Organic vs Paid Social Media Strategy: How They Can Work Together to Accelerate Your Brand
In digital marketing, organic and paid social media are often pitted against each other. If you only focus on organic social media, you're missing out on a broader audience. But if you only utilize paid social media, you're seen as "buying" likes and comments and not fostering a brand's community. However, instead of viewing the two as competitors, they're complementary aspects of digital marketing that, when used together, can enhance your entire online presence. You start with organic marketing as the essential framework or foundation of your social media platform and then build upon it with all the additional aspects that come with paid media.
Think about it in terms of our official Barketing Manager, Zoe – she's the perfect example of having the essentials and then THRIVING off all the extras. As the inspiration behind the name and logo of FlyDog Digital, she's living her best life at our agency – being provided food and shelter from her mom (our CEO Carly), getting endless treats for being a good girl, coming into the office only to nap the entire time, and still managing to win Employee of the Month…every month! While she only needs the essentials to survive, all the extras she's provided take her life from ordinary → extraordinary. We call that a win-win, or as Zoe would say, a woof-woof. Our goal: to take your brand from another voice in the crowd → the leading voice in the crowd!
Organic Social Media
Organic social media is any strategy on social media that does not rely upon paid ads. If there's no money involved, then the content depends entirely on the social media platform's algorithm. And we know these algorithms are not always favorable to organic postings.
An organic posting strategy is a great starting point when you're just starting out or trying to build your platform. Here are some of the main benefits:
Builds trust: Organic postings foster genuine interactions and conversations, helping you build an engaged and loyal audience. These are the individuals who found you and connected with your brand.
Test new ideas: Not sure if your audience responds best to reels, static postings, or photo carousels? Organic postings allow you to test and play around with new ideas and figure out what works best without spending money! Once you determine what your audience likes, you can boost those postings with paid ads and target even more of your ideal client.
Remember that organic social media is a long-term strategy that can take time to build. The social media platform algorithms aren't as favorable to these types of postings as they were 5-10 years ago, so it takes a lot of time and patience (!) to figure out what works best for your client (and constantly adjusting when the algorithm changes).
Paid Social Media
Paid social media involves using money to boost postings and reach a wider audience beyond your organic reach. While you can still grow organically on social media platforms (think viral content), it has turned into a "pay-to-play" business, with postings performing far better when there's an ad spend behind them.
Here are some of the main benefits of implementing a paid social media strategy to complement your organic one:
Broader audience and visibility: Paid ads allow you to target a much wider demographic almost immediately. This is particularly helpful if you want to focus on specific locations, interests, or buyer types for your products or offers. Paying close attention to your results and optimizing them to what works best will yield the most optimal results.
Sales and conversions: If you're looking for more sales and conversions in a shorter timeframe, paid ads are more effective at helping potential customers turn into buying customers. It still isn't an overnight strategy, but it can speed up the end-to-end sales funnel journey!
Clear ROI and tracking: You can see precisely how you attract your followers and buyers and how much it costs. The advanced stats from paid ads help indicate what is and isn’t working and allow you to readjust based on concrete data.
Main Takeaway: Organic vs Paid Social Media
The average consumer needs to interact with a brand at least (!) seven times before converting into a buyer. Implementing organic postings and paid ads can help foster a deeper connection with followers while attracting more of your ideal client. Organically growing enables you to build a genuine community and then use ads to retarget the best-performing postings for more engagement or boost a big launch.
If you're interested in leveling up your organic social media strategy and dipping your toes into the world of paid ads, let's chat about how FlyDog Digital can help you elevate your online presence. We promise Zoe won't be writing any content – she's only there to support our amazing team morally!
