When you hear the word advertising, what is the first thing you think of?

For me, it’s Social Media! And here’s why:

Firstly, lets have a look at what exactly it means to Advertise:

Advertise (verb) describe or draw attention to (a product, service, or event) in a public medium in order to promote sales or attendance.

Secondly let’s look at the definition of Social Media:

(noun) Websites and Applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in Social Networking.

And lastly, Social Networking:

(noun. the use of dedicated Websites and applications to interact with other users, or to find people with similar interests to one’s own)

So in summary, the objective of advertising is to make your product or service know and preferred, particularly in a public space and what is more public than – Social Media!?

There are a couple reasons why Social Media is one of the most, if not the most, common form of advertising:

1) IT’S FREE

There is absolutely 0 cost in setting up your personal/business account on any social platform. And because of it being free, there are billions of users online, every single day. This means that your brand has the potential to reach endless amounts of possible customers.

2) Everybody has access to it

As long as you have Internet, you can access Social Media! This means that pretty much any and everyone has the ability to access to some form of Social Media subsequently giving your brand a massive amount of exposure… if handled correctly!

3) Most are linked and work together

Most Social Media platforms are designed to work with each other. Whatever you share on one Social Media platform, has options for you to forward/share to another Social Media platform. They all sort of have their unique way of sharing content which separates them from other Social Media apps but many of them correspond with each other, making it so easy to share and post on multiple pages to try and gain as much exposure as possible.

4) Scheduling

Because of Social Media being such a big ‘thing’, there are many programs developed and centered around Social Media and making it as convenient as possible. This includes programs that can automatically release posts for you at any time, any day! This becomes so handy (especially for business pages) as sometimes you need to plan in advance because you never know what my come up and take your attention away from your marketing. It even comes in handy if you maybe going on leave or out of signal for a while so your page doesn’t become dormant, and it carries on running for you. It’s always good to have a plan and be forward thinking and there are programs available to encourage it.

5) Advertising

Traditional forms of advertising used to always be your flyers, magazine and new paper articles etc. But because times have changed and everything is shifting digitally, Social Media platforms allow for advertising!! Now yes, they are technically always advertising, but this advertising element is very direct and tailored. Social Media advertising is incredible!! It allows you to have so much precision in exactly what you are looking for in terms of the clients and users you would like to reach. From the general elements such as age and gender, to the more specific details such as hobbies, relationship status, job specifics etc.
Advertising on Social Media can be very ‘personal’ in terms of them suiting exactly what you are looking for. By this, I am referring to price and run time! Social Media platforms allow you to choose how long you would like to run an ad for and exactly how much you would like to spend. It does of course have some rules in place as to the minimum spend and run time but nothing like your conventional advertising methods. You are able to select run time, ad spend, how many times you would like it to appear to a user and so much more.

It’s fascinating to see and the results are always mind-blowing!

6) Insights

It’s all fair and well having your Social Media up and running – but how do you know if what you are doing is even working?? Most platforms have insight summaries available for analysis in order for you to gage if what you are doing is working or not. This is an amazing tool as you can go quite in depth into viewing who your main audience is, which content is getting the better response, if the page has been improving and so on. It gives good guidance as to what is and isn’t working and the best ways to fix this in order to improve your page to receive the best possible results.

7) Management

It’s completely understandable that you do agree with having an online presence but you just don’t have the time to tend to your page like you feel you should. And that is why you get people like us! Social Media Managers. It’s very important to keep your page running frequently as it shows the brand is present and active. If a page sits dormant for a while, sometimes followers loose interest and also don’t see too much from the brand anymore so may forget about it.

Social Media is a powerful tool and when it’s used and managed correctly, the are endless opportunities available to you!

Give users reason and desire to follow your page! You need to be unique and honest in your approach in order to stand out, not only from your competitors, but the daily Social Media ‘clutter’ as well!