Want to Make Money, be an Entrepreneur and be Successful?.... Check out this priceless advice.

Being an Entrepreneur is a habit, a successful one at that. Nobody is born an Entrepreneur, it's what you develop and create. The problem today is, everybody want's it on a plate or done for them and unless you win the lottery or are extremely fortunate, that's just not going to happen. Take small steps, that will eventually make a big difference. The best thing you can do is get started, stay motivated, be positive and don't give up.

Perfect Timing: The Very Best Time to Send Email Newsletters

Timing is everything – right? It may not be everything, but it certainly matters, especially when it comes to getting subscribers to notice and open your emails.

So when is the best time to send newsletter emails? We have some advice and we’re eager to share.

Best Email Send Time: General Advice

These general email send time tips are widely accepted by the email marketing community. They are great when you’re starting off, but be sure to read on and see why they won’t always work.

• Daytime vs. Nighttime. While this one may be obvious, it’s usually better to send out your email campaigns during the daytime. You know, when people are awake. Not asleep.

Mad Mondays. The general consensus is that should avoid sending out email blasts on Mondays. Why? People are already bummed out about the end of the weekend. They march into the office and are flooded with emails they’ve collected over the past few days. What’s the first thing they do? Delete those emails of course!

• Weekends. Historically, weekends are the days when folks are out running errands and going on adventures. Weekends tend to have low open rates, so most marketers avoid them like the plague.

• Give Heads Up for An Event. While 23% of emails are opened within 60 minutes after being sent, there are some lingerers who may not check out your email until a day or two later. To be safe, send out event-oriented emails 3-5 days prior to an event.

• Fan Favorites: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday have traditionally been favorite days to send email campaigns, as email marketers seek to avoid the Monday angst and Friday’s itchy-feet. MailChimp confirmsthat Tuesday and Thursday are the two most popular days to send email newsletters.

• Mid-Week, Mid-day: The tried-and-true traditional approach of sending out email campaigns in the middle of the week and in the middle of the day tends to do pretty well. General know-how suggests sending emails between 1-3pm (9-11am is recommended as well). It’s safe. It’s reliable. It’s not a bad choice. Just remember, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

MailChimp suggests 2 pm as the optimal send time based on their data.

That’s the Advice. Now Ignore it.

The tips above are considered general best practice advice for email marketing. However, there are many, many, situations which quickly challenge the classical suggestions above.

Just take a look at our own WordStream data.

Best Time to Send Emails: Thursday 8 – 9 am

Most email marketing articles would claim that 8am is too early to send an email newsletter, but it works great for WordStream blasts – we get over 25% open rates with this time!

Worst Time to Send Emails: Tuesday & Wednesday 8 – 10 am

Many would claim that Tuesday and Wednesday mornings should be great times to send emails, but we’ve found that Tuesday mornings result in under 5% open rates, while Wednesday mornings have below 5% click to open ratios.

Our WordStream data shows that the status just ain’t always quo.

There are several reasons why these old classic tips don’t mean squat in the end.

Beating the Rush.

So everyone agrees that Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the best days to send out an email campaign. Unless your competitors live north of Winterfell, they probably have heard this sage advice as well. This means that you’re facing a ton of competition by sending out emails on the “recommended” days and times.

If you don’t want your email newsletter to get lost in the hustle, swimming upstream may be your best bet. Although Mondays and Fridays are generally not recommended, who is to say they won’t work for you?

It Depends on the Device. 

Traditional “best time to send an email” numbers are being thrown to the wind as user habits change across devices. The standard mid-week, mid-day makes perfect sense for desktop users who are opening emails at work. Mobile users, on the other hand, tend to be pretty active even late in the evening.

It’s worth noting that although activity on mobile devices is plentiful on nights and weekends, a Brafton study shows that 55% of consumers open emails on desktops, while only 25% open emails on mobile devices. However, this study was done in 2013, and with users growing more reliant on mobile devices each day, these number could easily change. I also suspect that as businesses learn to craft more mobile-friendly emails, we’ll see greater email open rates on mobile devices.

