The Content Creator’s Guide to Paid Social Distribution
So you wrote a blog post, kicked off an advocacy campaign, or launched a new product. Now, you need to engage target audiences with your content. Chances are you will turn to paid social promotion to help — and you certainly should.
But how do you decide which social platforms to use, and how to allocate your budget? This article should help you get started. Read on to find out some of the best ways to use paid social and discover some hacks to help you make the biggest impact.
When to use it: LinkedIn is best for when you need to reach a highly-targeted influential audience. When targeting the right people is more important than mass reach, and when your content is professional or industry-focused in nature, it is the ideal channel.
Why it’s great: Its targeting specificity is unmatched. You only pay for clicks when selecting the CPC (cost-per-click) option while social actions (likes and shares) are free added value. Sponsored updates preview more of your content than Tweets, so by the time the audience clicks they are already more engaged and primed to take action.
The trick: LinkedIn’s CPC ads work on the auction model. To make the most of your budget, try first bidding at the bottom of LinkedIn’s recommended range, especially when you don’t have to spend a set budget within a short time period.
Twitter:
When to use it: Twitter reigns when your goal is to drive the conversation (especially when reporters are among your target audiences). It’s also ideal when targeting the followers of your competitors, peers, or other influencers will help you reach the right people, and when job title and seniority is less critical than interest area.
Why it’s great: It reaches a more influential audience than Facebook, display ad networks, or discovery platforms, but at a lower cost than LinkedIn. Like other platforms, it offers CPC placements, ensuring you only pay when someone clicks on your content. As a side benefit, interesting campaigns often boost followers for your Twitter account, building longer-term engagement.
The trick: Twitter cards are a great way to build leads and capture user information with a single click. You build them through the advertising dashboard on Twitter, but they are actually free to create and can be promoted organically.
Facebook:
When to use it: Facebook’s biggest advantage is providing significant traffic quickly and cheaply. It’s especially helpful when you have better-than-average content — you can use the CPM (cost-per-impressions) model on the site and get a better effective cost-per-click than most competitors because your content will be more popular. It’s also useful when you want to promote video, but driving traffic back to your site is not a critical goal.
Why it’s great: Simply put, reach and scale. Facebook is capable of driving more engagement per dollar than most other traffic drivers. It allows advertisers to target across numerous criteria, though the levers it offers may not always perfectly match your goals.
The trick: Invest $20 to A/B test your headlines or other content elements. Create two separate campaigns using the Facebook Power Editor tool (rather than two posts within the same campaign). Set the same budget and target audience, and set a $10 spend to run for an hour on each campaign. Launch at the same time on a CPM basis, and within a few hours you will have the results of your A/B test. Pro tip: target mobile (traffic that many publishers can’t monetize and is thus cheaper) to get a larger sample size for the same cost.
Whether you are driving users to your articles, videos, or other resources, these tactics will help you maximize your media budget and drive the greatest impact for your brand.
This post originally appeared on LinkedIn. You can view it here.
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