In recent years, it has become more challenging for businesses to reach customers on social media platforms without adding a dollar value behind each post. However, as with all things ‘marketing’, social media requires strategy. You can’t just throw money at it and hope it sticks. Let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons of paying for your social media marketing strategies and how organic and paid social media can work together for success.
What is Organic Social Media?
Like an organic vegetable with no additives or preservatives, an organic social media strategy doesn’t involve money, bells or whistles. It relies on the natural reach of social media posts for visibility. With organic social media, you use the free tools provided by each social media channel, such as hashtags. Many businesses have even created entire social media campaigns with the use of a single hashtag.
What is Paid Social Media?
As the name suggests, businesses pay to have their content shown to a target audience with paid social media. Think of this as using a megaphone for sharing your message, instead of shouting from your front step. A paid promotion or digital advertising would be something like Facebook or Instagram advertising or simply boosting individual posts on Facebook or Instagram.
Benefits of Organic Social Media
Use organic social posts as the foundation of your social media marketing strategy. Organic social media can help manage your reputation, connect like-minded people with your brand and build customer relationships. It’s also an opportunity to listen to your audience, what they’re saying to and about you, and establish trust – which leads to loyalty and repeat business.
Benefits of Paid Social Media
Arguably, the most significant benefit of paid social media is the ability to reach a wider audience who may not discover you otherwise. Paid social media campaigns can help reinforce your values and the key messages. For example, you can create an ad about the problems you’ve solved for customers in a way that highlights your values as a company. Paid social media also enables you to target people with specific interests and demographics (age and gender) within a customizable radius of a set location.
Benefits of a Hybrid Strategy
While organic and paid social media can work independently, integrating the two into your social media marketing strategy is a more effective approach. On average, in 2020, an organic Facebook post reached 5.2% of a page’s followers – and it continues to decrease year after year, as content on these platforms increases. Using paid options such as boosting strategic posts throughout the month, you can increase the reach of not only the paid posts, but it can even help improve your organic reach. An example strategy would be to post daily, but boost a key post every week for 3-5 days. Try combining a hybrid social media strategy with the 2022 marketing trends to reach more customers online.
Contact the Sims Advertising team in the New Year to experience a client-agency relationship built on integrity, open communication, and real-world marketing solutions.
