The recent Comscore report finally revealed that there's more to social advertising other than ad targeting and sponsored stories. There's a reason why the third biggest advertiser in the US, General Motors, withdrew its $10 million worth of ad budget from Facebook - Facebook ads are mere interruptions like ordinary ads. With this in mind, advertisers and marketers are treating social ads like traditional media where every click should yield a conversion rate or a measurable ROI. Social media pundits know that measuring Social ROI is still the holy grail of Social Advertising. But it seems a Like or Share is more valuable than ad clicks, this is what the Comscore report emphasized about quantifying paid and earned effects of social marketing campaigns.
Here are 3 crucial points in Comscore's report:
1.) Fans Turn Friends Into Fans
It's been a requisite for years that brands and businesses should establish their Facebook pages starting with accumulating tons of fans. Well, this isn't the case anymore, increasing fans doesn't mean you're increasing user engagement as well. The phase where a brand wants to have 100k fans on its page is already passe. Today, fans sharing a brand's content increases online awareness, this results to a fan turning a friend, relative, or random contact into a fan as well. This is how engagement coupled with user-generated content overwhelms the effectivity of paid social ads. Brands should also keep in mind that acquiring a million of fans isn't the be all and end all to achieve Social ROI, it's only the start of building a firm social media presence.
2.) User Engagement Produces User-Generated Content
A brand's Facebook page is a like a sponge. User-generated content is the lifeforce of any brand's page. Without UGC, a brand's Facebook page isn't functioning like a sponge, it should absorb as much UGC it can in order to be shared on their page. The fact that a brand's page is flowing with user-generated content is a sign that a brand is interacting well with customers. For brands, a fan page used to be a novelty, something that you should have because every brand is on Facebook. Today, a brand's Facebook page is a social monitoring center and a collaborative hub rolled into one. Social CRM is now all about customer-company collaboration aside from customer service.
3.) Click-Through Rates Don't Matter in Brand Amplification
The report said the focus on click-through rates of display ads and brand pages on Facebook downplays the impact that has on a user's friends and followers. The Comscore report says, "The idea behind amplification is that Fans who are reached with brand messages can also serve as a conduit for brand exposure to Friends within their respective social networks. Because the average Facebook Fan has hundreds of Friends, each person has the ability to potentially reach dozens of Friends with earned impressions through their engagement with brand messages