Different Types of online advertising

@Belted - Personally, I think that social media as a marketing tool has too much hype. People don't use social media to be sold things, they do it to interact with their friends.

So, the only way to use it effectively is to be a friend. Don't just send out advertising, give them real value and interaction. Competitions can help as well, I think. Just think about what you like to do when you're on your own Facebook page and which companies you like to keep track of and why, and go from there.

I would also be really interested to hear from successful social media advertisers since I think, despite the hype about this form of free online advertising, they are actually few and far between.

@chivebasil - There are definitely a lot of advertising agencies that specialize in dealing with online advertising, but I would be very cautious about using one. It's a difficult thing to track and the only real way to know if online advertising services are genuine is to research their customers and see if they are satisfied.

If you are considering signing up with a company, ask to be put in contact with some of their customers first, so you can see first hand what they do. It's all too easy for anyone to start this kind of company and they may not have the expertise you need.

Some online advertising rates are really reasonable. I recently started running some cost per impression ads for my art shop, which is located within a larger art website that plays host to many other shops, and I only paid about $5 for a week of advertising.

Even though I didn't see any sales as a result, I was able to view my shop's statistics, and I saw that my page views had increased dramatically during...