Demographics: Know Your Peeps.

Understanding your demographics is the single most important thing you can do for email marketing success. They’re your audience - you should know their habits and cater to them.

Some examples of how demographics override the safe “best time to send” general advice:

• If you’re targeting the young, tech-obsessed crowd, you would probably ignore the general tip about not sending emails at night. Evening emails could work just fine for younger audiences.

• The much-maligned Friday could be a great choice if you’re in the entertainment industry, with folks looking for fun things to do over the weekend.

• Weekends don’t have to be off-bounds either. What if you’re interested in reaching tech-savvy audiences in cold-weather climates? I bet they spend plenty of time checking emails on Saturday and Sunday.

Don’t forget to consider your target demographics’ time zone – you definitely want to customize email send times depending on where your recipients live.

The Ultimate Answer to the “When to Send an Email” Question

The answer to “what is the best time to send an email campaign?” is that there is no single “best time” to send an email – it depends on your audience.

I know, what a cop-out answer! It’s true though. While there are certain days of the week and times that are generally recommended by the larger email marketing community, we’ve shown today how easy it is to refute those claims.

Maybe you’re thinking – come on Megan, I came here for an answer, not some Nietzsche-esque statement about subjective truth. To which I’d say fine; the mid-day, mid-week motto is a great place to start and should perform decently enough.

However, if you really want to rock email marketing and send out your email newsletters at the very best time for optimal opens and clicks, you need to TEST!

A/B test your send times like crazy. This is really the best way to find the perfect send time for your particular audience.

Not Getting the Open Rates You Want? Don’t Blame the Hour.

Bad open rates aren’t just about your send times. If your open rates aren’t looking so good, consider these factors as well:

• Do You Have a Standout Subject Line? Subject lines are HUGE when it comes to email marketing. You could argue that subject lines are even more important the email copy, since it’s the subject lines’ job to get people opening your message to begin with. Make sure you have a saucy, enticing subject line. Try checking out our post on the best email subject lines to increase open rates.

• Are You Sending Too Many Emails? No one likes a blabbermouth. Could your low open rates be the result of sending out too many emails? Maybe you’re bugging the heck out of your email subscribers.

• Is Your Message Mobile-Friendly? Your emails absolutely need to be mobile-friendly, end of story.

Do you have any tips on the best times to send email blasts? What works for you? What doesn’t work for you? Share your experience in the comments!

http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/09/04/best-time-to-send-email-campaign

How to Grow Your Twitter Audience in Just 30 Minutes a Day

Whether you’re building up your Twitter following from scratch, or you already have some sort of established audience, building and maintaining a following can seem rather time consuming even to veteran marketers.

Posting everyday, several times a day, is just not enough to stimulate growth. The “if I build it, they will come” mindset just doesn’t apply with twitter.

This is why it’s important you actively try to grow your Twitter audience. To see real growth in as little time as possible you have to be direct  and understanding of your goals.

If you set and implement the following routine, in as little as 30 minutes per day you can start to see a more significant and faster growth in your audience. Get ready for the numbers to start climbing.

The Overall Strategy

The idea of active audience growth is that you are going to go out there on Twitter and find the users that are interested in your niche and that are also in the middle of a conversation on your topic and niche. You’re then going to insert yourself in the middle of these conversations in a non-spammy and helpful way that adds value.

For example, if you have a Twitter account for your online store that sells guitars, you might want to search for users on Twitter talking about guitars or asking questions about guitar playing and engage with them.

Don’t pitch them, don’t ask them to check out your website and don’t ask them to follow you. You just help them.

More often than not, they will check you out, see your bio and click the link to your website and even follow you.

There’s a little more to this than that, including favoriting and following relevant users, but in a nutshell, engage with people who might be interested in you or your brand, and add a lot of value first. This might seem a bit more scrappy than you are used to, but trust me when I say it works.

First off… Make Sure Your Bio is Optimized

After your first interaction with someone, they’re very likely to click on to your profile to learn more about you. First impressions are everything so ensure that your Twitter profile and bio are optimized for a great first impression!

