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Organic vs. Paid Social Media: How to Use Social Media in 2017

Social media marketing is no longer about promoting your brand’s content and connecting with your consumers; it has matured into an established marketing channel for remarketing, customer acquisition and retention. In the recent years, the volume of content on social platforms has exploded, causing the impact of the message to become diluted.

How can your brand’s message break through the clutter and resonate with your target audience?
Is organic social media marketing dead?
Or is paid social just an easy way for major social media platforms to make money?

What is Organic Social Media?
Organic social media is when you use the network’s free tools in order to build a community, share posts, drive traffic to your website and interact with your customers/followers.

What is Paid Social?
As opposed to using your free Facebook or LinkedIn page, Twitter or Instagram account, paid social media is utilizing sponsored content or advertising to boost your content, website, store, promotion, etc. to reach a larger amount of people. Simply put, you are leveraging the platform to help achieve your pre-determined goal by putting money behind your posts. With paid social media, you can target a specific audience using a range of demographic tools to increase your social media reach or the number of people who are exposed to your content. With paid social media, you can get your messages seen by your customers or potential customers at the right time.

Who Should Be Using Paid Social Media?

Thinking back just a few years, the idea of paying to advertise on social networks seemed foolish and even desperate to some. Why spend money when social media is free?! But over the last couple years, we’ve witnessed a dramatic shift in the social media landscape, and the major social platforms are making it pretty clear that social media marketing is no longer free.
As social networks continued to shift into paid platforms, getting your brand’s messages seen by the right audience would be next to impossible without paid social, not only because of the endless amount of content out there, but also due to algorithm changes from the major social networks, which favor paid social over organic. This in turns cause brands to have to pay to play.

According to a white paper released by Sprinklr:
“The average user is potentially exposed to 1,500 stories every time they log onto Facebook. Super social users are exposed to 15,000 stories. All of these stories compete against one another for users’ newsfeeds and attention spans. Rather than exposing users to every update, Facebook’s new algorithm filters newsfeeds using 100,000 different factors to decide which posts will get prime real estate on timelines and which ones will fade into the background.”

But there’s good news! Paid social advertising is one of the most undervalued and underinvested platforms. In fact, Sprinklr reports that the spend on paid social is behind the user’s attention by 50%, or $5 billion- —making it prime untapped real estate for grabbing attention and driving conversions.

The Good News About Paid Social Media Marketing For Brands- Boomtown Internet Group

Where Should Paid Social Fit into Your Marketing Mix?

You run paid search ads, so you don’t need to invest in paid social as well, right? Wrong!
Search and social are completely different platforms, which your consumer interacts with on completely different levels. It’s not a question of which should you investing in, amajority of company, with the expectation of a few, should be investing in both.
Paid search is intent-based and can target keywords closers to the bottom of the sales funnel. However, anyone one cause type in a keyword. With social ads, marketers target on a personal level by demographics, interests, hobbies, professions, etc. and typically performs at the middle to the top of the sales funnel. In additions, the analytics from paid social traffic provide a deeper insight into your target audience, and how the engage with your social media content.

Which Social Media Platform Is Right For Your Business?- Boomtown Internet Group

However, paid social media marketing isn’t about staying up with the latest and greatest. It’s about utilizing the right channels for your brands and then surging full force ahead. For help determining what social media platforms are right for your business, check out Lindsey’s recent blog post.

 

Want to get started with paid social media marketing for your brand? Contact us today!