Should You Develop A Strong Organic Social Media Marketing Presence?

There will forever be a never-ending debate among digital marketers about paid social media versus organic social media plans. While many digital marketing leaders of some of the more renowned companies would typically opt for a hybrid social media model, which allows a significant amount of (bulk!) organic social media marketing that is teamed with a certain amount of paid social efforts, it may not always be that straightforward for smaller teams – or those undergoing advertising as well as marketing budget cuts – to have a huge amount of paid-for social media campaigns, if any at all.

Besides the very pertinent fact that organic social media strategies can very definitely boost a brand’s presence (and followers) – while also offering benefits such as marketing cost-efficiencies as well as authenticity – the fact remains that any brand, big or small, is able to create a wholesome online image with a robust organic social media strategy even minus having a paid social media plan in place.

What Is Organic Social Media?

The term ‘organic social media’ is the usage of the free services and tools which each social media platform provides to its users. This includes posting the following for your audience:

• Status updates,
• Links, as well as
• Images with captions.

The aim of organic social media is to establish a community of loyal followers and customers through posting content that is relevant and interacting with those people who interact with your brand. If you would like to show customers your true values and culture, while – in addition to learning about the values of your customers – organic social media marketing is the best way to do so​.

What Is Paid Social?

Paid social, on the other hand, is identified as paying for social media platforms to show ads or sponsored messages to users of the social network according to user profiles and features, with each one of these ads or sponsored messages incurring a cost, depending on the type of ad served. For instance, pay-per-click (PPC) ads incur a cost each time your ad is clicked by a user.

Why Organic Social Is Important

When a prospect or customer research a brand online, they are bound to research the brand’s website in addition to their social media pages. This is in the B2B marketplace especially where a brand’s LinkedIn presence plays a vital role is influencing a potential buyer’s image of the company.

For B2C companies, having a robust Facebook, Twitter or Instagram plan – which is fed with pertinent and timely product updates, team updates and in general, other exciting social media content (polls, value-add reads or information, etc) – is very important in creating a more interested prospect as well as buyer base.

An organic social media strategy can assist with word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing. This is because people will visit your social profile in order to see what others are saying about your brand.

With 88% of individuals trusting online reviews that are penned by other consumers as much as they have faith in recommendations from personal contacts, and 81% of individuals saying that they’re influenced by what their friends and colleagues are sharing on social media, an organic social strategy is imperative towards building positive brand perception and share-of-voice.

If you don’t – at the moment – have an organic social media strategy which aims to post content constantly, engage with users as well as address customer joys or concerns, the users who you’re targeting through paid efforts could discredit your brand’s validity.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

If you would like to learn the ins and outs of social media marketing, then you really do need to do our Social Media Marketing Course. Follow this link to find out more.