{"id":657,"date":"2015-02-06T10:02:20","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T10:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialsimulator.com\/?p=657"},"modified":"2021-03-26T14:28:35","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T14:28:35","slug":"sponsoring-sorry-use-promoted-social-media-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helpfuldigital.com\/fr\/sponsoring-sorry-use-promoted-social-media-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Sponsoring ‘sorry’: how and when to use promoted social media in a crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

In conversation with a\u00a0government client recently, we touched on the challenge of getting messages out during a crisis.<\/p>\n

“Our audience is on Facebook,” he\u00a0said “but we know that Facebook is making it harder to reach that audience with posts on our corporate pages unless we pay to boost those posts. But in a crisis, does it\u00a0look odd to see sponsored content from us appearing in your newsfeed?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We know, certainly, that organic reach (i.e. the proportion\u00a0of people who have ‘liked’ your page on Facebook who see the posts you publish when they log in and flick through their own newsfeeds) has dropped over the last few years, firstly to ~15%, but now closer to 5% or less<\/a>. Increasingly, Facebook – and perhaps in future, Twitter and other networks – will ask brands to pay to reach their audiences.<\/p>\n

The relevance of promoted social media posts\u00a0to crisis handling isn’t new. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Twitter offered the Red Cross free advertising<\/a> to help boost the fundraising effort. And it works the other way: Hasan Syed put $1,000 into berating British Airways<\/a> with a promoted campaign of his own when they lost his father’s luggage. But since 2013, it’s become much easier for individuals and marketers of small brands to put modest budgets into boosting their social media updates, and to track the impact that it has.<\/p>\n

Back to the original question: but does it look weird? Certainly, there are heartfelt messages\u00a0that don’t benefit from being boosted. Take the recent tweet from Tony Fernandes of AirAsia:<\/p>\n

\"Tony<\/p>\n

Boosted, it might look a little like this fictional version:<\/p>\n

\"TF<\/p>\n

There’s a subtle but important difference in impact when you boost your social activity – and I think that applies to brands as well as individuals. Messages labelled as ‘sponsored’ or ‘promoted’ can look self-serving, somewhat mercenary and a little creepy.<\/p>\n

By contrast, there are some contexts\u00a0where boosting your posts could\u00a0work well:<\/p>\n