This is the era of technology. We are in a time where there is new technology being released every day and we attempt to keep up with it. Although in our personal lives we may not have to have all of the newest tech, but when it comes to business you need to understand what is going on in the global industry of technology. In a time where a lot of small businesses are struggling, many are not using the best source of advertising out there. What is the best source of advertising? You guessed it, targeted social media marketing. Following are brief descriptions of the advantages of most of the social media platforms that are prevalent today. In later articles I will go more in depth on advertising methods for each social media outlet.
Just about everybody has Facebook. Right now there is an estimated 1.6 billion people on Facebook. One of the best things about Facebook ads is that it can be very inexpensive. Facebook ads start as little as $1.00 a day and for a small startup company it is a very inexpensive way to put content in front of a lot of people. One of the biggest advantages of Facebook ads is the way you can target your audience. If you have an extremely small niche you are trying to target, you can put your content right in front of them. Your content may not be seen by as many eyes as an ESPN commercial, (unless it goes viral), but for what it costs and the ability to define your audience exactly how you want it, it is an essential tool to business today. More on targeting of Facebook ads in a later article.
Instagram – Instagram has really taken the world by storm in the last couple years. It started out as a very small platform for posting pictures and no words were really used. It has grown exponentially in the recent years almost rivalling the amount of engagement with Facebook. Instagram has a very unique way of being able to get in front of an audience, and that is through the use of hashtags. Hashtags (what I grew up calling a pound or number sign) are searchable by someone or it can pop up in peoples feeds by tagging a picture or video with a certain hashtag. Based on an algorithm based on engagement, your post can end up in the “Top 9” of a hashtag, giving your picture more exposure. The integration of Facebook and Instagram with posts makes it easy to post and advertise in both social media outlets primarily from Facebook. There are other ways to take advantage of what Instagram has to offer, more on that later.
Twitter – Twitter focuses on small posts. With a maximum of 140 characters in each post, businesses can still pack a punch in there Twitter profile interacting with current and prospective customers. Using the same hashtag system as Instagram does, people can find your posts that wouldn’t typically come across your profile. You can leverage your posts the same way you would with Instagram. With over 320 million active users a month Twitter is not a platform to shy away from when it comes to advertising. Using paid ads similar to Facebook, you can target a very specific target audience for your ads to be displayed too. These objective based advertising campaigns can be targeted almost just as specific as Facebook ads.
Small businesses need to focus on small scale social media marketing to start. Once the ads are starting to show results, the advertising can be scaled up. It can exponentially increase sales and exposure if done correctly. In later articles I will go in depth on how to exactly take advantage of each media outlet specifically.