The first thing you want to have is an easily identifiable profile picture (even on a mobile device) so that when you appear in a user’s notification feed, after following them, favoriting a tweet or replying to a tweet, it’s immediately clear what you’re all about.

You can use a picture of yourself, however brands should forgo logos for more relevant memorable images. For example, for your guitar store use a picture of a guitar.

The next thing to consider is your Twitter name. If you’re interested in getting guitar players on Twitter to check out your profile when they see you in their notifications, you want a name that is identifiable for Twitter users. For example, if your guitar store’s name is Rad, a better name on Twitter would be Rad Guitar instead of just Rad since guitar players seeing Guitar in your name are more likely to want to learn more about you.

Lastly, use pinned Tweets to help encourage people to follow you. After they click to see your profile after you show up in their notifications, what do you want to tell them? Why should they follow you? What do you frequently tweet about? Your pinned Tweet allows you to talk about yourself in a little more detail than your bio can. It can also be used to send profile visitors to a landing page to collect emails.

Now THATS a Pin!

Find And Engage With Twitter Users (20 minutes)

As I mentioned earlier, you will be using search.twitter.com to find people having a conversation about your product or niche. But what do you search? How should you search?

The first thing to consider is using operators to filter out the noise. You want to find people who are actually talking about what you’re searching for and are really engaged. You can also use Twitter’s Advanced Search but I like using operators since they allow for more options such as filtering out Tweets with links. Here are some operators I suggest you include in the search bar.

• -filter:links – This will allow you to filter out Tweets with links in them. Typically, Tweets with links are self-promotional tweets and not questions or real conversations about your topic.

• “ “ – If you a searching for a very specific phrase, include it in quotes (“gibson guitar”) so your results only contain Tweets with that exact phrase and not Tweets that just include those words. It’s worth experimenting with your searches and including and not including quotation marks around your phrases.

• ? – If you’re searching for users asking questions, this will only show Tweets that are questions.

• lang:en – Set the language for your results. In my case, I choose English.

• near:”san francisco” – Find Tweets from users around you or any specific location. This is great if you’re a local business. (think food truck looking for local hungry Twitter users)

• -word – If you want to filter out Tweets that contain a specific word or phrase.

So now that we know how to cut through the noise, let’s find people actually talking about what I care about and engage with them.

Let’s again say that I am a guitar store looking to build up my Twitter following. Let’s find people talking about Gibson guitars.

I’m going to search: “gibson guitar” -filter:links

Now, it’s as simple as engaging with those that are the most passionate and excited. Those are the ones that you’re going to get a response from and that are going to check out your profile and possibly even follow you.

Remember, you want to be adding value or having a real conversation. Don’t pitch or try to sell random users on your business. Don’t be the guy at cocktail parties handing out business cards.

Pretty simple, right? If you find Tweets from users that are your target audience but you can’t add value to their conversation, simply Favorite their tweet to get noticed.

Grow By Following Other Users (10 minutes)

Another part of actively and organically growing your Twitter following, is following the users that would be interested in your brand or business.

Look at the users that are “Followers” of your competitors or influencers in your niche.

From here, follow the people that you think would be interested in your business. This is a proven way to grow your following but there are a few key things to keep in mind.

You don’t want to over do it. Follow around 50 people a day, and make sure they are highly targeted follows. Follow active people and not businesses!

You also need to maintain a good ratio of following to followers. 1:1 is okay when you’re just starting out, otherwise you come across as a spammer. Use TwitNerd once a week to see who hasn’t followed you back after a few days.

If someone hasn’t followed you back after 3-4 days, unfollow them to maintain a good ratio. You also need to be careful with your number of unfollows. 20-50 a day is a safe range and you don’t want to exceed that or else Twitter will see you as someone abusing the system.

Your Turn

You will need to schedule and set aside time to do this everyday but a 30 minute, daily routine is all you need to see a significant growth in followers.

Of course, being active on Twitter means creating and curating awesome content that your followers will want to stick around for. So part of making this daily routine work better for you is also maintaining a consistent posting schedule.

