<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Social-Media-Community-300x153.jpg" alt="Social Media Community" width="300" height="153" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-8993" />Once you’ve decided to start using social media for your website’s marketing, you may have noticed you’re gaining increased exposure and have been able to acquire more customers. In some cases, it’s not as simple as advertising on Facebook and watching your ad bring in the sales; sometimes you have to pay for posts and in other times you can use social media marketing for free. 

By learning the difference between paid and organic social media marketing, adding in pictures and hashtags, and knowing the right time to market, you can become more successful on social media marketing. Here is a look at these tips and more. 

<h2>Should I pay for marketing or go with the free options?</h2>

Actually you should do both. The most successful companies pay for social media marketing and incorporate organic marketing, meaning they create high-quality content without paying to promote it. With organic marketing there is no cost, so your posts shouldn’t be sales-based but rather enjoyable, interesting, relevant and engaging. Its harder work and time consuming but it will pay off. 

You’ll want to look into paid and sponsored social media marketing too because paying a social network will allow you to target a specific demographic. When you’re trying to reach a certain audience and be posted in the most likely to be seen spot, you’ll want to pay for a campaign to “boost” your post on social media sites like Facebook. Paid advertisement work too and they will show up on feeds of those most likely to want your product or service. 

<h2>Are you relevant?</h2>

<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Social-Marketing.jpg" alt="Social Marketing" width="254" height="180" class="alignright size-full wp-image-8992" />Sometimes you are simply not finding success because your timing is off. You can have free social marketing by offering relevant and timely content. Perhaps you want to write about a great new sunblock to try at the pool but summer is over and the weather is cooling off. Most people won’t want to read about this until the spring when they are gearing up for pool season again. 

<h2>Are you incorporating visuals?</h2>

With the perfect content, timing and relevancy, perhaps you simple forgot to add a great image or video to accompany the post. Pictures, animated GIFs and videos give ads a huge boost in appeal. You need to give your ads a personality when they are online and when you do so, you increase the odds that it will be shared. 

<h2>Don’t forget to hashtag</h2>

<img src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Hashtag.jpg" alt="Hashtag" width="240" height="180" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-8991" />Lastly, make sure you are adding hashtags. It’s a way to track online so if you can come up with a great one, you can see if a social media campaign is seeing success. Find out if people are talking about your product or service by tracking your specific hashtag. If you can find something that excites other people, like the Coca-Cola campaign that replaced their logo with popular names to get people buying their name on a Coke, then you can really have an effect with hashtags. 

If you use these tips, you’ll see more success from social media marketing. 
