Facebook and Instagram, for example, have billions of users, and they offer fantastic marketing opportunities.
The question is, though, which approach is better: paid social media advertising or organic? Both can work equally well, and you can even combine them for great results, but organic social media efforts tend to drive better results.
In recent years, social media advertising has been pushed into a specific direction—focus on real people. And that’s why organic social media marketing can be the better choice despite the pay-to-play mindset of the marketing world.
Defining Paid vs. Organic Social Media Marketing
Paid social media advertising refers to any kind of social media advertising campaign that was paid for.
This can be anything from advertisements on Instagram to “boosted posts” on Facebook, and everything in between.
Organic social media marketing, on the other hand, costs absolutely nothing—well, except your time and creativity. This content is made by the brand and shared as normal, but with a lot of strategic thought put into it.
Organic reach has become finite, which means marketers should focus more on creating original and engaging content that feels more authentic than most paid marketing.
With that said, how do you nail social media marketing without having to fully rely on paid campaigns?
That’s what we are going to discuss: how your business can succeed at social commerce in this multibillion dollar industry.
Reputation vs. Lead Generation
Reputation (brand identity) and lead generation are essential for modern businesses and can complement each other.
Brand reputation is about the emotions and expectations that people associate with your company which can be a powerful asset when a customer is in the “decision-making phase” of their purchase.
This is opposed to direct lead generation which is about persuading potential customers to make a commitment.
While you can use paid social media ad campaigns to drive measurable lead traffic, your brand reputation is more affected by high-quality organic social media content and engagement.
As you can see, the two go hand-in-hand, and you can use organic social media marketing to get both right. Although direct lead generation is better achieved with paid marketing in most cases, organic methods can be highly effective as well.
Tactics that have shown to work include:
– Creating instructional videos related to your product or service
– Using quizzes and surveys to gain audience insight
– Repurposing blogs into visual content to link back to site
– Making podcasts that address your customers’ most common questions
– Taking advantage of strong call to actions on your site
Millions of companies do their best to attract customers, and you need to make yours stand out.
One of the best ways to get noticed by your target audience is by creating a reputation that will do the attracting for you. Of course, this takes time and dedication, but what real marketing strategy doesn’t?
Sharing Brand Culture
Brand building and reputation often get confused with each other, but there is a marked difference between them.
Your reputation is what people think and expect of your brand. Imagine the Aston Martin brand—it’s closely associated with wealth and luxury. That’s reputation.
Brand culture is more behind the scenes; it is the strategies that marketers use to create a reputation in the first place.
There are many ways you can use social media marketing to generate awareness and promote your brand’s culture.
One of the most basic tactics is consistency. Whatever approaches you choose, be consistent so your audience can learn to rely on you. Naturally, you must consistently deliver quality as well. If your brand is sharing great quality content on social media, people will automatically think higher of it.
In short, it is better to create and share content daily on a consistent basis than to post content several times in a day and then post nothing for the rest of the week. This is a marathon—not a sprint.
Listen to Your Audience
Your target audience is the most important element when it comes to social media advertising and organic marketing.
You don’t need to use a paid social media strategy to know what your audience thinks and says of you—but you do need to spend time listening. This practice of actively engaging with your audience via commenting, direct messaging, or even tagging followers in your content shows that you are active and available for feedback on your social platform of choice.
Be personally involved in your community and show that you’re more than a faceless entity or brand logo. You can create groups and invite like-minded individuals to join and create a wholesome community based on the solutions or even social issues your brand supports.
You can also directly ask for opinions and react quickly to questions and complaints to enhance the sense of community and overall trust in your brand.
On Instagram, hashtags are a great way to build and reach out to your community.
You can even start your own hashtags or incorporate relevant trending hashtags to extend the reach of your organic content even further. In fact, you should be doing this as part of your best practices already—and if not, now it’s time to start!
By using specific hashtags, you can unify posts and make a searchable thread that both you and your audience can make the most of. It’s also a nice way for anyone passionate about your industry to find your brand.
When posts are unified, your audience will see all of them on the same page if they search the hashtag all of them have in common. This searchable thread of posts can be used to give you insight into what people are saying about your product or brand.
Remarketing & Retargeting
This might include website visits or even customers that have clicked one of your ads in the past. You can then leverage remarketing campaigns to promote offers or content relevant to their previous brand interaction.
For this, you will want to invest in paid campaigns with custom Facebook audiences. It allows you to upload your customers’ email addresses and target them on Facebook with tailored ads.
You can create custom audiences from sources such as Facebook engagement, website and/or app traffic, and customer lists. These people already know your business and you can engage on a higher and more personal level with them.
Strategize to Boost Sales
The end goal of any social media marketing strategy is to boost sales. There are various ways that you can do so, but you should keep in mind that every social media platform is different.
Strategies that work on Facebook might not translate well on LinkedIn or Twitter. Instagram, for example, is a visual platform, so you need to create exciting visuals to hook your audience.
It also doesn’t allow links with every post and has character limits, so promotions need to be more direct.
On Facebook, you will be better off with short video content than just a visually pleasing image and hashtags. Research which approaches to take on the platforms and do A/B testing to ensure you’re getting the results you want.
Reviews by previous customers make for great organic content that will give your sales a boost. Encourage your customers to share their thoughts on social media; it makes a difference to potential buyers.
People are more likely to buy a product if they can see that others are satisfied with it. Online reviews serve as a brilliant source of social proof, which can help increase sales.
User-generated content is a goldmine as well. Get your customers to share their experiences with your brand and products on social media.
Craft an Organic Social Media Strategy That Rocks
Organic social media is becoming the norm, and people are expecting more ‘realness’ from businesses. Paid social media strategies certainly have their place, but you should focus on taking the organic approach. Your audience (and sales team) will appreciate it, and you’ll build a more positive reputation for your brand.
Need some advice on getting organic social media marketing right? Our team of experts is ready and can be reached at (877) 866-6699. Alternatively, you can click here, and we’ll get back to you soon.