Study: Organic Posting Is Most Popular Social Media Tactic, But Not The Most Successful

More than one in three large social media advertisers are not satisfied with their efforts from both paid and organic social media strategies. Those marketers that are satisfied with their social efforts are happiest with the results they achieve from paid social advertising than from using organic tactics alone.

These are conclusions of a study published by Kenshoo Social today called “The Key to Successful Social Advertising.” Kenshoo Social commissioned the study from Forrester Consulting to look at the strategies and tactics used by marketers in the U.S whose companies spend more than $100,000 per year on social advertising.

With 73% participation among respondents, organic posting on branded pages on general social networks like Facebook is the most popular social media tactic. Just over half (52%) say they use and post to branded accounts on microblogs like Twitter and Tumblr. While all of the advertisers surveyed use paid social advertising tactics, they were more likely to implement organic tactics like branded pages and content than to use paid ads.

Paying to promote content on general social networks, followed by paying to promote trends on microblogs and buying ads on general networks are the top three paid tactics used by the 69 respondents which indicated they were satisfied with their paid social advertising efforts. Interestingly, you can see from the graph below that the participation percentages of the top five tactics are all under 10%.

When it comes to social network advertising, 60 percent of respondents use ad rotation, but only 35 percent of large social media advertisers use granular audience targeting. Most of those that do use audience targeting use basic criteria like demographic targeting. Less than one-quarter use tools to either manage their bids or creative.

According to the study, satisfied brand-focused advertisers were happiest with the ability of promoted content to drive awareness.

Response-focus advertisers were  happiest with their ability to drive purchases by using standard social ad units. These action-oriented advertisers said that social ad units allowed them to use stronger calls-to-action than in posts, which could lead to better conversion rates.