Have you ever been torn about choosing between paid vs organic social media marketing? Or read conflicting advice from different sources on the topic? This article is intended to clear up some of the confusion and give you an understanding of the pros and cons of both methods to help you choose the right strategy for you and your business.

Paid Social Media

Paid social media allows you to pay for results that align with your business goal. Paid social media is effective for a number of objectives: promoting awareness, increasing website traffic, boosting engagement, gaining leads, app promotion, and developing sales. It allows you to target your desired audience directly while giving you complete control over how much and long you spend your money.

A downside to paid advertising on social media is, while you are provided estimates, you will not know exactly what your money will buy you. A big budget does not always equate to big results. Your objective, targeting parameters, ad creative, and ad copy need to cohesively play together to get the outcome you’re looking for. This may take some time to perfect as you don’t always know exactly what your audience will take to the best.

Organic Social Media

Organic social is effective for building relationships and humanizing your brand. It also has the ability to create your social media platforms into a hub of information for potential and current customers. This method costs you nothing while allowing you to reach your existing audience through valuable, engaging content and to build trust through conversations.

However, organic social media takes a long time and a lot of persistence to yield high rewards. It limits you to the pool of users that are currently following your accounts in hopes that they will share your content to their network. Even so, you are at the mercy of the ever-changing algorithm which means your content may not be delivered to your audience’s feeds as much as other pieces of content.

Choosing the Right Method

So, paid or organic? The answer is both! While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to marketing, there are benefits to finding your perfect balance between using paid and organic social media. Utilize the strengths of each method to create a strong online presence and scale your business. 

Need help finding the perfect balance for your social media strategy? Contact us and we’ll help you figure it out!