Social media is one of the most powerful tools your business can use to advertise, sell and discover new audiences. With social media, both paid and organic options are available for your business to take advantage of – but you need to understand how both work in order to get the full benefit out of them
In this blog, we’ll explore paid and organic social media strategies, helping you decide which is best for your business.
What is Organic Social Media?
Organic social media is the content you post on social media that you don’t pay for, such as your day-to day posts, reels, stories etc. It’s the content that appears in your audience’s feeds pushed by the algorithm and the SEO within your posts, allowing you to build trust, awareness and long-term relationships with your audience, turning them from mere followers to loyal
customers. It gives your business credibility, letting you create posts that don’t just focus on the aspect of selling, and more on attracting an audience and building a connection with them. It’s particularly effective for small businesses or those who are just starting out, as it’s a cost-effective way to get your business out there and in front of the right people without needing to spend money. Whilst organic reach has seen a decline in recent years, it’s still worth using – giving your business a social media presence is better than it not having one at all.
What Is Paid Social Media?
Paid social media is promoting content and your business by using promoted/boosted posts and ads on social media, targeting specific audiences to bring in sales and traffic to your business, website or social media page. A booming industry, the paid social media word puts you in control of who is seeing your content, where they’re seeing it, and what you want them to see. You can retarget former customers or those who have visited your site but haven’t made a sale, target email lists on socials or warm up cold audiences to get them engaged with your business. Whilst it can be quite costly, you don’t need the biggest budget for it to work – starting small and scaling based on data can put you on track to creating a winning strategy.
Choosing The Right Balance
There are strengths to Organic (building your brand identity and voice, creating a community, supporting customer service initiatives and giving you social proof) and Paid (increasing reach, driving conversions and leads, helping you launch campaigns or sales, retargeting audiences and getting you out in front of your ideal customer), but one of the biggest misconceptions businesses have is that they *must* pick or the other if they want to see online success. This isn’t true – both can run concurrently alongside one another, amplifying your engagement and conversions – especially if you choose the boosted post route.
Having an organic social media presence can benefit paid options as it shows your business is actively posting, communicating and building trust, and paid can boost your organic social media by bringing in more people to your page. See your organic social media as the foundation, and let your paid social media build on that groundwork. Let the data from your organic posts help you figure out which was to go with your paid ads – keeping a similar style of graphic and tone of voice that’s working organically for your paid ads helps you keep a consistent presence, across channels and strategies.
Organic social media builds authenticity, and Paid social media accelerates your results. Having the two work together is essential for creating a balance across your platforms and puts you on the path to achieve your goals and long-term growth.
Need further advice?
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