Social media started its journey as an organic marketing tool to help individuals and businesses to build network and find engaging content. Over a few years, paid or sponsored content has become an indispensable part of most of social media marketing strategies, and businesses are spending good amount of money to build audiences here.

When we talk about paid social media marketing, Facebook ads are the first that hit our mind. It is the most popular social network, hence could be an ideal place to promote products and Get traffic. Twitter also offers a variety of paid marketing options to get engagement. You need to buy Twitter tweets and followers to build credibility and fascinate potential customers.StumbleUpon could be the biggest source of traffic for you in case you want to promote your blogs, and generate both paid and organic traffic.

LinkedIn Advertising has been a part of paid social media marketing, but it is more classified than social. It contributes in promoting any business online, in its own way for good reason.

Following are three prominent points on which LinkedIn is different from rest paid social media marketing platforms:

#It’s Not Really Paid Social

Technically, LinkedIn falls under social media category, but it is very distinct from consumer-facing social media sites. The site offers two types of ad unites- first one is right-rail text ads, and another one is- sponsored updates.

The right-rail text ads absolutely lack social elements, whereas sponsored updates are more socially-focused.  However, all sociality will be limited to your LinkedIn Company page. Advertisers can ‘like, comment or share your sponsored update.

In Nutshell, you will get limited chance to interact with your audience, because:

• You simply have to delete the comments you don’t want to appear on an update. No moderation.
• Any potential customer who has asked any questions is not notified when you respond back to them.

# There Is no Real Display Ads

You will be surprised when you are posting display ads on LinkedIn, and you hear given below questions:

• Does Anyone Even Tap on Banner Ads?
• Do you enjoy polluting the web?
• Do you have a soul?

Although, this feature is helpful for display marketers as it enables them to do more sophisticated targeting and segmentation, but you have to observe behavior before you classify any user as a part of your audience. It is very reactive, so be careful.

# A Justifiable Hybrid

According to consultant Hutch Cartpenter research, over 72% of the Fortune 1000 are B2B organizations. It is still very difficult to reach them as there are very less places where you find aggregated business data in a comprehensive way.

LinkedIn, undoubtedly appears to have the best business data, and hence, crowned as the best ‘B2B advertising player’.

Is LinkedIn really worth our efforts?

Well, LinkedIn has its own learning curve, but it is really worth learning. Here is why it is worth promoting your business on this social media site:

# Visitors TO Linkedinis Business Minded

People visit LinkedIn not to kill time, but to promote business. You may get traffic from a single domain, but you are getting you are getting their attention at  the very best time. LinkedIn has recently acquired Bizo, the B2B powerhouse ad network. Although, plans are not revealed yet, but you will definitely be able to target specific business professionals soon.

# Unlimited Traffic

The social media site receives huge volume of traffic. Even with display-level CTRs, it will take a fortune to reach the site traffic fully.

# More Qualified Traffic

 When it comes to paid social searches, there are very limited ways to qualify traffic, but with LinkedIn, you can as your search will be based on business characteristics. So, you will be able to show your ads to only those who absolutely fit your target audience.

Bottom Line

Linked is certainly a different beast in the Pay-Per-Click Advertising Industry. If your marketing is B2B-focused, then there is no better platform then this to reach your target audience.

You can choose not to invest in your social media marketing, but remember one thing, most organic social media posts are not directly selling. Investing in paid marketing not only help you grab attention for your product, but also help you to stand out the cluttered social media newsfeed, which indeed helps in branding.  Among all social media sites, LinkedIn has emerged as a strong source for B2B marketing, and business that are targeting other business as a customer could derive substantial results through LinkedIn marketing.