Posted: May 22, 2015
Facebook and Twitter are by far the most popular social media networks today with combined unique users reaching more than 1 billion. Unless you’re new to social media, you probably understand the vast potential these tools have for generating interest in your website.
Reaping the benefits from social media is a completely different matter, which is why we want to provide this quick guide on harnessing both Facebook and Twitter to attract new followers, build your email list, improve site traffic, and sell more of your products and services, or if you’re like most companies online, a combination of all four of these goals.
We know how frustrating it can be to develop a great blog post or infographic only to see low engagement on the giant social network. In the last year, organic posts on Facebook have seen a 50 percent drop in post impressions, according to a 2014 Global Digital Advertising Report.
With this reality, businesses are turning to paid promotion services through Facebook to get more engagement with their posts.
Of course, the first step is to create your business’s Facebook page if you do not have one, which you can easily do by clicking the Create a Page link when logged in with your personal profile.
After creating your business page, you’re ready to begin exploring the various paid options available. The first question you will be asked when accessing Facebook’s Ads Manager is to choose your objective for your campaign. These objectives include boosting a post, promoting a page, improve page traffic, increasing website conversions, getting more users to engage with your app, and other actionable goals.
If you’re just starting out, promoting your page is the best place to direct your initial efforts. This feature will display your posts to users who are currently not followers of your page. If your page is more established, you can boost your posts so more of your fan base will see them. Many marketers mistakenly believe their posts will be shown to all of their followers, but in reality, Facebook limits the number of people who see your posts.
After you choose your objectives, your next step is to define the characteristics of your audience by age, gender and language, or through more advanced parameters like interests, behaviors and connections. This feature allows you to get really specific and avoid wasting valuable resources advertising to people who are ultimately not interested in your products and services.
Once you define your audience, setting your budget is the next step in this process. Facebook allows you to set either a daily amount or “lifetime” amount. After setting the amount you want to spend on your campaign, you then need to decide if you want to pay per impression (i.e. the number of people who see your ad) or by the number of people who click your ad or like your page.
After you’ve determined your objectives, defined your audience and set your budget, you’re ready to start creating ads.
Using text, photos and even links, you can either create one single ad or several options, it’s up to you. You also need to choose if you want your ad to display for desktop users, mobile users or both. Although most choose both, you should really try and determine the preferences of your target demographic. To find out, try out both at first, see which option works better, then use that knowledge for your future campaigns.
The best way to find out if Facebook advertising is for you is to start small and experiment. Facebook’s ads guide provides further information on their advertising options as well as other technical recommendations like ideal image size, text length and more.
Twitter is the second most popular social network with more than 310 million unique users on a monthly basis. Twitter ads can help you reach users who are not currently following or know about your company.
Of course, the first step is to set up your Twitter profile if you haven’t done so already. After you have done this, spend some time getting familiar with the platform and all its features, including the discover feature which allows you to find people talking about your business.
After acquainting yourself with the network, you’re ready to go to Twitter’s advertising page to begin your ad campaign.
Like Facebook, your first step will be to choose your objective. Twitter’s list is not too different from Facebook — are you trying to grow followers, draw more people to your site or grow your email list? It is possible to choose more than one objective.
Your next decision will be to narrow down your target audience. These parameters include basic identifiers like location, gender and device, as well as more advanced options like:
Once you’ve identified these parameters, your next step is to set a budget for your campaign. Twitter ads are very cost effective. You only pay when the user takes the intended action (email signup, product purchase, follow). Since Twitter is an auction-based system, you will need to determine the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for the desired action.
Besides setting a bid for each action, you need to set a total cap for your campaign. If you’re not sure what your limits should be, Twitter provides data on what other advertisers are paying for similar campaigns.
After you have set the budget and identified your audience, you’re ready to begin composing your tweets using text, links and images. You can also use prior tweets. Twitter also allows you to set up your campaign in advance which is nice considering our hectic schedules.
Last but not least, one nice, new option with Twitter is the quick promote feature. This allows you to promote your most popular tweets from your dashboard rather than going through the setup process described above.
Even if you don’t have the funds to embark on an advertising campaign in Facebook and Twitter, you should absolutely still be active on these networks provided they are a good fit for your business. Simply sharing other posts you find interesting and participating in relevant discussions will dramatically increase your visibility.