This is a quick roundup of some thought-provoking social media news I’ve come across lately and thought you might be able to learn from, too.

Organic vs. Paid

Someone asked me the other day about paid social media versus non-paid, usually called organic social media.

In my experience, small businesses and nonprofits don’t tend to want to spend much on advertising. So, it’s essential to recognize what organic social media can and can’t do for you.

The short version: one gets you in front of people who don’t know you, and the other helps people build a deeper knowledge of your products and services, which helps them get to know you better.

Here’s more on why organic still matters.

Ethical Best Practices

I see a lot of articles about using artificial intelligence in social media — no surprise there. So I was intrigued by an article on a topic I don’t see much: ethical practices for social media.

Whenever I’ve brought this up with people, usually related to AI, everyone nods in agreement because, of course, we should all be ethical!

But what exactly does that mean? Factual? Lacking bias? Protecting privacy? Sure, all those things. And 12 more categories — at least that’s what’s shared in this article.

Get comfortable. It’s a slightly lengthy read, but such an important topic to have a deep awareness of.

Authenticity

One of the positive trends I’ve been working with clients on is maintaining authenticity in their marketing, especially in light of misinformation zipping around, deepfakes in AI-generated imagery, and the proliferation of bots.

So there’s a line from this article that I deeply disagree with: “Many users will simply choose not to question the humanity of their following, so long as their engagement numbers continue to go up.”

No! Just no! We’ve always talked about the importance of having the *right* followers — high-quality followers — so that starts with them being human! Are we all going insane?

*Deep breath … another deep breath … I’ve been doing this a lot lately …* 😁

I’ll stop there. Read the article, and I’d love to hear what you think!