With Meta Verified rolling out a month ago and the ongoing “Blue Checkmark” woes of Twitter, now seems a good time to talk about paid social media verification (along with other subscription options), especially from the perspective of a business looking to do social media marketing. This dovetails neatly with most verification programs, as they are being targeted more at businesses—including influencers—than average users. Learn about your options and if it’s worth the cost for your business.
Meta Verified: Facebook & Instagram Paid Service
Created to “help establish your presence on Instagram & Facebook,” Meta Verification is a paid service ($14.99/month on either platform or $27 bundled) that is positioning itself as more of a protection and support tool than any sort of algorithmic edge. With it, you get:
- Verification Badge: After confirming your account with a government ID and video, you can gain a verification badge that shows your account is real (useful for individuals or dealing with scammers).
- Proactive Account Protection: While two-factor authentication (2FA) is available to all users, Facebook offers an advanced (and required) one, along with what they call “proactive account monitoring” for Verified users.
- Direct Account Support: As business marketers, we find this the most interesting. It is notoriously difficult to talk to a real person on Facebook support, even when you’re a business or running ads.
So, should you get Meta Verification? While Meta positions this service as a tool for newbies, we think it will help established businesses (already on both platforms) the most, as they can more easily eat the costs and are more likely to be dealing with scam accounts. However, if you’re having problems with your personal Facebook or Instagram, $27 might not be too much to get your account supported.
Twitter Blue & The Twitter Verification Debacle
Paid Twitter verification was, in many ways, the first popular social media subscription—as much as an example of what not to do as how it can be helpful. Back at the end of 2022 when Twitter Blue was rolled out (along with many other changes with Elon Musk at the helm), it was met with a wave of impostor accounts. Today, Twitter Blue verification looks like this:
- Twitter Blue Features: The subscription ($11/monthly) gives a lot of perks, so we’ll go over the most relevant. A 30-minute edit window, longer Tweets, prioritized rankings in conversations and search (appearing on top), and 2FA.
- Free Checkmark & Other Verifications: Recently, Twitter has started removing “Legacy Checkmarks,” but doing so unevenly—so, some accounts still have them (even if they don’t want them). They also have a large number of badges and other checkmarks; learn about each and how you can apply for them here.
Between these and the rough state of Twitter as a company—with the massive layoffs and uneven policy enforcement—we as an agency currently aren’t active on the platform. However, if your marketing revolves around PR over traditional social media marketing, it might be worth the cost, if only for security concerns.
Other Platforms & Honorable Mentions
While those are the biggest (both in terms of cost-to-benefit ratios and online hype), there are some other platforms to review that offer specialized tools or are included here for the sake of completion.
- LinkedIn Premium & Additional Tools: LinkedIn offers a Premium service, but it isn’t verification-focused. Instead, it makes it easier for you as an individual (Premium Career, $29.99/month) to either hunt jobs or as a business (Premium Business, $59.99/month) to build your network with InMail. LinkedIn also offers premium business tools for sales and hiring. All these tools are edge cases—many businesses won’t need them.
- Honorable Mentions: Just to be complete, here are some additional paid subscription services for social media platforms, though none are business or marketing focuses. SnapChat+ offers UI and networking perks for $3.99/month. Reddit Premium offers 700 coins per month and removes ads for $5.00/month. And Tumblr Ad-Free does just what you would expect, disabling ads for $4.99 a month. And YouTube Premium ($11.99/mo) as the social media everyone forgets.
In the end, paid social media subscriptions are no replacement for having a plan when it comes to social media marketing. From managing Meta Business Suite over personal Facebook accounts to knowing how to do social media advertising to avoiding common social media marketing mistakes, you should master the basics and have a strong social media plan before committing to any reoccurring subscriptions. Need a hand creating and executing a social media marketing plan? Vision can help.
