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I got this in my email from SmallBusinessNewz.com

Social media is about conversations. That’s the line we’ve been fed time and time again. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s the truth. For marketers and businesses looking to utilize the tools and social networks out there, it will probably serve them well to remember that, but it has often been suggested that directly marketing and trying to sell your product through social networks is in bad taste. That is a topic that probably isn’t so cut and dry. Have you had success advertising on social networks?

It’s going to largely depend on not only your goals, but your audience. It’s a different thing altogether when you talk about simply purchasing ads with social networks.

Absolutely. There are a lot of companies that can be successful buying ads on FaceBook for example. It does depend on your target audience. However, FaceBook needs to improve some things before I would recommend it.

You will hear from experts who tell you now is the time to buy FaceBook ads. However, you might also find it coincidental that these same experts provide a service to manage your FaceBook ads. So, if the person recommending FaceBook ads to you is also offering to manage your FaceBook ad campaign, you might want a second opinion from someone who does not stand to profit from you advertising on FaceBook.

Michael Kahn, SVP, Marketing at Performics says one of the biggest misconceptions people have about social media is that you can’t use it to market or sell.

Facebook has offered advertising for quite some time, and it has over 400 million users. Twitter is expected to launch an ad platform of its own at the upcoming SXSW (from which WebProNews will be providing live coverage), and Twitter has grown greatly over the last couple years.

Kahn says social is better for selling than many people think. He says Facebook CPC buys can perform really well, at the same ROI as search. Its just that the way Facebook delivers its ads is different than the way Google does. With Google, ads are delivered based on search behavior. With Facebook, ads are delivered based on information that users have chosen to share with Facebook.

Amazingly enough, this article has shown me a perfect example of someone promoting the use of FaceBook Ads who also just happens to provide services related to buying FaceBook ads. This page at Performics shows why they believe FaceBook Ads are good for you.

Anyone who manages PPC campaigns that include FaceBook Ads will tell you how great FaceBook Ads are. But as I said before, FaceBook still needs to fix a few things like the fact you can’t choose the time of day that your ads run. The fact they want you to pay by impressions and without controlling the times of day your ads will appear it means you are paying for each impression from the kiddies at FaceBook late at night as they visit profiles to make comments and find friends.

As I said, there are companies who can benefit from buying FaceBook Ads. Just don’t buy them because someone wants to sell you their PPC FaceBook Management services. Investigate it for yourself.

Facebook recently began testing a new “promote your post” feature with Facebook Pages. This presents page admins with the option to turn any status update into an ad to run across the social network, as the update is created. If this gets a full roll-out, it could go a long way in boosting advertiser enthusiasm for advertising with Facebook.

We don’t know yet how Twitter’s ads are going to be delivered, but hopefully we will soon. There are other networks that sell advertising on Twitter, however.

Do you advertise on social networks? How is the ROI?

About the Author:
Chris is a content coordinator and staff writer for SmallBusinessNewz and the iEntry Network. Subscribe to SmallBusinessNewz RSS Feeds.