In the previous video, we saw how paid ads can help you increase your reach or in other words, the size of your audience and how they help you getting in your message in front of people most likely to be interested in your product or service. By the end of this video, you will have a better understanding of the key ways in which social ads differ from organic social media posts. There are five key differences between an organic post and a paid social ad and I will walk you through them over the course of the next minutes. Organic social posts can appear in the feeds of the people that already follow you and once you have post your content on your page or profile, the content is usually shown to a portion of your followers. As your audience shares and engages with the content, your posts will be shown to more people. As we saw in the previous course, content engagement is one factor that determines the reach of your post. So be mindful of what content you share with your followers. The most successful posts focus on creating value for your followers rather than getting people to buy. So try to tell stories, inspire, and educate your followers with your organic content. You can of course, plan in a special promotion for your loyal followers once in a while but they should be mixed in with great content that engages your followers. You want to help them get to know and trust you and your brand. With organic posts, you share content and hope that it seen by your target audience but paid ads are guaranteed to get displayed as long as they don't violate any of the platforms policies, of course. That is the first way in which paid ads differ from organic posts. Paid social ads will show up in the feeds of people who belong to which ever audience you decide to target and it doesn't matter whether this audience already follows you or not. You could target any audience based on demographics, location, interests, and other factors. Remember DCB cleaning services? They provide cleaning services and now they plan to introduce a new product called SnackWall. Companies can subscribe to SnackWall choose snacks via the SnackWall app and DCB will then make sure the company never runs out of their favorite snacks. James is tasked with introducing SnackWall to the market. In the first six months after launch, DCB focused on attracting existing customers to the new SnackWall service. But after that, DCB wanted to reach new potential customers who work at startups around Silicon Valley and who might have an interest in healthy snacks. So James decided to use paid ads on Facebook because that way he could reach this specific audience. It's a way for him to reach prospects beyond the people that already follow the company's Facebook page. Social media advertising is powerful because of its targeting capabilities. If you find that you're not quite reaching your intended audience with your organic efforts, it may be a good idea to consider spending some money on advertising. When you choose to use paid advertising, you'll also get more control over when and where people will see your message. Since a lot of social media content is consumed on mobile, it's possible to pay for ads that show when people are in a particular location, like near your store for instance. Paid social ads look very much like they are organic siblings and they blend into the native experience of the platform. However, there are two elements that usually differentiate them from organic posts. First, a note that they are sponsored or promoted as in this example of an ad from Wayfair on Pinterest, and second, paid ads often also have a call to action button that takes users to the desired locations, such as a landing page. Here is an example of an ad on Instagram and its call to action button that says "Shop Now". Of course, paid ads are different from organic posts as they are not free. How much you pay to get your posts seen is usually determined in what it's called an auction. Each time there's an opportunity to show an ad to someone, an auction takes place similar to a competition to determine which ad to show to that person. This auction happens in the background, but the price and success of your campaign are mostly determined by a number of factors. How much you're willing to pay for a given action, such as a click or a video of you, how many other advertisers are interested in the same audience, and how relevant your ad is to the audience, among other factors. Every social media platform has its own unique equation for how an ad wins an auction. We'll go into ad relevance later but for now, do keep in mind that while you can focus a lot more on selling actual products with paid ads than organic posts, the key to success is making sure that the ad resonates with your audience. Now that you have a better understanding of the ways in which paid ads differ from organic posts, we're ready to take a closer look at examples from Facebook and Instagram and we'll do that in the next video.
