Social media is pretty great. It allows you to create a little community, growing your brand awareness, opening dialogues with customers, and generating a great ROI — all by being authentic. But nailing down the right strategy for the maximum growth can be tricky. Should you focus on paid or organic social?  

Trick question: you need both! Here’s a quick look at how to take advantage of each approach.

How to Use Organic Social Media:

• Show your brands personality
• Start a conversation with your audience
• Share inspiring, educational, and helpful content

How to Use Paid Social Media:

• Boost top-performing organic content 
• Optimise ads for each platform (asset sizes, CTAs, etc.)
• Narrow down on your ideal audience 
• Use A/B testing…then measure & repeat 

Seems simple enough. Organic is a great way to engage and inspire your audience with helpful content that shows off your expertise, while paid is a great way to fine tune your most successful content to reach new people and drive growth. 

But there are a few tips to help you make the most of a fully-integrated campaign using both paid and organic social. Check it out.  

Integrating Your Organic & Paid Strategies

 

• Use Organic to Test Your Content
  No brainer here — if you have a specific organic post, image, or video that received great engagement or feedback, consider putting some paid amplification behind that content to get more eyes on it. You can do this by creating an all new ad with the same message and asset, or simply boosting the post you already have. It’s easier and lower risk than going the paid route from the get-go and hoping it performs well.  

• Promote Original Content, Share Curated Content
  Curated content (content created by other brands) or user-generated content (content created by individuals, like your followers) are great tactics for your organic community. But it’s usually not worth putting money behind unless a very reputable source is talking very highly of your brand. Otherwise, save those dollars for original content that shows you as the expert, not someone else.  

• Keep Consistency Across Your Content 

By now you know paid and organic social both have different purposes and advantages, but the end goal is the same: growing your business. And it’s likely people will somehow interact with both throughout the customer journey. Aligning your messaging, look, and feel is important to minimize the gap between organic and paid, and create a seamless experience. The easier it is to identify your brand wherever you are, the easier it is to remember you.

 

• Incorporate Remarketing Strategies
  A fantastic way to combine your paid and organic efforts is to create ad-hoc remarketing display ads using previously visited organic pages or content. Specifically target people who have already visited your page or website and use similar visuals or messaging to the posts/pages they’ve seen previously. This approach will not only give users a more natural feeling when they click on the display ad, but it’s also low risk, high ROI since these people are already interested in your business.  

• Create Multiple Touch Points
  In order to keep potential buyers moving through their customer journey, they need reasons to stay engaged. Sending them reminders that at one point or another, they were interested in what you had to offer is a big part of that. With the average consumer attention span now at just 8 seconds, it certainly doesn’t take anyone long to get distracted by the next video or meme. Through those retargeting strategies we mentioned in #5, you can leverage analytics to optimize content for driving target audiences down the sales funnel. And don’t forget to answer and follow up on individual inquiries organically too. 

For expert guidance on integrating paid and social media to achieve your unique goals and KPIs, contact shyft to discuss your strategy today.