Social Media platforms are always evolving and come up with new ways to connect people worldwide. For an organization these platforms offer a convenient way to encourage real time interaction with their customers through real time content updates, feedback, two way communication and much more. Thus for any organization, utilizing social media as a marketing and customer engagement tool is a no-brainer. When considering marketing, the debate of Organic vs Paid marketing on Social media takes centre stage. One has to choose their path on the basis of their organization’s requirement in terms of result expectations from such activities. Hence approach is and should be different for each one.
As per one consumer behaviour survey consumers visit a brand’s social pages before visiting their website, hence keeping your Social media up to date & interesting for them is very important. Before we start a comparison of approaches let’s first understand them.
Organic marketing:
Organic marketing is anything that happens on social media without spending a penny. Organic reach is the number of people who have seen your free post. These posts will show up in the feeds of people that follow you. Your posts will be shown to more people as your audience shares and engages with them. With the sheer increase in the content published on social media in recent years, a large organic reach is becoming difficult to achieve. However, there is no need to be daunted if you don’t have a budget to spend. This predicament can allow you to get more creative and strategic with your ideas.
Paid marketing:
It’s anything that is influenced by advertising (i.e. spending money). While organic posts are only shown to your own followers/friends, paid ads allow you to target people who have not liked your page or outside your network on social media but have similar interests and/or demographics. Paid social posts will show up in the feeds of whichever audience you decided to target. You can target audiences based on different parameters like demographics, location, interests and more. With organic approach you post and wait for things to happen. But paid social guarantees that your posts will get seen by many more people.
Organic and paid social media
One shouldn’t have one without the other. A solid organic strategy improves your online presence, and a paid strategy increases your brand’s reach and awareness to targeted audiences. Managing both organic & paid aspects of social media takes time and planning, but the results of a well-executed campaign are worth the effort.
The organic & paid approach can be used together to provide amazing results. For instance, you can pay to “boost” an organic post to present it to many more people than just followers. This is often an effective strategy for organic posts that are performing particularly well. Understanding the distinction and striking a balance between organic posts and paid boosts is essential to creating a successful social media marketing strategy.
How does one decide if, when and where to boost a post ?
There is no single answer to this question. It all boils down to the purpose of the post. Ask yourself a few questions.
- Who are the intended audience of the post? This would include answering questions such as demographics, location, interests etc of the intended audience.
- Are they existing or new customers?
- Is the content informational or promotional?
As you answer these questions the choice of organic vs paid becomes clear.
Final Thoughts
Brands never want to miss an opportunity to communicate with a huge audience, especially for free. But free reach on social media platforms is gradually decreasing. The social media space is becoming crowded due to its ubiquity thus giving rise to a stiff competition for attention.
Thus making an impact solely through organic reach, unfortunately, is more of a dream than a reality. At the same time one wants to avoid spending every last penny on paid social media posts. Thus organic social is necessary for ongoing success. Although organic reach is difficult to grow, the benefits of organic posts are still tremendous. It provides an incredible opportunity to promote your company, free of cost, to a loyal audience and extends your network through social sharing.
At the risk of over simplifying this a final thought would be – Focus on adding value to your audience through periodic organic posts and grow your audience through occasional paid boosts. Sales will follow as people see value in your content and start trusting your business.
