Tips To Grow Your Social Presence With Organic and Paid Advertising

There’s a lot of buzz on social media, and social media advertising can help you get into a position where customers see your ads instead of your competitors’. People aged 18 to 34 are more likely to follow a business on social media than in other ways.

This means you’ll be able to reach that audience when you advertise on social media and create accounts that represent your brand. If you get people to follow your accounts, you can advertise to them through your posts and this may reduce what you spend in the long run.

In addition to organic social media management, you should also be incorporating paid social media advertising. Before you do, the first thing you need to do is to figure out a budget.

Social Media Advertising Budget

According to The Content Factory, the average business spends between $200 and $350 on social media advertising every day.

You might be shocked at this amount and feel like it’s too much. Keep in mind that this number includes all sizes of businesses including the big guys who spend millions in online advertising. If your social media advertising budget doesn’t allow for that much per day, that’s ok.  In general, social media advertising should comprise a part of your overall marketing budget. You want to include several types of advertising so don’t let one type take up too much of your entire budget.  In other words, don’t overspend on social media marketing and ignore other channels of reaching customers.  If you’re just starting out, it’s good to take it easy and practice on how to get the best return on your investment.

Your goal should be to attract new followers to your social media site or to get them to respond to your promotions. And if you get more followers on your social media sites, they’ll be able to see most of your posts with no investment. So, you should first spend money on gaining new followers.

Start Out Small

Are you just venturing into social media marketing? Start small! It generally takes a lot of trial and error to reach the right audience so it’s good not to spend too much before you get the hang of it. Instead, take time to learn what you’re doing before diving in head first.

One method you should incorporate is split testing to see what gives you the best results. Put two campaigns to the same audience and monitor your analytics to see which one is performing better. Then use your best performing ad and test it against another one. With time, you’ll understand what people respond to and you’ll become more confident in spending larger amounts of money.

Also, look at what your competitors are doing to reach people on social media. This will help you design a better and more effective marketing strategy.

How Much Should You Spend on Social Media Advertising?

Ultimately, spend enough to see a positive response. For instance, even $5 can help you reach more people and gain followers. Also, this is low enough that if it doesn’t work right, you can change your approach without running your budget into the ground.

So, try spending $5 per day for a week and see whether you get positive results. If you do, increase the budget. If not, remain at the same level until your results improve. As long as you’re ready to adjust, you’ll get more mileage out of your investment.

One factor to help you decide how much to spend is what social media network you’re on. For example, you can focus on the network where you’re most active. Or you can decide how much to spend based on the metrics of social networks. For instance, Facebook has the largest number of users but if you’re targeting professionals, focus on LinkedIn. Twitter is a good place to start if you’re looking for organic views and shares, but it’ll be difficult to design an ad that grabs people’s attention because most posts are short and disappear quickly.

Deciding how much you should spend on social media advertising is challenging, but the rewards are worth the potential risk. Social media will connect you to a large audience that already uses the platform to follow brands. If you start small and work your way up, you’ll be surprised by how quickly you’ll see a real return on your investment.