If you have any questions or feedback, leave a comment below. I engage and respond with everyone.

https://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/how-to-grow-your-twitter-audience-in-just-30-minutes-a-day/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SocialMediaExplorer+%28Social+Media+Explorer%29

Get on Page 1 of Google in 7 Minutes (or less)

How to Find ClickBank Products That Sell

ClickBank, the web's premier digital product marketplace, is literally teeming with thousands of different products that you can promote as an eager affiliate marketer. Some products are bad, some are average, and a much smaller selection are actually very good.  

Picking the right product on ClickBank can mean the difference between making little or no money, or stuffing your bank account full of cash. This is especially true once you start building up bigger traffic or list numbers — a simple change of product to something that converts even 1% better could result in a lot of extra cash!

So how do you find these fantastic money-making products? I'll walk you through it. I've even created a super easy-to-use template for saving promising options as you go:
 

Get My ClickBank Products Template

With this template, you'll be able to fill in all the ClickBank product details you need, and reference them later. Now just head to the Clickbank Marketplace and we'll get started.

Step 1: Find My Categories

Once you've arrived at the ClickBank Marketplace, the first choice you're faced with is: Which category to look at first? The answer to this question depends on whether you already have your website up and running. I'll talk you through both scenarios:

I Already Have a Website

Since you already have a website up and running, it should be fairly straightforward for you to pick the categories that suit your audience most. 

Ask yourself:

1. What is the focus of my website — my "niche," so to speak?
2. Which categories in the ClickBank Marketplace align with that topic?
   • E.g., If you have a weight-loss website, you might consider these your main categories:
     1. Health & Fitness 
     2. Cooking, Food & Wine
3. Who would be most interested in my website?
   • E.g., Male, female or both? Rough idea of age group? What types of interests?
4. What else would someone of that audience be interested in?
   • E.g., If your audience is predominantly women aged 18-45 with an interest in weight loss, you might also consider...
     1. Self-Help
     2. Spirituality, New Age & Alternative Beliefs
     3. Home & Garden
     4. Parenting & Families
     5. Languages

It really depends on the tone of your website and what you think your audience will be interested in. Make a list of your possible categories, in order of relevance to your audience. You can do this on paper, in a Word document, or in the left-hand column of your spreadsheet.

You'll notice when you click on the arrow to the left of a category, you'll see a drop-down menu of sub-categories. Feel free to add relevant sub-categories to your list next to your main categories. 

I Don't Have a Website

If you don't have a website, never fear! Whether you plan on building one or not, you've got the chance to start fresh, which is exciting stuff.

The main things to consider when choosing your category are:

1. What are you interested in? 
   • It's much easier to target categories that interest you, as you'll already have some knowledge on the topic.
2. Which categories will be the most profitable?
   • You really want to make sure that a category has a strong selection of promising products for you before you go ahead. 
   • Learn more about picking a profitable niche here.

If you can find a category that you like with a lot of promising products, you're on the right track already. :)

Jot down your top picks once you have them, either on paper, in a word document, or in the left-hand column of your spreadsheet. If you are planning to build a website, make sure all the categories you write down suit roughly the same audience.

What Do I Do with My List of Categories?

You'll want to go through the following steps, starting with the first couple of options on your list, and working your way down until you've found a handful of promising products to promote.

For this example, I'm going to look at the "Diets & Weight Loss" sub-category of the larger "Health & Fitness" category.

Step 2: Filter by Gravity

Starting with the main category you'd like to look into, the first thing you want to do is set the "Gravity" filter on ClickBank. This will allow you to see just how much success any given product is already having. 

What is Gravity and Why is it Important?

Gravity is based on the number of affiliates who are currently earning commissions from any given product. If a lot of different affiliates are selling a product, then it will have a high gravity. If very few affiliates are making sales, it will have a low gravity.

You don't want to waste time building promotions around products that might not be easy to sell. Filtering by gravity can help you find products that are already proving themselves, while avoiding products with no proof of success. 

How Do I Set My Gravity Filter?

