, you’re potentially reaching a lot more than your 200 followers, and hopefully growing your network with even more followers as a result. So that’s advertising with social media sites. You get the ability to do some really fancy targeting. And on top of that, you can ramp up your visibility on social networks very quickly… as long as you’re willing to pay for it, of course.