It's no secret that big companies and start-ups alike have been using Facebook's advertising platform to enhance their online campaigns. Twitter is set to follow soon with promoted tweets inserted on users' timestreams, but do users really pay attention to social ads? If yes, then how does a brand benefit more from paid social instead of using organic social?
There hasn't been a standard model to measure ROI from social media outreach. The issue has been how to gauge a conversion scale from some aspects such as user engagement, number of likes and retweets, and number of fans or followers. Well, are there any more to add if new features or functions will be added by Facebook or Twitter?
Recent findings have been more than confusing and suggest that Facebook marketing is slowly climbing up the mountain but is not really a fad that marketers tend to be part of. Hitwise reports that 1 Facebook user/fan is apparently equal to 20 additional visits to a business' website within a year. Another study, from PageLever, shows that the reach of a Facebook fan page is not as broad as marketers think: The data shows an average of 7.49% of fans view posts on a daily basis. Some Internet marketers we know are getting tired of figures. Besides, does it matter if these figures are real or feasible when a social media ROI scale hasn't been firmly established?
I'd like raise a two issues, here they are:
- Percentage of Actual Engagement vs. People Viewing Paid Social Ads
- Enhanced Ads Through Paid Social vs. User Engagement/Community Management
Paid social might work like nitro, but cars don't run on nitro alone, they need gas, just like any social media campaign will run on organic social gas.