With approximately 2.5 billion daily active users*, Facebook is the world’s most popular social media platform. With such a wide user base, it is possible for almost any business to locate their target audience, especially using Facebook’s ‘Facebook for Business’ tools. Additionally, with their specialised business pages allowing you to track metrics and providing analytics, it is quite a well-designed platform for keeping track of the success of your marketing campaigns. 

Whilst the lack of hashtagging may make organic traffic a bit harder to generate, Facebook Ads are a great tool for creating paid traffic. You can either create specific ads or boost your page’s Facebook posts, targeting your audience by selecting desired characteristics from categories such as age, gender, interests, employment, purchasing behaviours, relationship status and so on. The amount of available data available on each consumer on Facebook means targeted advertising is extremely simple to achieve. 

When creating new ads, the automatic placement feature in the Ads Manager allows the delivery system to make the most of your budget by placing your ad in specific locations on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network based off of the objective you select when creating your campaign. With both written or video ads placed in community groups, on the main feed, on the side feed or in Messenger, there are plenty of opportunities to be seen on Facebook - as long as you are willing to do a little boosting. Advertise your website, your product, your service, a special promotion, a campaign, your Facebook page itself - whatever you wish. 

What does all this mean? That Facebook can be a very cost-effective way of growing your following quickly, especially as you can easily be seen by the people you want to be seen by. Messenger allows you to capitalise on those leads by setting up automatic replies to anyone who sends your page a message, or even automatically beginning a conversation with anyone who views your page. However, if you are not able to put some budget towards Facebook, other platforms are more likely to generate organic traffic and leads. 

Twitter claim to be the number one social media platform for discovery and suggest people spend 26% more time viewing ads on their platform than any other social media platform**. They are certainly a good option for organic traffic thanks to the popularity of hashtagging, which allows consumers to discover tweets containing specific hashtagged keywords. This can be utilised in both the content you produce, allowing your target audience to find you, and through paid Twitter for Business targeting tools that allow you to target ads at audiences based on their conversations, keywords, interests and followers. Similarly, you can also run paid Ad campaigns based on your objectives that optimize towards a marketing goal - awareness, conversions or specific actions. 

As standard, an Instagram business account is free to set-up, and provides you with real-time metrics on your posts and stories, insights into your followers and user interactions, and a platform for providing business info such as address, contact details and business hours. You can hashtag keywords to allow users to find you in the ‘Explore’ section of the app, or you can pay to have your post appear there; Instagram offers a number of paid advertising options. You can place ads so they appear on the stories section, with click-throughs to your page, a special offer, or your website. Alternatively - or additionally - you can place ads on the main feed, with the option for photo, video or carousel ads. Instagram also has a feature called Collection, where you can showcase a range of products and services. Similarly to Facebook (Instagram is owned by Facebook), you can promote or boost certain posts, and all advertising can be targeted based off of your specific criteria - location, demographics, behaviours, lookalikes, interests, or custom audiences. 

Instagram is certainly a powerful business platform now, but you have to be willing to put the effort into your aesthetic. Graphics, videos, boomerangs, GIFs, animations, professional photography - all of these thrive on Instagram, and quality is key. As a business, you have to be willing to put thought into the appearance of your page as a whole, which means you have to decide your content strategy ahead of time. The effort is worth it, however - Instagram is a fantastic place to reach new customers and audiences, as long as you use it correctly. Already established companies such as Vogue have managed to sell out their September issue simply by using Instagram stories, so it evidently is a great place for your business to be. 

LinkedIn is a great B2B option for digital marketing and brand awareness. A social platform for professionals, LinkedIn offers companies the chance to engage with and target businesses or individuals within their target audience. You can track and participate in content trending with your target audience, drive specific actions with a customisable call-to-action button and track and monitor activity with visual metrics. You can create a business page and produce content, videos, messages, articles, training and more, published either organically or with the help of their advertising features. These allow you to sponsor posts or messages to target specific professionals, advertise directly into your target audience’s inbox, create video ads to drive leads, produce text ads with PPC (pay-per-click) or CPM (cost-per-impression) options, create personalised dynamic ads to draw in your audience or prospects and more.