There are many different ways to advertise your business, but with the wild popularity of social media, you may be wondering if advertising from a social media platform is worth your time. Twitter’s advertising capabilities are growing, and it just might be a great time for you to jump on the Twitter advertising bandwagon. Sponsored Tweets Twitter, an advertising platform less developed than Facebook’s, offers advertising through “Sponsored Tweets” or “Promoted Tweets.” Here, advertisers will pay per impression to have their tweet show up at the top of feeds when certain search terms are searched on Twitter’s search engine or certain hashtags are used. This is a very effective tactic, as it forces consumers to pay attention to your tweets. However, this method can become costly, and is often only an option for large corporations with hefty advertising budgets. On a cost per click basis for promoted tweets or cost per follower basis Twitter recommends a bid of between $0.5 and $1.50/each. Promoted Accounts/Tweets As we’ve discussed before, Twitter advertising used to only be a viable option for big businesses with big budgets. But times have changed! Because sponsored tweets can get expensive for small businesses, Twitter now offers “Promoted Accounts,” where Twitter looks at your current followers, searches for people with similar interests, and then recommends your business in the “Who to Follow” section, as well as “Promoted Tweets,” where Twitter constantly monitors your tweets and automatically promotes your best tweets. Businesses only pay when the promotions get someone new to follow your account or a user engages with your promoted tweet. For overall pricing for small businesses promoted accounts, a business will enter a daily budget of how much they can spend per day on both promoted tweets and accounts and their plan won’t exceed that. The minimum daily budget is $1, so at a minimum, businesses have to spend $30 a month. Positives of Twitter Ads The great thing about ads on Twitter is that they don’t look like ads. As opposed to Facebook, where ads blatantly appear on the sides of users’ feeds, Twitter ads casually show up right in users’ tweet streams. Twitter also has a leg up on Facebook when it comes to mobile advertising. On mobile devices, Facebook’s apps can’t show many ads, whereas Twitter’s “promoted tweets” and other ad formats seem to integrate more seamlessly into its apps. The real-time nature of Twitter communication is also good news for marketers. Twitter makes ads more relevant and timely to their users. There are many great things about advertising on Twitter, but when it comes down to it, each business must look at its individual advertising needs. Consider who your target customer is and evaluate which social media advertising outlet will allow you to reach your audience with as little cost as possible. Try giving several outlets’ advertising a chance – you never know what might work. But remember, if the confusion and cost comparisons get too complicated, an experienced social media consulting agency can help – SocialNicole love to partner with you in your online marketing journey! Photo Credit
Archives for January 2013
Facebook Introduces Graph Search
Yesterday Facebook unveiled yet another update to the social networking site called Graph Search. This new feature essentially acts as a search engine within your Facebook friends. With it you can search common interests within your friends, find restaurants that they have been to, music that they have listened to, photos from certain events and much more. For example, you could search “friends who like baseball” if you’d like to find someone to go to the big game to or “friends who have visited Portland” to get some recommendations on places to visit on your next trip.
Some say that Graph Search will give Google a run for its money. Instead of searching millions of hits on restaurants to try in your area, you can use Graph Search to see where to people you talk to and trust the most have been. Giving users a more personal search experience and possibly better results. While Graph Search does have some similarities, Mark Zuckerburg made it clear that “Graph Search is not Web search” in a press conference.
This new tool could truly change the way we search for things. With a more accurate way to find recommendations and reviews, will some search engines become obsolete?
What do you think about Facebook’s new search feature? Do you see any pros or cons? Share your thoughts below!