Bonnie and Clyde. Cookies and milk. A cold beer on a hot summer day in Colorado. These are just some of the best duos of all time.
One more to add to that list that you may not be as familiar with: organic and paid social media marketing.
While each on their own prove to be a viable tool in any digital marketer’s pocket, when combined, they can create an absolute force when it comes to building brand awareness/loyalty, driving website traffic and of course, the ultimate goal for any business: getting those conversions. It’s important to note that conversions go beyond the sale of a product; they can be a deeper understanding of a brand through unique viewership, a connection, a sense of trust and loyalty that is built with the consumer.
One benefit of having both organic and paid social media as part of your digital marketing strategy is that when used in conjunction with one another, they can give you a better overall picture of your audience. You can analyze the demographics, behaviors and interests of those who interact with your organic posts, and then use that data to create specific audience types in which you can target your ads knowing that they are already familiar with and react positively to your brand/organic content.
Another benefit of having your organic and paid social media strategies N’Sync is that together, they can help to grow your online presence. Organic social media does an excellent job of building that very necessary brand loyalty, creating a relationship and building a connection with your followers. Paid social media on the other hand, is great in achieving brand awareness – educating, informing, and helping to guide people along their purchase journeys.
Organic and paid social media – two sides of the same digital marketing coin. One simply does not (or should not) exist without the other.
Organic is the foundation of your social media efforts. It’s the driver behind your online community and audience engagement. When you take that strategy away, you eliminate a very big chunk of your social media activity. And when that happens, your ads don’t perform as well as they should. Paid social media is how you can take your content one step further, the very sweet icing on the proverbial cake. And everybody loves cake with frosting. To stand out and be successful in a very saturated digital marketing space, you must learn how to integrate both organic and paid social media strategies into your overall marketing plan.
And I know you’re probably thinking, “Well, Wendi. How do you seamlessly integrate the two in a way that really makes the most of your social media?”
I got you.
The first thing you can do is determine your most popular content. If you have a particular post that is converting well or tip-toes into viral territory, it might be perfect for an ad. A great example of this would be to boost a high-performing Facebook post to quickly convert your organic content into a promotion in a matter of minutes.
The second thing you can do is to make sure you are posting at the most opportune times. Social media is a lot like life in the sense that timing is everything. It matters for both organic and paid social media. You can leverage the best times to post organic content on your respective social media platforms to inform you of when you should run your ad campaigns in addition to your own data.
Last but certainly not least, don’t be afraid to promote without ads. Much like the fact that organic and paid social media don’t have to be a matter of either-or, neither do promotional posts.
Better together…
…like this peanut butter and jelly sandwich that has my name on it so if you’ll excuse me…..