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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
Content marketing
–- creating and distributing relevant content to attract, acquire, and
engage your target audience –- has become a popular marketing tactic
over the past few years. But although most companies understand how to
promote their content via their “owned” channels, such as their Facebook
Page, their Twitter account or LinkedIn Company Page, many are missing
out on the opportunity to get their content in front of a larger
audience through paid social promotions.
For example, let’s say you’ve spent time and money developing a great
new how-to video or article –- how do you make sure people see it?
Promoting it via Facebook Promoted Posts will put it front and center
for your fans. Or, what if you’ve received a positive write-up in your
local paper? You can make sure your target customers see it by making a
small Twitter ad buy targeted at local followers of that paper.
Positive product reviews, media coverage, blog posts and educational
content like white papers and presentations can all have tremendous
value for your business. Here are three paid social ad tools that can
dramatically expand visibility for this content.
1. Facebook Promoted Posts
With Facebook Promoted Posts,
businesses pay to have their regular posts appear higher (and more
often) in the news feed, so there's a better chance their audience will
see them.
“Most small business owners don't realize the impact of just spending
a little bit of money to promote posts,” said Anthony Kirlew, Chief
Strategist at AKA Internet Marketing. “With all of the noise in the
Facebook newsfeeds as well as the EdgeRank factors, the message of most
small business Facebook pages is unseen. For a very small amount of
money, companies can get the lift that leads to the exposure they are
seeking on Facebook.”
To promote a post on your Page, simply create the post and click
“Promote” at the bottom of the post. You’ll be prompted to select your
audience – either people who like your page, or people who like your
page and their friends –- and to set a budget based on how many people
you want to reach. Compelling graphics and headlines are important for
driving maximum engagement with Promoted Posts, so even if you’re
promoting someone else’s content (such as a story about your company in
the local paper), consider including your own graphic and headline to
make it pop.
Galen Ward, co-founder and CEO of real estate search engine Estately, used Facebook Promoted Posts to seed viral sharing of its fun blog post, "37 Things You Should Know Before Moving to Seattle.”
Ward’s strategy was to go narrow with the post promotion, crafting a
post that would appeal to Seattle sports fans, and then promoting it to
people who have the Seahawks as one of the interests on Facebook.
According to Ward, the company spent just under $100 and got 8,500 Likes and tens of thousands of visitors to the web site.
“We paid under $3 CPM and got around a five percent click-through
rate — so for under $100 we got our post in front of over 30,000
people,” said Ward. “Without Facebook, it would have travelled through
our limited networks, but with Facebook ads we got it in front of
virtually every person who might be interested in it. And because the
content was engaging and in front of the right people, it sparked a ton
of viral sharing.”
Ward says they are now experimenting with spending $10-20 to promote
each of their blog posts and will up the spend for posts that perform
well.
2. Twitter Promoted Tweets
Twitter recently launched a self-service capability for Promoted Tweets,
which are regular tweets that you pay to promote to more people.
Twitter allows you to target people by geography, interest or gender,
and you only pay only when people click, retweet, favorite or reply to
your tweet.
Twitter’s pricing system is based on bidding: you set the maximum
amount you’re willing to spend per follow or click, and Twitter will
give you suggestions for what you should bid to optimize your campaign.
Twitter tools allow you to see how each of your tweets is performing;
after a few days of running promoted tweets, check back in to gauge how
the campaign is working and whether you need to adjust your bid.
Online music publication Prefix Magazine
used Promoted Tweets to increase brand awareness and drive more
high-quality readers to their site, prefixmag.com. The site saw an
immediate 49% jump in visitor traffic from Twitter compared to the week
before the Twitter ad campaign. “When
a tweet is resonating, I want to keep it resonating — to have that
tweet snowball — and Twitter advertising makes that happen,” said Prefix Magazine’s Publisher Dave Park.
Daniel Rothamel, founder of artist management company Two Plus Media offered free downloads of “The Wretched”,
a mixtape by his client NomiS, via Promoted Tweets. The $50 campaign,
which targeted users in the U.S. interested in Christian and Gospel
music, resulted in 7,900 impressions and 105 engagements on the tweet.
"One of my biggest challenges with promoting new artists is cutting
through the clutter to find the people who are already interested in the
music my artists create,” said Rothamel. “Promoted Tweets helps me
target these people more effectively, giving me a greater chance at
successfully turning them into fans."
3. LinkedIn Ads
To get your content in front of a business audience, consider LinkedIn Ads,
which run on prominent pages on the LinkedIn.com website. Ads consist
of a headline, a description (up to 75 characters of text), your name or
company name, a small image and a URL. You can specify which LinkedIn
members view your ads by selecting targeting criteria such as job title,
job function, industry, geography, age, gender, company name, company
size or even by a particular LinkedIn Group (such as “Corporate Real
Estate”). Like with Twitter, you set a maximum budget and only pay for
the clicks or impressions that you receive.
According to LinkedIn,
the best-performing ads are relevant to the target audience and written
with clear, compelling words. LinkedIn suggests that you highlight
special offers, unique benefits, white papers, free trials or demos to
get people’s attention, and include strong call-to-action phrases like
Try, Download, Sign up or Request a Quote.
Internet marketing agency Cardinal Web Solutions
used a LinkedIn ad featuring a company culture presentation to help
generate interest in their job openings. According to founder and CEO
Alex Membrillo, “The content included in the presentation has been very
effective for attracting qualified candidates, and overall interest in
our company has increased significantly.”
Marketing software company HubSpot
is offering white papers and free educational resources via LinkedIn
Ads to attract marketing professionals. The company says it first
experimented with ad campaigns on social networks other than LinkedIn,
but the campaigns did not yield satisfactory results.
"There's a lot of distraction on other social networks," said Dan
Slagen, the company's head of paid marketing. "People are there for
reasons besides improving their businesses, or networking with other
professionals. We need to connect with B2B companies that are focused
on lead generation, which means LinkedIn is the place for us.
According to Slagen, HubSpot’s LinkedIn Ads generate a click-through
rate that is 60 percent higher than its average across other social
networks, with much higher quality leads.
"There's no clutter on LinkedIn - members are there to do business," he added.
Getting Started
Ready to get started but still not sure which channel makes the most sense for you?
HipLogiq CTO and cofounder Adam Root recommends that small businesses consider all three networks, but use them for different purposes.
“My strategy is to use Twitter to gain new users, Facebook to build a
community and LinkedIn to generate leads for the sales team,” says
Root. “My logic in choosing this strategy is that Twitter is a good
medium for targeting moments and encouraging action, Facebook is a great
medium for building long-term relationships and LinkedIn is a business
network with high-profile agencies in its user base that I’d want as
customers.”
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