Social Media Advertising: Is Paid Social Media Amplification Worth it for Your Business?

The old mantra in online marketing is that ‘social media is free’. Sure, it’s $0 to sign up for a Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook account for your business and it’s easy to publish links or original content out via your earned properties.

Getting your message into the streams, timelines, and inboxes of those who matter to your business, however, isn’t easy. Why? Social marketers today face steep competition on social networks. Because of ever-evolving business models that favor sponsored content, it’s harder than ever to get your message out organically.

But fear not, dear marketer, paid amplification can help you restore reach. Using social platforms to boost content with advanced-based targeting helps you to attract attention to the content you post, making it possible for you to secure new fans, shares, and ultimately sales for your business.

Social is where attention spans are dedicated

There are endless options for marketers to distribute knowledge about products and services, like TV, print, and display advertising. But let’s take a look at social with options, such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and more.

Social networks, whether on desktop or mobile, offer the ability to capture potential customers of all ages, where their attention is dedicated to the task at hand. And paying to get your social ad units into the right hands is an investment that’s well worth it.

Target and reporting like no other advertising medium

With advertising and knowing who your customer is, it’s all about touch points. Social platforms offer the richest touch points because of the sheer volume of personal information they have about you, their users.

On Twitter and/or Facebook for example, you can target audiences via:

• Location
• Demographics
• Political Affiliations
• Life Events
• Keywords
• Connections and Followers
• Event Targeting
• Mobile Platforms of Choice

For example, if you wanted to target newly engaged women located in the Southeast US, you could do it easily with social targeting. Following that, you could then measure the effectiveness of click-throughs, engagement rates, and cost per conversions.

Paid enables quicker experimentation

With typical social messaging experimentation, you can try A/B testing on factors such as image styles, word choices and calls to action. Typically you have to post the message and then wait days or weeks for a dataset to become large enough in order to draw conclusions from. However, with paid social, you can test all the above along with audiences, to see what type of content works on different audience segments.

Also, because paid amplification presents the content to the audience more quickly, the experimentation (and amazing results!) are more efficiently realized. Eventually, when you achieve the results you desire, you can boost the spend on those content pieces for even greater return.

Paid exposes an otherwise unseen audience

When social posts are delivered with the right message – and targeted at the right audience using the methods and touch points mentioned above – that’s where the engagement magic happens. The beautify of paid, however, is its ability to surface new audiences that would have otherwise not seen your content.

And if your content is relevant to that audience, there’s a high chance they’ll share it, leading to higher click-through rates and greater visibility into their personal networks.

Is Paid Social Media Amplification Worth it for Your Business?

if “content marketing” was the promotional trend of 2014, paid social amplification is all the rage in 2015. But, as with any practice-turned-buzzword, there are a lot of myths and misconceptions around what exactly “social amplification” is. Is it just a fancy way of saying “paid advertising on social media”, or something more?

Let’s take a closer look and discover what, exactly, paid social amplification is and whether or not it’s worth leveraging in your business, as well as a few examples of how it can be used creatively.

What Is Paid Social Amplification?

First, it’s a good idea to talk about what paid social amplification isn’t. For example – it’s not just distributing your ad across social networks. It’s also not about your brand promoting your message across your own channels. The amplification part truly happens when others pick up on and spread your message – like ripples in a pond. Your amplification here relies entirely on other people and their networks to spread your influence.

Social Networks are still one of the best ways to share content

Social amplification, at its core, relies on word of mouth from key influencers in your industry or niche. However, these influencers are often overwhelmed by pitches and simply don’t have the time or desire to be everybody’s megaphone. When that happens, it may be time to reach into your wallet and leverage paid amplification. Here’s how to do it, along with some of the results that companies are getting.

Getting Your Social Message Amplified

You may be familiar with or even use some of these social promotion methods – but resist the temptation to simply “gloss over” these techniques simply because they look familiar. There’s a lot of gold nugget tactics here if you dig a little deeper.

Facebook Promoted Posts and Sponsored Stories

Estately, a real estate search engine, wanted to promote its 37 Things You Should Know Before Moving to Seattle post. Using Facebook Promoted Posts, the focus was more narrowly targeted to sports fans, who would in turn hopefully share it with their fellow Seahawks fans.

According to Estately CEO Galen Ward, the company spent just under $100 and at the time of the post, got 8,500 likes and tens of thousands of visitors. Ward estimates that the post got in front of over 30,000 people. Currently, the article is sitting at 53,000 likes.

Estately is currently experimenting with smaller $10 and $20 social amplification spots for its better performing posts to determine if it can recreate this kind of buzz for other stories.

Promoted Trends on Twitter

Promoted trends appear in the Trends sidebar of Twitter and for many companies, can be a way to create greater brand awareness and conversations around their industry. Case in point – the Washington Post could’ve bought any promoted hashtag – like #washingtonpost, but instead they went a step further and bought #Election at a time when the U.S. House and Senate majority elections were in full swing.

Choosing a broader hashtag helped the Washington Post become an aggregate source for election news

As a result, anyone searching for election news would see the promoted tweet and likely click it for an aggregate collection of election details.

Selling with Stories on Instagram

Sites promoting on Instagram have, until recently, mostly used the service as a giant billboard to showcase ads as users scroll by. For businesses using sponsored posts on Instagram, a new type of ad – the carousel, has arrived to put their story in the hands of more visitors.

An example of the Instagram carousel ad format

Unlike self serve ad platforms like Facebook, Instagram is very specific about how advertisers work with its platform. From sponsored images to video, Instagram likes to make sure that advertisers who elect to work with them are thoroughly vetted and their creatives accurately controlled. Instagram’s director of marketing, Jim Squires, often tells brands to create images that “capture a lifestyle, not just a product”. So far, advertisers from Taco Bell to Hollister, have come on board.

Still, Instagram’s selectivity can be seen as either a boon for those looking to reach high-end consumers, or a muzzle on brands, which may not fit the profile demographic. Currently, there are only about 15 approved brands advertising on Instagram. But if you think this exclusive club isn’t worth your time – think again. Analysts predict that Instagram will have more than 100 million users by 2018. Expect more and more opportunities for advertisers to be welcomed aboard as Instagram finds its niche in the display ad space.

Which Network Do I Focus On?

One of the most important questions business owners find themselves asking with regard to paid social amplification is, “is there a certain network I should focus on?” And while you’ll want to keep your demographic in mind, there’s no reason why you can’t leverage all of them in a way that consistently fills your funnel with customers.

For example, you could use Twitter’s paid amplification to promote tweets surrounding industry conferences, workshops or hashtags, so that prospects who are involved with those events will notice your brand. Twitter is particularly noteworthy in terms of “short burst” news-type events, so taking advantage of its platform for these kinds of messages could pay off well.

Facebook, not surprisingly, is about driving community. Here, you’d ideally want to use paid social amplification when looking to foster customer outreach, name/brand recognition and product announcement and adoption. Of course, it’s also not a one-way communications street, so make sure that you are your company’s own best advocate and promptly answer customer questions and address concerns before they spiral out of control.

You can even take a cue from HP, which has started including social-enabled links on its display ads to make them more interactive and enticing to potential customers.

An example of a social-enabled display ad

By combining this type of ad with promoted post links, you’ll be able to easily rev up your social reach while accurately gauging your return on investment to determine if continual social amplification is the right strategy for you.

Now It’s Your Turn…

Have you used paid social amplification for your posts or content? How has it worked out for you? Share your examples and triumphs with us in the comment below!

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