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5 Ways Paid Social Has Improved the Social Media Landscape

In November, I traveled to Chicago's West Loop neighborhood to attend Social Media Week. For four days, some of the brightest minds in the industry shared their tips and tricks to being a successful marketer, and now I want to share that knowledge with you. This post is part of a series recapping lessons I took from the conference.

As the value of Facebook’s organic social traffic continues to decline, paid media seems to be falling into a negative light with some people.

The popular argument is that social media is a place to post, share content and reach an audience for free. What a lot of people don’t see are the limitless opportunities for creativity, as well as the targeting capabilities that come with paid social that were never available to us through organic posts.

SOCIALDEVIANT president Linda Johnson took the stage at Social Media Week to explain these opportunities and discuss the bright side of paid social.

A Lot Has Changed

The social media landscape has changed a lot just in the last year. From January-July 2016, we saw a 52% decrease in organic reach on Facebook. But here’s the big secret: that’s not a bad thing. What a lot of marketers and brands are learning is that there are a number of ways paid social has improved the social media landscape.

Johnson called out the following reasons in her presentation:

1. More creative freedom.

We now have more ad types, meaning more room for creativity than ever before. As customer expectations and grievances on social media have increased, this creative freedom has allowed marketers to design campaigns that appeal to their target audience.

2. More focus.

Having more creativity doesn’t mean making more creative, it means being more selective about which platforms are being used, how often we post and what campaigns are running. Brands have had to be more selective about what they’re posting and where they’re posting it, and that in turn has resonated well with their audiences.

3. A closer connection to consumers than ever before.

Thanks to each social platform’s advancing targeting capabilities, we have the ability to reach as broad of an audience, or as small and hyper-targeted of an audience as we’d like.

4. Clear metrics for success.

We now have the ability to get closer to our KPIs than ever before and can link our goals directly to our business objectives.

5. Paid social is a horizontal enabler.

Social is now being seen as the start of a great idea, rather than a tactical final step. Now, because paid social calls for us to plan and budget, we have to think about it holistically. The days of sending a couple tweets to promote a campaign are over. Since brands are putting dollars behind their social efforts, a lot of planning goes into each post, and that opens us up even more creative possibilities.

Interested in learning more about Symmetri’s social offerings? Contact us or get in touch on social!

You can watch Linda Johnson’s full presentation by activating your Insider Membership at www.socialmediaweek.org.