How do you truly know which social media platform to use when advertising your business?  That depends on your product and services, your target audience and quite simply the cost.
Let’s take Facebook for starters.  There are approximately 1.2 billion people who use Facebook every day!  Who wouldn’t want to tap into those social media users who are much more than that?  They are CEOs, nurses, waitresses, pilots, veterans, information technologists, engineers and etc.  We all need goods and services from businesses and using social media is an excellent way to capture the attention of a targeted audience.
An example of a business area to gain from social media advertising is the financial services arena.  The projected 2 billion people who will most likely be using mobile banking by the year 2020, will certainly enjoy the easy access in which to use their mobile devices during their activities of every day life.  The loan company in California, SoFi which began in 2011 saw a 39% increase in their loan applications by using FB and Instagram.  Since they have no physical bank branch location, they used a digital 3 campaign advertising venue that was successful for them without stepping foot in a traditional bank storefront for obtaining their loans.
FB Messenger services can reach automated connections with a variety of people which can produce a myriad of potential customers.  33% of future marketing professionals are projected to be adding FB live video streaming for their advertising needs.  So what about the cost?  Facebook uses an auction/bidding process which can sometimes cost less than the actual bids.  Pricing varies and is based on that auction process.
Twitter is loved by many and has been successfully used by the Poncho 8 restaurant chain.  Their ad tweets directed their hungry loyal customers and some new patrons as well to the locations of their new restaurants.  Another company, a non-profit entitled SOS Lapsikyla ran a winning click or conversion campaign to gain international sponsors for their prized program to care for children who are not able to be supported by their biological parents.  Loyal Twitter users can promote, retweet and follow a business that they value and it can be reached by countless others.  Promoted trends/tweets can be pricey however the simpler Twitter ads are less costly but are also auction based.
Last but not the end of the social media outlets is the professional LinkedIn social media site in which approximately 467 million professionals in a variety of industries is available for advertising as well.  Businesses can select and advertise by job titles, specific industries and also by going directly to the ‘inbox’ of selected individuals.  The goals for advertising on LinkedIn may lead to other leads, professions, educational enrollment and event registrations to name a few.  Set up is easy and the pricing options are flexible and can reach spot-on audiences.  According to Dan Slegon, the Head of Paid Marketing for HubSpot, a leading inbound marketing and sales platform, “LinkedIn [has] no clutter and [they are] there to do business.”  Ad costs are set up by using a daily budget.  Once your budget is reached, the advertising ends until the next day.  They also use a bidding system and a click process too.  Another great feature of LinkedIn is the ‘campaign manager’ area in which advertising updates and/or success rates are available which show the results of specific posts, whether the posts/ads are links, photo or text.  The cost of advertising is set by the businesses and varies by the price fixing of daily budgets or maximum clicks.
So, whether you choose Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, they have all proven to be valuable for many businesses and should be seriously considered if the traditional ways to advertise is something you are not interested in at this time.  Please visit those social media sites and/or connect to their advertising departments by searching for their specific advertising areas in your web browsers.