You should ideally look for products with a gravity of at least 6, so that's the lowest you'll want to set the minimum value on the filter:

Anything below that has very little proof of success. I'm not saying that low-gravity products can't be successful; they could just be new and haven't had a chance to succeed yet. Often though, low gravity really does just mean that the product... well... sucks.

It takes a lot of effort and risk to attempt to find a hidden gem, so best to look at your higher gravity options first.

While high gravity means a high success rate, it can also mean higher competition. This will often not be too much of a problem, but to be safe, consider targeting a few products with high gravity and a few with medium gravity to get the best spread. 

Step 3: Review Product Metrics

Now that you have a list of products with a gravity rating of at least 6, it's time to pick out the most promising products for your list. So what, other than gravity, indicates a promising product?

There are a few other metrics available to you. You can find each of these in two places: the filters box where you can choose to set your preferences, and at the bottom of each product listing. 

So let's run through what these stats are, and what they mean for you.
 

Avg $/Sale: The Average Amount Affiliates Make Per Customer Over Time

This will include the original sale of the product, but it could also include "Rebill" values — people spending more with the vendor after the initial product purchase. 

While this is the average amount other affiliates are making, it's not a guaranteed number for you because:

1. Not everyone will go on to buy more later on, and
2. You can't guarantee that the people you send through will be the ones buying more.
    

Initial $/Sale: The Amount You'll Make Straight Away from a Single Sale

Initial $/sale is a much safer value to look at when considering your profit-per-sale, because it's the amount you'd earn from every sale right then and there. Even if a customer doesn't go on to buy other products or subscriptions later on, you'll still make this amount.

You can set a minimum value for this with the filter on the left, to make sure you're promoting a product that will make you enough money. For example, you might decide that you don't want to make less than $20 per sale, and set the filter minimum there.
 

Avg Rebill Total: The Average Amount People Spend After Their Initial Purchases (if They Buy More)

The avg rebill total is the average amount made from each customer who buys more following the initial purchase. This is fantastic when it happens, because you earn further commissions from the same customer. 

If you're interested in options that rebill successfully, such as subscription-based products, set the minimum Avg Rebill Total to be more than 0. Then, look for options with a good rebill total value, and check that the avg $/sale is higher than the initial $/sale. These are good indications that a product rebills successfully.
 

Avg %/sale: The Percentage of Profits You Get from Each Customer

This is just a way of seeing which vendors are stingy with their commissions, and which ones are practically throwing their products away, keeping only a tiny cut per sale.

It's easier for vendors of digital products to give a higher percentage of the sale price to affiliates because there aren't any costs, unlike physical products. Because of this, it's quite common to see commission percentages around 75% on ClickBank.
 

Have an Example:

To show you how I'd think about it, I'm going to look at the top option on the list in my example search: The Venus Factor.

• The "Grav" value shows a very high gravity at just over 260
  • This makes me think that the product has a high level of success, so I know already that it can sell itself if I get people to the sales page.
  • I also think it'll have high competition, so if I went with this product I might also pick a couple of other products with lower gravities (maybe between 50 and 100) to target for my lower-competition options. 
• The Initial $/sale is $39.59
  • I'd make almost $40 per sale. That's a fine amount!
• Avg %/sale is 90%, and avg %/rebill is 76%
  • This makes me think: "Woah, I'm getting a large slice of the pie!"
  • I make 90% and they make 10% from the initial sale, when I send someone through and they buy.
  • Then I make an average of 76% from other purchases after that. 
  • This vendor is looking to get as many signups as possible, and potentially make more money from rebilling. 
• Avg Rebill Total is $106.61
  • That's a high amount... This is promising.
• The Avg $/sale is $58.5
  • This is quite a bit higher than the initial $/sale, which makes me think that a decent chunk of customers are rebilling successfully. This is also promising. 

Looking at this products metrics, I would take it to the next phase: reviewing the sales page. If it passes that final check point, I'll add it to my final list of profitable products to promote.

Step 4: Check Out The Sales Page

When a product looks good on paper (or in this case: on your computer screen), it's time to see if it checks out. Often good stats indicate that the sales page works, but you need to see it for yourself before you send your hard-earned traffic that way. 

