Organic Vs. Paid Social Media Growth

In today’s world, there’s a huge spotlight on using social media to build your brand awareness, provide customer service, generate leads, connect and engage with your target audience, advertise your products or services, track your company performance, and more. The great thing about social media is its numerous platforms to choose from like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, etc. Although similar, they all differ in some aspects which makes it crucial that you are marketing on the correct platforms that will best suit your business.

When beginning to build your brand, establishing your social media presence is important for the growth of your business. You want to first outline your social media strategy, media goals, and target audience. Who are you trying to target to identify with your brand? Social media influx to your page can occur either organically or by purchasing it. Both organic and inorganic growth can lead to successful businesses, however, they aren’t necessarily equal. 

What is Organic Growth?

Organic growth is your company’s infrastructure. It involves the traction to your page, interest in your content, your exposure, and networking happens naturally. Ideally, this natural growth is composed of an audience that is searching for the product or service your company is offering. They’ll become invested in your content; thus creating a connection to your brand making them loyal customers & spreading positive word of mouth about your company. With organic growth, there is zero outside influence directing audiences to your page in which there may be less of a chance of establishing meaningful connections. Some tips to drive your organic social media growth are:

• Target the right audience
• Market on channels that best accompany your business
• Post content frequently
• Track analytics to post at appropriate times for your audience
• Be active amongst social communities
• Use relevant hashtags in every post
• Create relevant content that encourages engagement

Building a social media presence with organic growth will solidify your company’s strong foundation that will help sustain your business in the long run.

What is Paid Growth?

Unlike organic growth, paid growth refers to the paid, boosted, or sponsored ads that often require money to gain attention to your product or service. As users have increased the amount of time they spend on social media sites, users have become more accustomed to the ads that are being delivered to them. According to eMarketer, social media ad spending has increased since 2019.

Paid Growth through social media is more cost effective than, say, running an ad on tv, and gets your advertisement right in front of your audience. Promotions on social media allow businesses to generate leads and drive conversions, raise brand awareness, reach a broader audience, attract new followers, and promote new services, deals and events. Make sure that before you run a paid ad on social media you follow these tips:

• Research your target audience to ensure you are targeting the right profiles on the right social media sites
• Increase the quality of your content
• Check ad analytics to ensure that you are optimizing your ad performance
• Keep your ad short and sweet

For any business social media is a key component to marketing their goods or services effectively. Organic and Paid social media growth both have their pros and cons, and while both strategies have different results, they both provide the opportunity to gain new customers and followers, and promote quality content. With the consistent evolution of social media marketing in 2021, utilizing both to your advantage can be beneficial to the overall growth and success of your business. It’s all about discovering which strategy works best for your unique business.