Social media is one of the most powerful tools your business has for reaching new customers, along with staying top-of-mind for your existing client base. You can grow your audience on social media through organic reach and paid promotion, and you’ll need to know the difference between these two forms of social media marketing to succeed.
Here’s everything you need to know about organic vs. paid social media and how the two can work together to help you make the most of your social media profiles.
What Is Organic Social Media?
Organic social media is the free, unpromoted content that you post on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin. This includes photos, videos, stories, and text posts that show up in your followers’ feeds, as long as they are not boosted with any paid promotion.
The biggest advantage of using organic vs. paid social media marketing is that it builds trust with your audience. If people connect with your business through a helpful infographic that you post, for example, they’re engaging with you because you offered them relevant information, not because they saw your ad. This can help you build loyalty across socials.
The Limits of Organic Social Media
When you’re creating a social media strategy for your business, organic posting may not be enough. This is because the algorithms that serve content to users on social platforms prioritize content from accounts users already follow and engage with regularly.
If your social profiles don’t have an established follower base, you may find it hard to grow organically without supplemental support from promotional content.
What Is Paid Social Media?
Paid social media content includes anything that you pay a platform to display. This can include sponsored posts, organic posts that are boosted, or multi-post ad campaigns.
When you use paid vs. organic social media, you can fine-tune your strategy by adjusting your budget and the specific audience you want to reach. This gives your content the potential to be extremely precise in its ability to connect with exactly who’s missing from your customer base.
An Ongoing Investment
Organic posts don’t inherently cost anything to publish, but you always have to pay for sponsored content. Running social ads is also an ongoing investment, because you aren’t likely to see much of a return on your investment if you only promote your business for a short period of time.
These ads generally work best if you keep them running for weeks or months, adjusting as you go with help from digital marketing experts.
How Do You Track Paid Social Performance?
Social media platforms give you plenty of performance data when you invest money for ads. You can find specific data on the impact of your promoted content within the social platform itself. For example, you can manage Facebook ads through the Meta Ads Manager.
Interpreting your social ad performance data can be a bit complicated, though. This is one of the areas where a digital marketing specialist who focuses on small-business social media ads can step in and help you apply the data and adjust your strategy for better results.
What If My Social Ads Aren’t Working?
Even though you pay for social media promotion, you won’t always see a return on your investment. A specific, strategic, and correctly configured campaign is everything here.
If you aren’t seeing conversions from your promoted social content or seeing your follower base grow, the first thing to consider is how you set up the ad. You might be unintentionally serving your content to users who live outside of your service area, and you might also be choosing the wrong age and income demographics for your business.
There are dozens of other factors that can sabotage your ad performance. The content needs to be high-quality and engaging, the calls to action need to be clear, and your budget needs to be considerably high to move the needle. These, too, are areas where a digital marketing specialist can be a big help.
How Do Organic and Paid Social Work Together?
A strong social media strategy should include a combo of both paid and organic content for every major platform.
You can use organic content to connect with your existing audience and use paid promotion to build your following and convert high-intent social users. Plus, in some cases, the content that you post organically can translate very well into promoted content.
Is Paid Social the Right Form of Advertising for You?
It’s also wise to consider how your advertising budget might be spread out between paid social, search ads, and other forms of advertising. If you only have the budget to implement one type of advertising at the moment, starting with a search campaign that directs users to your site might be more beneficial than focusing on paid social.
A digital marketing agency with a small business specialty can help you decide how to allocate your budget across organic and paid channels. They can also be your outsourced partner for doing the actual posting on social media, freeing you up to focus on running your business.
Making Social Media Work for Your Business
As a small business owner, getting traction on social media might feel like an uphill battle. With the right support, it’s not.
Padula Media specializes in social media management and marketing for small businesses. We help business owners upgrade their socials and make the most of paid and organic social content to get customers to call or walk through the door.
If you need help creating a winning social media marketing plan, contact our team today.