You Gotta Spend Some to Earn Some
Under the social media umbrella lies two different avenues that are both competing and complimenting each other: paid and organic social media. In todays digital marketing world, you cannot have one without the other. Algorithm updates, especially during 2020, have made the organic social media landscape HIGHLY competitive – and many businesses are finding that spending at least a portion of their social media budget on advertising is no longer optional. Paid social absolutely needs a strategy, implementation process and someone to nurture it of its very own.
Confused about the difference? Here’s a breakdown:
Organic social media: Organic social media refers to the free content (posts, photos, video, memes, Stories, etc.) that all users, including businesses and brands, share with each other on their feeds. Your audience will usually entail a percentage of your own followers, your followers’ followers, and anyone who searches the hashtags you may use.
Paid social media: Paid social media is another word for advertising. It’s when brands pay money to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc. in order to have their content shared with specific new targeted audiences who are likely to be interested, either through “boosting” their organic content, or designing unique advertisements. These initiatives can be brand awareness, promoting a deal or sale, generate leads or drive conversions (e-commerce sales).
The biggest takeaway is this: your paid and organic efforts must be integrated or your results could suffer. You’ll get more out of social by uniting these two strategies – and here are 3 reasons why:
Paid and organic target different goals
Both contribute to the customer journey in their own unique ways.
Those who integrate their paid and organic strategies are more confident in their social ROI
When businesses merge their paid and organic strategies, they’re in a better position to show the impact of their efforts. This can be helpful for making a case for a bigger budget, planning future social activities, or simply proving that your social initiatives are working.
Your organic insights can influence your paid initiatives (and vice-versa)
Your organic posts can help inform how you should advertise on each platform. This is where tracking and analytics comes into play.
All in all, paid and organic campaigns complement each other to drive results, so brands that don’t combine these strategies risk missing out on new customers, lead generation and conversions.
