Being Funnelled Into Paid Social Media Isn't Such a Bad Thing

If you want to achieve any marketing aim then biddable is a great way to boost our activity however, biddable is difficult to get right. If you want to get some solid advice on how to do it right, then read our blog on "Biddable media can accelerate any inbound marketing campaign"

Facebook's always in the news, whether good or bad. They released data the other week to say they had surpassed 3 million advertisers on the platform. On the other side of the (literal) coin, though, it was revealed that despite earning over $1 billion in sales the company only paid £4,327 in corporation tax over the course of 2014.

When something happens with Facebook, everybody hears about it - it's one of the perks of being one of the biggest companies in the world. However, that's now not as true as it once was for the company that uses Facebook to reach out to its audience to get its message out there. Facebook has been tweaking its algorithm to try and herd page owners and brands into its Power Editor and paid social media, encouraging them to spend more money to reach a wider audience.

Facebook's constantly tweaking its algorithm of course; recently an update has been made to put live videos at the top of people's news feeds to help it compete with Periscope, while rumour has it changes to Messenger to open it up to publishers in April.

This latest tweak though is another in a long line of adjustments that are hitting brands where it's most important, right in the wallet. Page owners may have noticed more prominent calls to action when they go to make a post including the 'Boost Post' option. Not just to reach a new audience but to reach out to people that have actually taken the time to organically like your page.

Face the Facts

It's not by accident. Back in 2012 Facebook itself estimated that pages organically reached about 16 per cent of their fans, on average. Close to four years on from that post and the number has dropped significantly to around 2-3 per cent of people that actually like a page.

And there's a lot of ire around that figure, especially for those that have spent years painstakingly spent years building up their Facebook pages through word of mouth and have organically achieved like numbers entering the thousands. Now those people can't engage fully with their audience because Facebook, greedily, wants more money they'll argue.

Except we're not sure that a statement like that's entirely fair. We understand the argument, yes, and think it would be wonderful if people could get their message to their audience totally free of charge. Only, that's not being fair on Facebook and the incredibly deep targeting tools it can offer to all kinds of businesses looking to grow their audience.

Remember the other week when we said an entire publishing industry had all but collapsed because three of its major sources of revenue had effectively dried up? Facebook - if used properly - is an enormous leap forward in an advertising sense and better than anything previously seen before in the publishing industry. You get what you pay for, you know...

The Tweet Life

That's not us saying that everyone should be paying for Facebook, it's still an incredibly effective free way to share information and get creative content out there. We just find it interesting how, the more time that passes, the more networks like Facebook are pushing advertisers toward their paid social media models.

Because it's not just Facebook that's doing it. Facebook also owns Instagram, and recent research shows that the same situation is arising on the photo-sharing network. But you'll also find it happening on Twitter - a company that's having to constantly cover itself from heavy fire because of the way that a portion of its users use it to launch offensive, abusive attacks against anyone and everyone.

But there has been a glimmer of light for the company, especially since it's always accused of letting down investors because of poor user uptake and flat quarterly results. The advertising side of Twitter is starting to take hold and bring some money in; again Twitter's changing its algorithm in a similar way to Facebook so advertisers are more willing to use their paid software to appear in front of their target audience.

And why shouldn't they? Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are businesses too and have to earn money, its employees have mouths to feed... We'd also like to point out that, especially in an inbound sense, if you focus all of your efforts on one area such as social and don't make the most of other channels such as email and content creation, then a problem like budgeting to reach more people through paid social media is only going to be amplified tenfold.

Budgeting for paid social media

Is it really a problem, too? Apparently not, as Facebook has announced that it has seen a big spike in the amount of small businesses paying to reach out to its target audience, with an interesting case study involving Cupcakin' Bake Shop in California featured on CBS News. It's the sheer amount of small advertisers paying a few pound here and there that are helping Facebook rake it in, with small businesses the vast majority of paid social media advertisers.

Something that Twitter is working hard to match with its Funnel Analysis software, to get as much information as possible to learn more about how users use and engage with its platform to better refine it and deliver a more accurate paid service for advertisers. The majority of social networks (especially the most used ones) offer paid services somehow to reach an audience.

Because no matter how good social targeting software becomes, there's still a lot of work that needs to go into a campaign. Different people of different ages and genders use different social networks at different hours of the day; it's still not an exact science, even if online advertising technology is better than it has been before.

A lot of planning, creative content and the right calls to action can make for a good free social media campaign, while introducing paid targeting elements can turn it into a great one.

In our opinion we're living in an age where businesses looking for quick, consistent growth would be foolish not to at least consider a paid social media campaign. It's the best way to immediately speak to new and existing customers, and the right strategy will keep them coming back to your business regardless of what you do on Facebook and Twitter.

If you want to achieve any marketing aim then biddable is a great way to boost our activity however, biddable is difficult to get right. If you want to get some solid advice on how to do it right, then read our blog on "Biddable media can accelerate any inbound marketing campaign"