Paid advertising on Facebook reaches five times more consumers than organic content.
There are two ways to reach consumers on social media- paid media and earned media. Organic (earned) media is extremely valuable for any brand. It s a way to engage consumers, enhance brand perception and build loyalty. But a new study from Facebook and comScore indicates that paid advertising on Facebook can dramatically increase your reach. Among the top 100 brand pages on Facebook, those using paid advertising reach an audience that is 5.3 times larger on average, the study found.
As reported by Matt Kapko for ClickZ, comScore looked at how major brands used paid media to extend their audience five times over their organic audience in one week. Some brands were able to extend the reach of a single post or other piece of content by more than 100 times with paid media, according to comScore.
Paid advertising on Facebook can be used by healthcare marketers to cast a much wider net and reach a much larger audience. Facebook ads, or paid media, will reach “slightly lighter” Facebook users than organic content, comScore concluded. Paid messages were 30 to 60 percent more likely to reach users that have liked 100 or fewer pages. Similarly, paid messages were 17 to 32 percent more likely to reach users who hadn’t posted a status update in the past 28 days, the study confirmed.
With media planning, whether its TV or print or Facebook, traditional or non-traditional advertising it’s always desirable to reach those lightweight users. You’re reaching more lightweight users when you’re paying because you’re ensuring you get in front of those users.
Ad campaigns that are focused on reach, reaching a larger number of people, are usually more desirable. And the study from comScore indicates that paid advertising on Facebook can significantly expand our reach.
Many healthcare marketers have spent hours trying to decide the value of social media and whether it’s worth the time and effort. And that is still being debated. However Facebook advertising can be an excellent way to reach users of social media. Even the light users of social media.
A word of caution is needed. Using Facebook advertising effectively requires significant thought and work as well. You are very limited in what you can say in a Facebook ad. It’s very much about like outdoor. Words are limited. The message must draw attention and communicate something meaningful. And if the Facebook ad is successful piquing interest there must be more information provided by a landing page or micro site that can provide more information and close the deal.
Posted by Jimmy Warren 
Healthcare Marketing: 25 MORE Interesting Facts About Social Media
October 28, 2011Sarah Evans, author of social media and PR blog “Commentz” regularly compiles interesting stats and facts about social media. She recently shared her most relevant ones with Ad Age. Some can be useful to healthcare marketers.
1. “In early March, Google removed from its Android Market more than 60 applications carrying malicious software. Some of the malware was designed to reveal the user’s private information to a third party, replicate itself on other devices, destroy user data or even impersonate the device owner.”
2. “Groupon is on track to bring in between $3 billion and $4 billion in revenue this year alone. Facebook’s 2010 sales were reported to be only around $2 billion in its sixth year of existence.”
3. “A study of 24,000 consumers across the 16 largest countries found that those who are most connected, living on the cutting edge of social media tend to be more ‘prosocial’ than average, being more likely to do volunteer work, offer their seats in crowded places, lend possessions to others and give directions.”
4. “99 percent of Android devices are vulnerable to password theft.”
5. “Recent estimates put less than 10% of the population using Twitter, far less than other social sites.”
6. “More than 3.34 million mentions were recorded over a one-month period of people making social asks.”
7. “David Poltrack, CBS Corp., announced that, based on a new research study, ‘age and sex don’t matter when it comes to increasing TV ad effectiveness.’”
8. “An average of 40 percent of the traffic to the top 25 news sites comes from outside referrals, the study found, with Google Search and, to a lesser extent, Google News the single biggest traffic driver.”
9. “Almost one-in-four South Africans use social media as a tool to look for work, but are concerned about the potential career fallout from personal content on social networking sites.”
10. “The percentage of US parents who allow their children between ages 10 and 12 to use Facebook or MySpace more than doubled from 8 percent a year ago to 17 percent now.”
11. “33% of Facebook posting is mobile.”
12. “Fully 69% of visitors to news.google.com ended up 3 places: nytimes.com (14.6%), cnn.com (14.4%) and abcnews.go.com (14.0%).”
13. “85% of media websites now use online video to cover news.”
14. “”Social media advertising spending will increase from $2.1 billion in 2010 to $8.3 billion by 2015.”
15. “Facebook is approaching 700 million users and Google handles over 11 billion queries per month. World-wide there are over 5 billion mobile subscribers (9 out of 10 in the U.S.) and every two days there is more information created than between the dawn of civilization and 2003.”
16. “Twitter reported that the network saw more than 4,000 tweets per second (TPS) at the beginning and end of Obama’s speech [re: death of Osama Bin Laden]“
17. “65% of all social media related to the royal wedding has come from the U.S. in the past month [April]. The U.K. has been responsible for just 20%.”
18. Re: the Royal Wedding: “911,000 wedding-related tweets were tracked in the past 30 days. That’s about 30,000 per day and accounts for 71% of all social media.”
19. “According to NPR’s internal usage data covering January 1 through mid-April, users who request audio — maybe a station stream, a national newscast, or NPR Music content — view twice as many pages as those who only read the apps’ content. On average, audio streamers rack up 4.2 pageviews per visit versus 2.4 for the text-only crowd.”
20. “Twitter penetration rates in Canada are among the highest in the world, according to new data from online tracking firm comScore Inc., which suggests that nearly one in five Canadian Internet users over the age of 15 regularly visit Twitter.”
21. “Traffic from social media has highest bounce rate. [...] If you’re looking for ‘hyper-engaged’ readers, those that click through five or more pages on your site, forget the guy who came from Twitter. A link from another content site is three times more likely to be engaged, and someone coming in from search, is also above average.”
22. “”Digital services accounted for an estimated $8.5 billion (28%) of the $30.4 billion in 2010 U.S. revenue generated by the 900-plus advertising and marketing-services agencies that Ad Age analyzed.”
23. “Total Facebook spent on lobbying, Q1 2010: $41,390. Total Facebook spent on lobbying, Q1 2011: $230,000″
24. “Nearly seven in 10 tablet owners reported spending at least 1 hour per day using the device, including 38% who spent over 2 hours on it. And while just 28% consider it their primary computer, 77% are spending less time on desktop or laptop PCs since they got a tablet.”
25. “According to a Network Solutions survey, the use of social media among SMBs has grown over the years, rising from 12 percent in 2009, to 24 percent in 2010 to 31 percent currently.”
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