Social Media Advertising in 2016

For most businesses, social media marketing is a bit of a mystery — and that’s because it is a relatively new landscape, one that is constantly changing. But social media marketing is extremely powerful and has the ability to take a small investment and give it global reach. The key to successful social media advertising is to stay on top of industry changes and trends, so you are making the absolute most out of every advertising dollar you spend. Here are some top trends in social media advertising for 2016:

Product Placement and Sponsoring Soars: Celebrities like the Kardashians have been doing it for years — taking inconspicuous photos of themselves with products or mentioning new services in their Tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts. Why? Because it really works. But most businesses don’t have the budget to pay out celebs to promote their goods. But what they DO have is the ability to turn fans into marketing tools. Freebies to fans in exchange for Tweets of Instagram posts that mention the product or courting posters that are popular with your demographics and hooking them up with product or services for mentions and hash-tagging your company. These are incredibly powerful ways to grow your organic marketing on social media. When you use keyword-friendly posts, Instagram also provides the perfect place for organic search engine optimization.

Facebook Ads and Boosts: One of the biggest social media shake-ups in 2015 was the new Facebook advertising policies. Facebook knew that businesses use the site as a key marketing tool, and began to collect payments in forms of “boosts”, which allow a company to reach more customers for a small fee. Those fees increased in 2015 and were paired with a new structure that makes it nearly impossible for a business to get their content out there without ponying up. Savvy digital marketing services have learned how to make the most of these boosts and take a small monetary investment on Facebook and create a huge impact.  By including trending hashtags, post-tagging and links to popular related news articles and stories, you can make even a five dollar boost reach thousands and thousands of new fans. Facebook has also rolled out a new “Buy” button for businesses to use, which allows consumers to shop right from their page – and initial reports from businesses show that they are finding success.

Twitter and Instagram Advertising: In 2015, Twitter and Instagram began offering advertising campaigns. Twitter offers objective-based ad campaigns that aim to be much more flexible and affordable than Facebook. Twitter ads are perfect for those small and medium sized businesses who want to expand their reach online, appeal to a more diverse crowd and take advantage of all affordable social media advertising opportunities. Twitter’s fee structure allows businesses to pay for certain performance-based actions rather than just retweets or clicks. Twitter includes tweet engagements, such as retweets, replies, website clicks or conversions, app installs, new followers and leads in their fees. Instagram advertising has been popular for larger brands, who are able to get their content sponsored on newsfeeds – but the ad fees are still quite pricey for smaller brands.

LinkedIn Shifts from B2B into B2C. According to a recent article by Business Insider, LinkedIn is more popular than Twitter among professional adults. The core user demographic of LinkedIn is white collar young professionals between the age of 30 and 49. These users tend to be very web-savvy with disposable income – the perfect audience to advertise with. 2015 saw a major shift on LinkedIn from business-to-business communication to business-to-consumer messaging and advertising. There are many opportunities to be had to develop a promotional strategy on LinkedIn, which combines advertising and search engine optimization strategies. 

If you’re ready to grow your business through social media marketing and advertising, the best way to start is with a great digital marketing agency — one that specializes in search engine optimization and social media selling. Noxster is a LA SEO company with a focus on social marketing — and works one on one with clients to navigate the ever-changing world of social media advertising.