When you first started advertising your business online, you likely simply bought some banner ads and that was all there was to it.  Today, however, advertisers need to draw their audiences in so they can engage with the overall brand.  This can be done in a number of different ways, but social media is one of the most popular and efficient.  Ads that run on news feeds are effective because they are in line with the stream of other items.  When customers are reading their news feeds, they are more likely to read the ads as just part of the news.  Those ads will then help your brand accentuate itself among the competition.

When banner ads first came out, they got a lot of attention and a lot of people clicked through to the websites they advertised.  However, the effectiveness of these ads since then has gone through a downward spiral and businesses now have to get a little more creative when they advertise online.  In the future, a good mix will likely come onto the scene and social media is a big portion of that mix.

Social Media can really help with the storytelling aspect of a brand.  When a business has a blog, social media pages, and other sites for customers to enjoy, they have a story on the internet that fans can follow.  That means these businesses will have to create and distribute a good bit of content on a regular basis.  The content will need to be engaging and not really in ad form.  This type of content can do way more than a regular banner ad because it endears customers to the brand and gains their trust and loyalty.  Advertisers now need to create content and a platform in order to gain access to customers in the social media world.

Social media also offers businesses a whole new way to target certain demographics with the right campaigns that are designed for certain audiences.  In addition to standard ads, businesses can buy social ads that will show up in new feeds of certain people who fit certain qualifications.  Brands want to be where their consumers are and consumers are often on social media sites.  Because of that, brands now have access to the right type of consumer in a very easy manner.

One challenge of advertising through social media is maintaining the same voice across many different sites and platforms.  All of those platforms also have to be current.  The campaigns that run on social media sites can be very complicated and they all have to have interesting content on a regular basis.  In order to be effective with social media advertising, businesses need to reach the right audiences with the right messages.  This means understanding who a business wants to read and knowing what they want to hear.