Social media is like survival of the fittest — brands that don’t adapt risk falling behind. Social networking platforms are multi-pronged, iterative, and have become integrated into almost every feature of our daily lives. What may have been a successful outreach campaign last year has already become stale, a reflection that the most “current” practices in the social media jungle are changing every day. Corporate brands, emerging businesses and news agencies source the latest trends in brand engagement and inbound marketing on the market. As the “new” rules shift with technology’s rapidly evolving pace, brands must conform their messaging, outreach and awareness toward social media’s most current platforms and advertising opportunities.
Once relegated to banner ads easily ignored on the side of the screen, advertising has become a seamless part of the social experience, wedging itself directly between Facebook newsfeeds and status updates. Any company with a few dollars to spare can “boost” their content on Facebook to reach targeted users by selecting categories and topics they may be interested in that reflect the brand’s messaging. Brands are blurring the line between organic and paid content, with sponsored posts adopting the characteristics of organic content to great effect —but not without cost.
The new reality
According to a recent study by Social@Ogilvy, the consumer reach of strictly organic brand content has declined to 6 percent. For larger brands, that number falls to 2 percent. It’s expected that brands will soon be facing a negligible reach for organic content, meaning that years of efforts to earn “Likes” and “Followers” won’t mean much without help.
Driving this trend, today’s average consumer is exposed to more than 3,000 marketing messages per day; there is simply too much competition for every message to achieve visibility. Those who want to succeed must adopt strategies that push their content ahead of the pack.
The modern advertisement
Ads masquerading as organic content have been around for years — a practice pioneered by search engines that placed paid-for links right at the top of results.
Today’s advertisers are able to identify target audiences by a number of factors: location, interests, education, age and more. Algorithms then select ads that are likely to appeal to a consumer’s personal taste — a far more effective strategy than the blanket advertising of the past. Social platforms take this concept a step further, integrating ads into feeds previously reserved for organic-only content.
A few highlights
- Twitter’s “Promoted Tweets” fit seamlessly into the organic construct of the social experience and don’t get buried in a fast-moving content stream. Users can also be provided “suggestions” of whom to follow or hashtags to use based on interest.
- Facebook and LinkedIn encourage use of Newsfeed ads, which boosts engagement by using the names of a consumer’s friends as endorsements.
- New ad units at Instagram and Pinterest are designed to blend into the natural landscape of the user’s social feed.
The result is that casual consumers — particularly those on mobile devices — are often unable to distinguish between paid and unpaid content, leading to significantly higher brand engagement.
The cost
Fortunately, a brand doesn’t need to be a Fortune 500 company to purchase social advertising. Advertisers are able to customize their budgets, through monitoring an ad’s performance to see how well it engages consumers. They can then redirect or restructure funds if necessary. Settings also allow advertisers to control daily spend, total spend and length of time, to ensure ads don’t exceed budget.
So, consider this the memo
This trend is only going to grow in 2014.
Facebook has conceded that Page Likes are now more important for driving advertising than organic content, and the company has even gone so far as to suppress organic content to effectively force brands to advertise if they want to be seen. Fortunately, advertising could be a way to save organic content, at least in the short term.
If users engage with a paid post, they will start to see that brand’s organic posts in their newsfeed for approximately two to three months. However, if they don’t engage with those organic posts, then impressions will decline.
It is imperative to continue creating interesting and engaging organic brand content, but it can’t be relied upon to drive your message. Advertising has become an inescapable reality for any business that wants to grow via social media. In the digital era, the right combination of advertising and organic content increases reach and brand engagement. Those willing to pay to play now have a distinct advantage.
