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Lately, many businesses are hiring specialized paid social media marketers to handle these nuances.īut if you want to hire one, what are the most important skills for a candidate to have? And which social media platform should they specialize in?
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The world’s greatest Facebook advertiser might flop on TikTok, even after applying everything they know. Each one is different, with unique best practices. You also have to understand the social media platform you buy ads on. It’s not enough to understand your target audience. However, with more platforms, new techniques, better technology, and fiercer competition, it’s much harder to break into social media advertising today than it was 17 years ago. The emergence of Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, and now TikTok has given digital marketers even more channels for reaching finely defined market segments.
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Of course, Facebook isn’t the only social media platform anymore. Marketers no longer have to waste as much money advertising to people outside their audience - social media lets them target specific niches and micro-niches, so only potential buyers see their ads. That’s the advantage social media advertising has over its traditional counterparts. Facebook's worldwide ad revenue for 2021 is projected to reach $94.6 billion.Īnd yet, the core appeal of Facebook and all social media advertising remains the same: targeting specific customer groups. Today, Facebook has a few more users - 2.8 billion monthly active users, as of Q1 2020 - and Facebook advertising has grown with its user base. The platform's worldwide ad revenue for 2021 is projected to reach $94.6 billion. Youth).īack then, social media campaigns couldn’t come close to traditional advertising campaigns on reach, but they offered a direct connection to niche audiences.įor a youth marketing agency, it was cost-effective to advertise only to college-age adults on Facebook, even if the platform had less than a million users at the time. Facebook - or “The Facebook,” as it was known back then - had launched two months earlier, with only a small pool of college students for users.īut it was that small, specialized audience that attracted Facebook’s first social media advertiser: the youth marketing agency MRY (then known as Mr.
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