“Each of the major social networks have expanded their capabilities when it comes to advertising and promoting your product or service.” 

Facebook

While Facebook has certainly opened up as a marketing tool, it still has roots in being a social hangout and a place for people to relax and browse the daily lives of their friends and family.

• Facebook Business Fan Page. To this end, you should start by making a Facebook Business Fan Page. This page will act as a profile for your brand and a place to post all of your latest content. It will also be a great place to interact with and engage members of your audience.
• Group. You can also set up a group on Facebook, which like making a page, is completely free. Groups act as a discussion forum where you can attract and engage all kinds of people from your audience.
• Advertising Options. Finally, Facebook also offers advertising options. These have incredible customization options that allow you to target specific geographical areas, education levels, ages, and even the types of devices they’re using.

Twitter

Twitter is an amazing and simple platform that limits posts to 140 characters or less. This limit means that you’ll need to say more with less. One of the best strategies here is to intrigue and entice potential readers with tweets that pose a question, offer a statistic, or identify an issue.

• Hashtags. Twitter organizes and categorizes tweets using hashtags. Always include a relevant tag with your tweets so it gets seen by the right people. Asking your followers to favorite and retweet (RT) will also help spread your influence.
• Promoted Tweets. Starting with the first option, promoted tweets are paid tweets that can be displayed at the top of certain people’s feeds. Tweets flow like a rushing river down a person’s feed, so this option allows you to keep one of your own at the top.
• Promoted Accounts. You’ll be able to promote tweets to specific locations, followers, and certain keywords in search results. Secondly there’s an option for promoted accounts which makes your account appear in the “Who to Follow” section on the left side of user’s Twitter feeds. This is used to gain more influencers as followers of your brand.
• Promoted Trends. Finally, there are promoted trends. These are specific hashtags that will appear on the left side of user’s feeds. By investing in a promoted trend, your topic of choice can appear as “trending” in this section.

Pinterest

Pinterest may be young, but it’s an up-and-comer for sure. This image-focused platform offers a wholly unique way to promote your content. At the surface, the site is essentially a massive pinboard where people can post images and comment on them.

• Basics. Each time an image is pinned, it creates a link back to your website. When someone repins your images, that’s another link back to your blog. When creating your Pinterest profile, include a profile picture and make sure that it isn’t hidden from search engines in the settings. This way it will be indexed by Google and show up on search results.
• Share Button. Adding the Pinterest share button to images on your site is also a great way to connect the visual aspects of your site to your Pinterest profile. From here, create boards with unique titles and descriptive names. Upload only high-quality images and given them specific titles and descriptions so they get noticed.
• Promoted Pins. Beyond this, you can also take advantage of Promoted Pins. This new feature allows you to choose pins that you want to show members of your audience. Once you set up your targeting preferences, you can choose to pay for engagement or visits to your blog and track the entire effort in the process.

YouTube

Video content is on the rise as YouTube continues to break records and shatter expectations. It’s replacing television and cable at a rapid rate, so now is the time to start understanding and utilizing the marketing potential here.

There are four kinds of YouTube Advertising Options:

• In-Stream – These are ads that play before or during a video. After 5 seconds the user can skip, but you will only pay if they watch more then 30 seconds.
• In-Slate – Ads that show at the beginning of a video that is ten minutes or longer. These allow you to choose between three different adverts or as one ad. You only pay if the user watches the video.
• In-Search – These are a lot like Google Adwords advertising in the sense that they appear when certain keywords are searched on YouTube. They are placed in the top and right-hand side of the results.
• In-Display – This type is different because it appears beside YouTube videos that are embedded on other sites as part of Google’s Display Network.

You can choose who sees your ads based on a variety of options like demographics, interests, keywords, topics, device type, and more. All four options on YouTube offer a lot of potential. The biggest focus you should have is on reaching the right people by understanding your audience.

Instagram

Instagram is a lot like Pinterest, but it offers a lot more in terms of customization. When using this platform for your brand and blog, try adding some new tactics and strategies to your overall approach. These will help you get more engagement and better returns on your investment.

• Customize. Beyond simply posting images, try using a free tool like Canva to create graphics that add text and ultimately tie the image back to your brand. You can also do this by telling a story inside your captions.
• Advertisements. Instagram also offers advertisements now that appear as sponsored images. Since Facebook purchased the platform for a cool $1 billion, you can manage your Instagram ads on your Facebook profile which makes it easy to cover both sites.

The social media sites keep evolving so keep an eye out for changes.