To go through to a product's sales page, click on its name. 

Then you'll want to review the sales page to see whether you think your target audience would buy this product. When I look at the Venus Factor, I can see straight away that there's a sales video. In fact, it's the only thing on the page (until a bit of time time has passed and a large sales page appears underneath, full of awesome sales copy).

Sales videos are often very effective, so if a sales page you look at has one, that's a good sign. If it doesn't have a video, but the content is very compelling, then that's also very promising. Think about the design of the page, the wording of the copy, and any bonuses or features offered, such as discount pricing or product reviews. 

My favorite rule of thumb is this: A great sales page will make you feel good, even if you didn't buy.

The process from here goes like this: 

1. Pick a product with promising metrics from your search on ClickBank.
2. Look at the sales page and decide whether it's good quality, as well as a good fit for your audience.
3. If it passes the test, add it to your list.

The best way to set up your list is in a spreadsheet, like the ClickBank Products Template you can get here. 

That way you have neat columns for saving each product's name, your affiliate link, and any key metrics you might want to compare later on, such as gravity, initial $/sale and avg $/sale.  

Once you've done this a few times, you'll come out with a fantastic list of profitable products to start promoting!

Step 5: Final Considerations

Last, but definitely not least, I have a few final tips to keep in mind, which will make sure the products you choose will be as profitable for you as they can be. These types of things you should make a note about in the "Notes" column of your spreadsheet.

1. Make Sure Your Product Choice is an Exact Match to Your Niche

I can't stress this enough. If you pick a fantastic product, but the type of website you have doesn't attract the right audience, you'll be out of luck! You've really got to think hard with each product you look at: "Could I sell this to my target audience? Does it line up with their interests?"

The Health & Fitness niche offers a few brilliant examples of this with the various fat-loss, muscle-gain, and weight-loss programs around. If you run a weight-loss website then selling a muscle gain product (even if it's an absolutely awesome product) probably won't net you very high conversions.

Why? Because a muscle-gain product is likely to be aimed at men looking to bulk up and get stronger, whereas the weight-loss niche is largely women looking to lose weight. The closer you can match your choice of product to your niche topic, the better.

2. Ask for Review Access

Let's say that you find a product that looks really good in terms of sales page and testimonials. It could all be very slick and professional, but you still want to make sure that the product itself is up to scratch. You can't judge a book by its cover, and you can't judge an e-book by its sales page.

Get in contact with the product owner and ask for review access. Don't be demanding or rude, but instead do your best to convince them that you are a serious affiliate, and you want to make sure your customers are being looked after.

3. Read Honest Reviews of Products

Although you don't actually own the products you're promoting, if you refer people to junk products, they'll harm your reputation (not to mention you'll suffer the cruel fate of ClickBank refund requests).

It pays to seek out honest, unbiased reviews of the products you are planning to promote. Look for discussion boards/forums and blogs that discuss your products in an honest manner. If a product "stinks," don't be afraid to look for an alternative; this could save you a lot of hassle down the line.

So Where to Now?

You've got a few great options going forward. Which one is best for you depends on whether or not you already have a website and/or a plan for your affiliate promotions. Either way, you need a solid strategy going forward; these ClickBank products won't promote themselves!

So let me run through some options:

I Already Have a Website, and a Plan!

Good for you! Go forth, live long, and prosper with the profitable affiliate products you'll find with the steps above. If you ever want extra tips on affiliate marketing, our free lessons and affiliate marketing blog are always there for you.

If you haven't already, I'd look into email marketing. It really is the best strategy: you'll build a list of genuinely interested people to whom you can sell products over and over again, rather than losing people the moment they leave your website. 

I Don't Have a Website, I Don't Know Which Niche to Target, but I Have Time to Do the Research.

There's a fantastic training course that can take you right through from your niche research, to building a website, to setting up your affiliate promotions and finally marketing that website to a profit. 

It's called, "AffiloBlueprint," and if this is the situation you're in, it could be just what you need to make sure you're getting it right the first time around. After all, no one wants to sink masses of time and energy into a project, only to find out they'd set it up wrong right from the foundation. 

