Organic vs. paid social media—is one better than the other? Should you invest more heavily in one over the other? As it turns out, there isn’t such a clear-cut answer.
Both can help your business grow, but you need to know the ins and outs of paid social media ads and organic marketing. There are a lot of factors to consider, so let’s begin by covering what you need to know.
What Is Organic Marketing on Social Media?
Organic marketing strategies include focusing on content, your website, social accounts, and SEO. It includes the content that you share on your social media accounts. You don’t pay for organic marketing, though it does take time for this strategy to work.
Examples of organic marketing include:
- Infographics
- Blog posts
- Videos
- Testimonials
- Unpaid posts on your social media
- Guest posts
- SEO
- Email newsletters
Organic marketing focuses on bringing traffic to your website or increasing your followers on social media over time. However, it’s a vital part of your SEO marketing strategy.
What Is Paid Social Media Marketing?
Paid social media advertising requires you to pay for advertisements on social media sites. You can pay to boost posts, which can help you reach a wider audience.
Instagram ads and Facebook ads are two examples. Users can also now buy directly from their Instagram feed.
Paid social media ads allow you to focus on a set sub-audience. You can hone your target audience and make it more specific to reach your goals.
Examples of paid social media marketing include:
- Influencer marketing
- Display ads
- Pay-per-click (PPC) ads
Using paid social media, your traffic on your website also increases. However, you’ll have to set a budget for your ad spending.
Organic vs. Paid Social Media: Which One Is Right for Your Business?
Ideally, you should be using both strategies to maximize your exposure, drive traffic, and grow your business.
Organic marketing may be more attainable for your business, depending on your budget. Paid advertising produces the results you want faster. You need to use both in your marketing strategy.
As such, it’s important to evaluate your business goals and decide what you need to focus on.
The main positive point of organic marketing is that it’s free, while paid social media advertising costs money. Organic marketing also continues to work for you, such as with blog posts or videos.
Paid social advertising, such as through PPC marketing, helps you reach a wider audience and convert them into customers. It’s best for attracting new followers, raising brand awareness, generating leads, and driving conversions. You can use a paid social media agency to help you make the most of your advertising dollars.
There’s a lot to learn, but you can start with this post, which covers paid media in depth.
Elevate Your Business
The battle between organic vs. paid social media shouldn’t be a battle at all. It isn’t necessarily which one is better, but what each one can offer you and how each method will help you reach your goals.
If you want to elevate your business to the next level, you should rely on organic marketing for SEO purposes and paid social advertising to attract more customers.
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