Advertise on Facebook or Twitter?

Most of our clients new and old are itching to get on Twitter and Facebook eager to take advantage of the millions of people and businesses that use the sites to socialise and communicate, but be careful in some cases the brand doesn't fit the hole and you have to choose or even go elsewhere.

Before you think about advertising on these platforms you need to answer a few questions.

Will your offering be relevant to the audience?

Is there an audience already?

Do you have an angle to engage the community?

Do you have the time and resource to manage the campaign effectively?

Before you start a new advertising campaign you need to have an understanding of the audience, expected response and rationale of how the placement fits in with your brand and offering. From there you can calculate an expected return. Most importantly you need the time to manage the campaign on a day-to-day basis.

If the company is marketable on Twitter or Facebook there are quite a few paid for advertising options available.

Twitter offers Promoted Tweets which can be set to advertise to users like your followers with geographical targeting in search results or on their timelines when they look at recent tweets. A plus is these ads are priced on a cost-per-engagement basis. This means you pay for re-tweets, clicks, replies or favourites. As a result you don’t pay for impressions.

As well as Promoted Tweets there are Promoted Trends which are shown beside user’s timelines and are seen as hot topics which are popular at the time.

Some companies choose the Promoted Accounts option especially if they are about to launch a new product. They offer a large amount of exposure and can be seen in the ‘Who to Follow Section’ or search results. I often use the Who to Follow Section when I am looking for influencers or experts in a field. This obviously gives your brand a certain amount of credibility.

A new advertising option on Twitter is the promoted profiles offering. Your profile is branded and available to everyone even if they are not logged in. You can display all of your latest content and offers and at the top of the page you advertise using a banner placement for more exposure. From an overall advertising campaign point of view it gives you greater control over the branding of the campaign providing a more seamless experience. Some companies don’t even use bespoke websites any more when they run campaigns and drive traffic to a Twitter or Facebook page instead.

Take a look at some examples: Facebook Advertising

Facebook has more options and flexibility and with over 800 million users worldwide a bigger potential audience.

Most companies start with some sponsored ads they are priced on a cost-per-click basis and you can target by location, language, age, gender and a number of other options. Before you even begin to think about buying ads you have to have a think about your target market and the relevance of your advertising on this platform. If you are selling Marine insurance to exporters you have to ask yourself is Facebook really going to be the medium of choice?

For a really integrated approach which you can use as a hub to connect and promote your business to the Facebook community you can build a page. You can do some pretty nifty customisation to make it look cool. Here’s an example: https://www.Facebook.com/ASOS

It can take time to build up but if your brand is a good fit and you have a clear strategy and approach you can soon build a decent following you can check out our fan page which has over 5,000 likes. bdrlondon’s Facebook page

A good idea on Facebook is to create an app which users can make use of. If they like it hopefully they will continue to use it and share it to friends.

A good example of a free Facebook app is this one by Flixster you can rate movies and from there you can share with your friends.

You can also create Sponsored stories on Facebook which you can use to generate traffic and likes in addition you can run sponsored ads to help with your promotion.

Both Twitter and Facebook offer bag loads of opportunities if you know your audience and own a brand which fits with the community. Every company under the sun wants to jump on the band wagon but few will get it right.

You have to do your due diligence and be interesting but most importantly you have to have the time to put in to make it work. It’s not the kind of thing you can set up and then forget about it.