The free lunch is over, social media marketers: prepare to pony up and devote even more of your budget to paid promotion on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and their ilk. That’s the conclusion reached after digesting the findings of a recent report by Gartner, entitled “Digital Channel Survey 2016: Social Marketers Expand Tactics for Results.” According to the report, four out of five industry professionals who spearhead social media marketing programs indicated they would place paid advertising programs via social media over the next 12 months—with 42 percent this group embarking on paid social marketing endeavors for the first time and 38 percent already having paid programs intact.
Learn more about why and how social media marketers need to switch gears and shift into paid social strategies by reading my latest article for EContent Magazine, found here.