How to Advertise with Social Media – by Ted Dhanik

As the average person spends more of their time on social media sites, the potential for efficient advertising grows as well.  Given that advertising has a lot to do with creating brand awareness and letting the public know about product and service offers, social media is a great medium through which to achieve these goals.  There are many different social media websites that advertisers are taking advantage of.  Some of the best sites to advertise on include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.  Businesses have to evaluate what their main goals are in order to choose the right website to place ads on.

Facebook continues to grow in its popularity and the amount of users.  Today there are over 500 million active users on Facebook.  Out of that number, about half log on every single day.  Each month, there are about 30 billion pieces of content shared on the site.  This number includes page links, blog posts, photo albums, and news stories.  The average user has about 130 friends.

Facebook functions somewhat like word of mouth referrals.  If businesses advertise in ways that appeal to the viewers, the viewers will then share the information with their Facebook friends.  Obviously this can translate into a huge number of new customers if done effectively.  Facebook ads are not very expensive, compared to other types of online ads.  Therefore, companies of all different sizes can take advantage of these ads.

Another great social media site for advertisers to utilize is YouTube.  YouTube is one of the most popular search engines, next to Google.  Video advertising is a great way to get a message across to consumers in an engaging way.  Ads can appear before, within, or next to videos.  Over half of YouTube users visit the site at least once a week.

Author bio: Guest post is provided by Ted Dhanik, CEO of engage:BDR, supplier of high performance marketing solutions. Ted Dhanik is a passionate blogger who helps form trends in display advertising.  Visit www.teddhanik.com for more information on Ted Dhanik.