Is The Age of Free Social Media Over?
Is the social media free lunch over?
When I joined Facebook and Twitter in 2008 the key attraction was that you could gain online attention and market on social media for free. There was little social media advertising available and it was usually not an easy task and not self service.
Brands started building tribes, followers and fans. Many focused on growing their “likes” on Facebook.
This allowed them to reach their customer for free without paying for a TV campaign, newspaper ad or radio advertising. The other attractive aspect of social media was that it also had global reach. Never before had there been a way to reach a global audience for free.
It was unprecedented.
Smart phones added fuel to the social fire
Added to the evolving mix was the increasing use of smart phones as they reached critical mass. Billions of photos and videos a year are now captured by mobile phone and shared to Facebook, Twitter and even YouTube.
This led to the rise of social networks that made mobile their focus. Instagram picked this trend and started "just" as a mobile app. Today it is the fastest growing social network with a growth rate of 23% in just the last 6 months and is not far behind Twitter with over 200 million users.
Mobile and social has continued to be a manic mix that continues to add momentum and fuel to the fast moving social media landscape.
Facebook “like gating” is gone
Just last week Facebook announced that it was changing the rules (again) on how brands can build their fans on their network and reduce their free organic reach.
So what happened?
They informed their customers and users that they were going to stop marketing apps “like gating“. So this means that apps and brands will no longer be able to “incentivize visitors to “like” a page to receive a discount, coupon or to even access free content.
Why are they doing this?
Facebook’s take is they want to improve the value of a “like” so that only genuine fans are liking a page and not just to get a discount. A more cynical take on this change is that it competes with Facebook advertising.
Facebook in the last 12 months has continued to tighten the screws on organic reach with few as 2.71% of fans seeing your updates in their newsfeed.
Organic or free reach tactics are getting harder to achieve. Here is a chart showing the decline of organic reach in just 5 months.
Source: Sprinklr
The combination of more users, increased noise and declining organic reach means that paying for attention on social media is starting to become essential. It also means that you will need to be both smart and creative with your organic reach and marketing tactics.
8 paid social media platforms
As social media has moved from a perceived fad to an embedded trend that could no longer be ignored the evolution accelerated. Platforms started offering self service advertising. Today we have 8 of the major social networks offering social media advertising.
Source: Sprinklr
Fast facts on paid social media
Today there are 4.2 billion users across 8 of the top social networks. Here are the fast facts on paid social media advertising.
- Facebook has 1.3 billion monthly active users (MAUs)
- Facebook ads were initially offered in Q3, 2004
- Facebook ads are seen on the right side, in the news feed and on mobiles
Google+
- Google+ has an estimated 830 million active monthly users. (Note: This could include Gmail users)
- Ads were launched in Q4, 2013
YouTube
- YouTube has 1.3 billion monthly unique users
- YouTube ads were launched in Q3, 2006
- It includes logged-in and non logged-in user who are exposed to in video ads
- Twitter now has 260 million monthly users (MAUs)
- Twitter ads launched in Q2, 2010
- The ads appear in the Twitter timeline, on mobile and on the left and right side banners.
- Linkedin has 200 million unique monthly users
- LinkedIn ads commenced in Q3, 2008
- Ads appear to logged in users via “sponsored” updates
- Instagram now has 200 million unique users every month
- Ads were launched in Q4, 2013
- Logged in users are exposed to ads in their Instagram feed
- Pinterest has 60 million MAUs
- Pinterest ads were launched in Q3, 2013
- Logged in users are are exposed to ads in their Pinterest feed
Tumblr
- Tumblr has 48 million monthly unique users
- Tumblr ads were launched in Q2, 2012
- Logged in users are exposed to ads in their Tumblr feed
The implications for marketers and businesses is that they will need to continue to learn and adapt and add new skills to their social media marketing tactics toolbox. Standing still is not an option.
Are you continuing to improve your social media marketing education?
What about you?
How are you evolving your social media marketing to counter Facebook’s declining organic reach? Are you trying other platforms such as Twitter? Are you concentrating more effort on building your email list?
Are you starting to pull out the credit card and advertise on Facebook?
Look forward to your stories and insights in the comments below.
About Jeff: He is a blogger and CEO at Jeffbullas.com and is an author, digital marketing strategist and keynote speaker and works with companies and executives to optimize their online personal and company brands with digital, content and social media marketing.
- LinkedIn’s – 25 Social Media Experts You Need to Know
- Ranked #8 on Forbes” The World’s Top 40 Social Marketing Talent” – 2014
- His blog is read by 4 million visitors a year
- Listed in the “Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers” 2013 on Forbes.com at #11
- Published in the New York Times
- Listed on the Huffington Post as one of the “Top 100 Business, Leadership and Technology Twitter Accounts You Must Follow“
Creating better conversations with analytics and optimisation.
9yPersonally I hate the fact that on Facebook you have to pay to engage with your audience properly. There are some paged I love that I literally never see unless I enable notifications or Manually visit the page. I think it's partially the reason Facebook's demographic is changing entirely. At face value it would appear that Facebook is free, and it is to the general user, but to a business it's certainly not, which is how it's always even, really. You have to spend money to make money.
TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT CENTRE ,President & Chief Executive , Author , Trainer , Editor ,Counsellor
9yNo it's just Growing & New Avatars adding every Minute !
Incubating value-adding engagement between solution providers and executive decision-makers at leading companies
9ySocial platforms are making it more difficult to reach your intended audience and making it easier for companies to share with audiences who do not follow them
Managing Director at Frontline Manufacturing/Mills Group
9yGreat post Jeff. The social media landscape is still evolving, and we are seeing this with the emergence of more niche social networking tools like Snapchat, which is set to rival Facebook and Twitter in the mobile computing sphere. This has changed the digital marketing scene again, and I discussed this here: http://www.getserio.com/blog/rise-mobile-computing-mean-businesses/
Marketing | Digital Marketing | Social Media
9yGreat article Jeff! Social media might not have ever been free, but it was certainly a lot easier to just use the functions of the platform to organically reach the audience. Now you can't keep moving forward without paying for advertising! Do you know how Facebook are going to police "like gating"?