You can learn more about AffiloBlueprint here. 

I Don't Have a Website and, Honestly, I Don't Have Time for All This Research. Isn't There a Fast-Track Option?

There is a quick-setup option available to you. All the niche research is done for you, including a selection of profitable affiliate programs. Not only that, but website setup is fast and easy with just a few clicks. You also get an e-book giveaway to encourage people to sign up to your mailing list, and a years' worth of newsletters laced with affiliate promotions designed to make you money on autopilot.

If you're interested in a fast-track low-effort option like this, check out AffiloJetpack here. 

So that concludes this post! I hope you've found it useful. If you have any questions at all on this topic, fire away in the comment section below. 

Have you found ClickBank's Marketplace easy to use? What are the main perks or problems in your eyes? Let me know in the comments below!

http://www.affilorama.com/blog/how-to-find-clickbank-products-that-sell

The 3 Best Platforms For Building Your Brand Through Paid Social

For those new to the world of social media management, paying to promote a post, tweet or business page is often viewed as some sort of unethical practice from the darkest of digital marketing catacombs. The reality of the situation, however, couldn’t be more different from what’s being perceived.

Even those who specialize in social media mastery have struggled to fully jump onboard with the idea of paid social as a promotional tactic. So undervalued and underinvested is the area that, reportedly, funds devoted to boosted social lag behind customer attention by about 50 percent. Astoundingly, that translates to nearly $5 billion.

Truthfully, if your brand is in need of a sizable advantage to compete with a host of digital rivals, paid social is just the marketing frontier that you’ve been hoping to discover. Most impressive is the fact that, by simply dedicating a few extra dollars towards social endeavors, measurable results—the kind that actually have a way of nabbing an audience’s attention—are guaranteed.

Produced by Fusion 360, the following infographic extract presents a concrete, real-life example as to what can come about through paid social:

As demonstrated by Space Walk, paid social does more than just make the occasional “marketing strategist” cringe. Positively, it delivers on numerous tangible fronts: 

• User engagement
• Audience identification
• Search engine rapport
• Brand exposure
• Target analysis, and most importantly
• A healthy ROI

Now, the real question—which of the Internet’s plethora of social channels is most important for your brand’s paid social? Well, in order to maintain a high level of widespread efficiency, it’s never a bad idea to focus on social media’s “Big Three.”

1. Facebook – Internet’s Finest Social Coverall

Ever since it’s emergence onto the social networking scene in 2004, Facebook has successfully managed to work its way into the lives of over 1.35 billion people. Yeah, so just in case you’re one of those people who’s into shocking statistics, that’s barely under China’s national population total.

Seeing as how Facebook is suitable for both B2B and B2C marketing needs, it’s no wonder that upwards of $11.4 billion of annual ad revenue is generated through the booming social outlet. With a minimum product- or service-pushing budget of just a dollar a day, businesses can both tackle and analyze ad objectives like audience growth, app installation and video views at an extremely affordable price. 

If the aforementioned sounds like something that your money-making entity could benefit from, consider promoting a Facebook ad to help build up a hefty bulk of likes. While purchased ads might provide the solution that you’re looking for, by using Sponsored Stories, it’s possible that a promoted webpage or blog post has more opportunity to drive traffic to your website and, in turn, develop more interest in your brand. 

As a final word of caution, when promoting content of any type—be it an advertisement or recently published article—make certain to use captivating adjectives, enticing verbs and numbers to attract clicks. Note: this is not an invitation to spread the digital plague that is “clickbait.”

Summary of brands that should consider paid social through Facebook:

• B2B and B2C marketers
• Need both mobile and desktop interfaces for advertising
• Target specific demographics, interests and behaviors
• Interested in audience growth, web traffic and special offer/event promotion
• Minimum cost per click: $0.01
• Minimum daily budget: $1.00

2. Twitter – Targeting At Its Finest

On Twitter, users are limited to only 140-character messages, but that has done little to keep people from being glued to their mobile devices throughout the course of any given day. Founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, Twitter—in recent years—has managed to rival Facebook as social’s biggest player. 

