Optimise your online advertising campaign with social media

Optimise your online advertising campaign with social media by Jamie Dawson
Social media is getting so popular these days, they are a force to be reckoned with and an opportunity no one can afford to miss. The news are flooded with stories about Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or some other popular social network, where more and more people seem to spend ever more of their time messaging friends, sharing photos and exchanging updates. However, social media as the name suggests are designed for socialising and entertaining but not commerce so utilising them in your marketing campaign is not straight forward. In this article we will take a quick scan at what you CAN do with blog and twitter to reach audience you cannot through conventional online and offline marketing methods such as classified ads.

Blogging

Set up a blog for your business and regularly post interesting articles that people are going to enjoy reading about. The articles could be about almost anything related to your business: a new trend emerging in your industry, a new product launch or a change in your policies. Although you must be very careful and considerate about what you write as the articles will represent the opinions of your company.

You can then promote your blog through conventional online marketing methods such as directory submission and forum postings. It will be a second platform after your main website to draw in additional traffic. Almost all major companies have their own blog, which they use to as the medium to release information to the public. As a result, their blogs are often closely followed by many people interested in their products and services.

Twittering

Twitter is a micro-blogging website where users can share messages that are shorter than 140 characters. Updates can be posted via their website or through a mobile phone. More and more people are starting to use to keep their friends informed about what they are doing. You can create a profile and get more people to 'follow' you. When someone follows you, your updates will be sent to them so the more 'followers' you have, the greater impact your messages will have.