Social media marketing has played a vital role in the success of many businesses for some time now, but with constant updates, new platforms, security updates, and more, dipping your feet into social marketing isn’t as easy as it once was.
What is the difference between paid and organic social?
Simply put, organic social refers to any social post, posted for ‘free’ without paying the platform to amplify reach, whereas paid social refers to any ad you publish or boosted post you pay for.
Organic social posts include non-paid for stories, posts, reels, TikTok’s and more, while paid social content includes sponsored posts, ads, boosted posts, and more.
Why you need both, and how they complement each other
Sounds simple, right? Well, that part is, and you’d be forgiven for thinking if you’re running paid social ads, you don’t need organic socials and vice versa. The truth is, without a strong organic social presence, you’re preventing your paid social ads from achieving their full potential, and without paid social, you’re missing further brand awareness, sales, leads and more.
This is especially important for less established brands and businesses. For instance, picture that you’ve just looked at an ad on Facebook, and while you like the product, you click on the brands Facebook page to learn more about them, just to see that they haven’t posted in some time, and they have a small number of followers. It may make you hesitant to purchase, and rightfully so. This isn’t an uncommon thing for users to do either.
Organic social isn’t only about posting consistently, or having tons of followers, it’s more so about the quality of your posts, and the followers will come. Take that same scenario, but picture their Facebook page with high quality posts, and they’ve posted regularly; it completely changes your perception of the brand.
Similarly, the quality of your ads makes a massive difference in performance. Poor-quality ads lead to inferior performance, but that’s another blog for another time.
One of the many strengths of running paid social campaigns is that they allow you to amplify your social reach without relying on the platforms tricky and ever-changing algorithms, and they can also help you receive those essential sales, leads and much more.
What social media platforms should you use?
Depending on what it is you’re offering, or trying to sell, will inform you of your paid and organic strategy, and the platforms you use. Here’s a breakdown of social media split by age, courtesy of Statistia.
18-29 years – Snapchat (41%), TikTok (35%), Instagram (32%)
30-39 years – LinkedIn (34%), X/Twitter (34%), Snapchat (33%), Instagram (32%)
40-49 years – LinkedIn (25%), Facebook (22%), X/Twitter (21%)
50-59 years – Facebook (29%), LinkedIn (24%), Pinterest (24%)
That of course isn’t the only deciding factor you should take into consideration when deciding which social platforms to focus on. If you’re not able to commit enough time to creating videos, you’ll probably want to focus your efforts somewhere other than TikTok.
If you don’t have the budget to outsource your social platforms, or time to manage them yourself, you’ll need to be selective and only use the ones that work for you, and you need to do it well.
Tools and resources for social media
There’s plenty of tools out there for you to utilise to help you manage your organic socials and your paid campaigns.
Firstly, we have our organic social management tools, that help you schedule posts in advance, write posts and more. These include Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Buffer. For analysing your post-performance, you’re better to use the in-platform analytics, or the analytics provided by your social management tool.
For paid social, the key tools to create and manage your ads will be Facebook Ads Manager, LinkedIn campaign manager, TikTok Ads Manager and more. While you can use the relevant social platforms analytics, you may also want to link your ads to Google Analytics for further information.
You can check out more of our best free PR and Social Media tools here.
How your social communities can support you with organic posts and paid social ads
Social communities are much stronger than you realise, not just to boost engagement, but they can also be positive voices in a world of negativity. These voices reinforce the message you’re posting about, and occasionally opt to defend you against those who may have negative opinions about your brand.
Not only that, each comment or like you receive improves your organic post reach and helps to boost performance for your ads. Think about it, reviews, positive or negative, affect your decision on whether you’ll buy a service or product, and that goes for any consumer.
That’s why building a strong, valued community that will vouch for your product or service heavily influences people on whether to learn more about your product or even buy it.
Look at these examples below of brands and businesses that have created a strong community, and the impact it has on their posts and ads.
As you can see from the example above, it only takes one user to support your cause, and act as an honest and trustworthy voice, and it can make a significant difference in post-performance.
This post has received lots of likes and comments, which as mentioned above, increases post reach. Every social platform wants its users to be scrolling for as long as possible, and uses data, such as comments and likes, to serve its users with the most engaging and relevant posts.
This quick review and comment from Passenger’s top Fan, Julie, tells its readers two things: they’re a trustworthy brand, and their products are high quality. Most people will only take the time to write reviews for either extremely positive or overwhelmingly negative experiences, which is why you’ll rarely see a two- or three-star review for a product. Every product review or client testimonial is so powerful, and it can’t be overstated.
Here, just how many comments, shares and likes Rheel’s ads have received, and to reiterate, this is down to creating a strong and engaged community. It also helps to have an excellent product, of course!
Why strong SEO and PR are important for social media
For some, SEO and PR can be an afterthought, but it can have an enormous impact on your overall results and performance.
It’s extremely common for users to view your product, or brand, and not click on the ad immediately. Purchasing any product or service, takes much consideration, from viewing alternative options, reading reviews and searching for different prices, so having a website that has been optimised so it’s easily found when searched for, can have a massive impact on sales and performance.
Further to this, consumers care about a brands ethics, and what they stand for more than ever before, so having positive stories out there about your brand, such as charity work, could be the deciding factor on whether people choose your service or product.
Building a strong organic and paid social strategy
Running ads on any social platform without a proper strategy in place is as useful as carrying water in a sieve. You might get some results, but you’ll be wasting your time and money. The same goes for organic socials, without an understanding of the platform you’re posting on, or what it is you’re trying to accomplish, you’ll be wasting your time.
Of course, we can create and manage organic and paid social strategies for you, but here are some pointers to get you started in the right direction:
Define clear objects and name your key goals. Do you want to drive leads? Brand awareness? Or are you completely focused on sales?
Set KPIs to measure success, such as cost per click, impressions, conversions and more.
Know your audience! Understand your target audience demographics and behaviours.
Test, test and more testing. Using A/B testing, or even testing several types of creatives and copy type in your posts and ads is essential to understanding what resonates with your target audience to improve performance.
Strong creatives for your organic posts and your paid ads are key to strong performance.
Encourage your followers to generate UGC and use this content in your social posts and your paid ads.
Conclusion
While both paid and organic social media are invaluable, they become even more powerful when used together, with a strategy in place for both. You’ll find paid social media can be more expensive, but less time consuming than organic social media. You can reach people faster with paid social media, but you’ll build stronger connections and communities with organic social media.
And don’t forget, we’re here to help with all social things. Drop us an email to find out more.