While the current crown still belongs to Facebook, Twitter has successfully amassed a remarkable 284 million active monthly users who generate upwards of 350,000 tweets per minute. Though doing little in the ways of B2B communication, there’s no better platform from which social specialists can join an industry-specific conversation with potential consumers than Twitter. Interactions are quick and timely, seeing as how the average user spends a total of only 17 minutes a day on Twitter. 

With that in mind, however, if your company’s market research has proven that mobile usership is a mainstay of client connectivity, Twitter’s pool of fans—86 percent of them, to be exact—prefer to use the social outlet on their respective smartphones than through a computer. 

For companies interested in focusing more on Twitter, as far as paid tweets are concerned, followers, keywords, clear-cut demographics and distinct interests can be targeted. All this for a minimum payment of one cent per click or—much like Facebook—a dollar a day.

Twitter, like most social outlets, offers a variety of ad options for businesses to promote their content. Of these options, the most popular is by far that of Promoted Tweets. Promoted Tweets allows brands and marketing experts to select their most popular tweets and direct them at precise audiences, interests or keywords. Additionally, tweets can be purchased through programs like JustRetweet or PayWithATweet.

Summary of brands that should consider paid social through Twitter:

• B2B marketers
• Prefer mobile interfaces for advertising
• Target followers, keywords, demographics, interests and behaviors
• Interested in audience growth, engagement and web traffic
• Minimum cost per click: $0.01
• Minimum daily budget: $1.00

3. LinkedIn – Built For B2B Marketing

Lastly, rounding out the list of the three biggest social powerhouses is LinkedIn. Well-known by most, LinkedIn is a business-oriented social site which is devoted entirely to professional networking. What was once considered an online billboard for résumés has quickly transformed into a place where industry influencers can come together to share useful knowledge, helpful tips and breaking news. 

Realistically, a company—regardless of size—without a LinkedIn business profile is a company that’s yet to have taken the digital side of it’s marketing strategy seriously.

In only 12 years’ time, LinkedIn has been able to attract an active monthly membership base of over 187 million people. Unlike its greatest rivals, LinkedIn is especially unique in that it’s exclusively geared towards B2B marketing. Whereas Facebook and Twitter have both learned to make cellular interaction a pillar of accessibility, LinkedIn has yet to have mastered the mobile realm with 74 percent of professionals preferring to access the site via a desktop computer at work or at home. 

For companies looking to improve social engagement, video views, driven web traffic and business leads, LinkedIn is difficult to compete with. Even more impressive, while Facebook and Twitter allow for finite targeting to take place, LinkedIn makes finding professional game changers even easier. Companies, schools, degrees, job titles/fields and skill sets can all be pinpointed with paid social efforts. 

Furthermore, with an average of 6,944 endorsements taking place with each passing minute, the odds of your paid post being glanced over by the perfect set of eyes are nothing short of favorable.

In order to gain ground on Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn has put a great deal of emphasis on bolstering the connections that people can make through their own feeds. LinkedIn does offer traditional paid ad options that allow for advertisements to appear on the sidebar of a user’s page, but using Sponsored Updates is widely considered a more advantageous method for getting your brand’s content seen by the right people. 

Perhaps the biggest of LinkedIn’s paid post benefits comes from the massive amount of information that’s made readily available for brand advertisers to use: industry, job title, company size, current location, etc. The estimated cost per click on Sponsored Updates is roughly between one and two dollars. Though costing slightly more, if clicks turn into future subscribers and customers, the monetary sacrifice will be well worth it.

Summary of brands that should consider paid social through LinkedIn:

• B2B marketers
• Prefer desktop interfaces for advertising
• Target professional, academic and geographic factors
• Interested in engagement, video views, web traffic and potential leads
• Minimum cost per click: $2.00
• Minimum daily budget: $10.00

Needless to say, in the digital age of communication, having a robust social media game plan is of the utmost importance. With innumerable voices vying for the attention of possible consumers, paid social can no longer be considered a shady practice; rather, a means to get the proverbial social ball rolling.

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