Did you know that close to 3 billion people use social media? According to Statista, the number will rise to 3.43 billion by 2023. All this shows the potential in social media advertising. Today, it is challenging for a business to survive online if they fail to leverage the immense power of social media.

Many startups think that advertising on social media is all about creating content, sharing the content, and waiting for buyers. However, with so much competition online today, that almost never works. What works? Read on for more.

First, Choose a Social Media Platform

When choosing a social media platform that matches your needs, consider the following:

• Do your competitors advertise there?
• Does your target audience engage here?
• Will your ad format fit the platform?
• Do the demographics of the channel match your business?

Each of the social media platforms has its advantages. Facebook, for instance, is the largest social media platform with more than 2.4 billion monthly users. It allows you to use different ad formats. You can use Facebook for B2C or B2B ads.

Instagram is the best for visual ads, increasing web traffic sales, and increasing brand awareness. Twitter offers a horde of advertising options and is ideal when you need to find followers for your product launch or a new social channel. For B2B interactions, choose LinkedIn. Snapchat is a B2C platform that generates real engagement metrics. If you need to generate immediate sales for your products or services, use Pinterest.

You must use at least three of these platforms to leverage the power of each. For instance, you can use Facebook for written content, Instagram, and Pinterest for visual content, and Twitter to find followers for all these platforms.

Free or Paid Social Media Advertising?

Free social media advertising does not work anymore. The algorithms that social media sites use to rank posts on the timelines have drastically changed. If you need to reach your audience, you need to use paid ads. If you do it well, paid ads will not cost much. Again, almost all your competitors are using paid ads, and your free social media post will stay buried under all their ads.

So, how do you do it?

• Create content and share on social media
• Promote your top content
• Tag site visitors with a cookie so they see your ads on social media
• Filter your audience, so only those interested in your business see the ad
• Remarket to the audience using social ads, display ads, and remarketing lists for search ads
• Convert leads to buyers
• Repeat

It is easy to create content, but if your content is not RELEVANT, you will pay more for ads, something that your business budget may not accommodate. Relevant content is shareable and invokes high post engagement. When your post is highly relevant on Facebook, you get more impression shares, and you pay a lower cost per engagement.

To create relevant content, ask the following questions:

• Is your content related to your audience’s interests?
• Is your content fresh?
• Does the content help your audience in any way?

You can tell your content is relevant if you get shares, replies, likes, and increased engagement. With more engagement, your social media advertising gets easy, and your budget goes down.