As time marches along social media giants continue to find ways to monetize their empires and provide opportunities for business who wish to promote their products/services. Let’s look over a handful of the latest social media advertising platforms:
Instagram – Sponsored Photos and Videos
In the fall of last year Instagram (Facebook’s photo sharing incarnation) released its first ad or ‘sponsored photo’ from Levi’s. After great success (for example, Michael Kors gaining 36,000 likes from a single ad) other advertisers joined up, including: Adidas, Ben & Jerry’s, Burberry, General Electric, Lexus, Macy’s, PayPal, etc.
Instagram says that they will use information from what you do on their website as well as what you do on Facebook. For instance your interests and basic info on facebook, and the things you follow on Instagram.
At present the cost of Instagram’s sponsored photos are unknown, but it is safe to say it would be extremely expensive and most small business would not be able to afford them. However, we can assume that after the system has matured and grown it would then provide advertising solutions that small businesses could participate in.
Pinterest – Promoted Pins
Last October new social media giant Pinterest began implementation of ‘promoted pins’, in which a company would pay X amount of money to have their pin appear whenever a user searches for a particular keyword. For example a store selling costumes could have their costumes appear if one searched for ‘Halloween’. Their website states:
“If you’re interested in learning more about how we’re experimenting with promoting Pins, please fill out the form below. We’ll share more info and updates with you as we get closer to launching a product.”
Twitter – Promoted Tweets
Like Facebook, Twitter’s “Promoted Tweets” have matured over the past couple years, starting from only being available to major market movers (As is the current situation with Instagram and Pinterest ads), to recently being available to many small business by using a ‘cost per engagement’ model (which tends to average around $1.50-2.20 per click). This is good news for small business, allowing them to reach even more potential customers, with full control over how much they spend.
Conclusion
While most won’t be able to participate in Instagram and Pinterest ads, businesses should keep an eye on them while they develop and in the meantime get a flavor for social media ads with Twitter and Facebook.
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