Tesla is finally spending money on paid advertising — but not for the reasons that many might think.

The company doesn’t typically invest in paid media — but apparently it does think highly of organic and paid content for specific reasons across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

BrandTotal, a social competitive intelligence and brand analytics platform, on Friday released new data on Tesla, analyzing the company’s paid and organic social campaigns from July 1 to August 26, 2021. 

During the past 90 days, Tesla has run two LinkedIn campaigns.

BrandTotal also analyzed Tesla’s non-paid, organic content across social platforms and found that 52% of Tesla’s overall social media engagement occurred across Instagram, with 29% on Twitter, 13% on YouTube, and 6% on LinkedIn. 

Tesla does not have a Facebook page, with Elon Musk deleting it in 2018. Three years later, still the company has not returned to Facebook. 

Most of Tesla’s social media video views — 41% — are on Twitter, followed by YouTube with 27%, Instagram with 26%, and LinkedIn with 6%. 

When it comes to overall non-paid, organic social-media engagement across all auto brands, Tesla took the No. 3 place with 1.4 million, behind Dodge with 1.9 million, and Jeep with 1.4 million.

Tesla topped 24 other leading auto brands, including Audi with 1.1 million, and Mercedes with 1.1 million.

BrandTotal Research in 2019 revealed that Tesla did not invest in paid social-media advertising. Instead, the company promoted itself through non-paid, organic content across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Two years later, Tesla ran targeted LinkedIn ads to support talent recruitment for the company’s forthcoming Research and Development Center in China.