You think your company has a great social media strategy along with a great organic following, so you may wonder what would be the point of spending money on paid posts?
Well, suppose you had a food truck that everyone in the neighborhood patronized. You’ve never advertised but, over time, the locals have made you successful. Now, however, your business has plateaued and the opportunity to expand your business is limited because it’s based mainly on word or mouth.
What if your food truck ran some radio or TV ads and reached a large audience outside your neighborhood? Of course, you’d have to pay for those ads, but they would bring in customers that would normally be beyond your reach.
Clearly, a combination of local, organic and paid advertising would be a great way to satisfy your current customers while expanding your food truck business. Social media posts work exactly the same way.
Why the Shift to a Hybrid Strategy Matters.
The shift to hybrid organic/paid social strategies recognizes that relying on one is insufficient; it’s about integrating free, relationship-building organic content with paid amplification of your brand, which will expand your reach. Organic brings you brand loyalty, while paid posts let you achieve some shorter term, immediate business goals, which is why more businesses are shifting to a hybrid strategy of organic and paid posts.
Smart marketers use this hybrid approach mainly because today’s users can spot hard-sell ads, but they won’t find your best organic posts without a gentle push. Combining paid and organic social media strategies helps you build authentic connections while achieving growth objectives and staying competitive.
How Organic Social Media Builds Community
Organic posts allow brands to communicate authentically with their audience. By sharing relatable content and responding to comments, brands can foster genuine connections.
As a part of building connections, organic posts can encourage followers to share their experiences or content related to your brand. This sharing creates a sense of belonging and highlighting user-generated content can strengthen community ties and encourage participation.
Another advantage to organic posts is the ability to actively seek feedback and to respond to followers, showing that you value their opinions. This two-way communication helps build a loyal community that feels heard and appreciated.
Paid Social Expands Your Reach
Paid social media can expand your reach in several important ways, like targeted advertising, which allows you to target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. This precision ensures that your content reaches the most relevant audience, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion.
Additionally, you have the ability to geographically target an audience so you can tailor your ads to specific geographic locations, allowing you to reach audiences in designated cities, states, or even countries. This is especially useful to promote local businesses or events.
Paid social media also allows for retargeting users who have previously interacted with your brand. This keeps your brand top-of-mind and encourages potential customers to reconsider the products or services your business offers.
Importantly, and maybe the most helpful, is that paid social media provides detailed analytics, allowing you to track performance and optimize your campaigns. This data helps you refine your targeting and messaging for maximum reach.
The Power of Using Organic and Paid Together
Your organic posts make your brand feel real. Paid ads help you get in front of more people. When they’re aligned, you see better results and faster growth.
While organic can provide authenticity and trust, cost-effective growth, community vibes, and content that lasts, paid posts can be used for launching new products, promoting an event or a limited-time offer, getting a leg up on the competition, and reaching audiences that would love to follow you except they may not have ever heard of you.
According to Sprout Social, a good social strategy begins with determining what content belongs on your organic channels and what should be promoted through ads. Once that’s clear, it becomes much easier to keep the tone, look, and overall message consistent so that everything is working toward the same goals.
It takes some experience to find the perfect balance for successful hybrid organic and paid posts. It can also be tricky to create and implement an effective hybrid strategy; one that will convey the authenticity of your brand to a larger audience and turn your best-performing organic social media posts into paid ads, keeping that authentic feel while scaling your reach.
Fortunately, McFadden/Gevender has social media experts with years of experience that are waiting to help. Give us a call and let us tell you how we can take your brand further.
