“We advertise on Facebook, so why do we need to post on a regular profile?” Because strong organic social media influence bolsters paid digital marketing.
With 60% of the world’s population on social media, you can’t afford to ignore it. Organic social media content can even improve your website’s performance in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Spending money on social media marketing without developing a positive organic social media presence is like buying a car prized for its comfortable ride and then putting worn-out tires on it.
Strengthen your social media influence and you strengthen your digital social media marketing. And with Google’s recent Helpful Content update, your social media influence can add to your perceived Expertise-Authority-Trustworthiness (EAT). This could boost your website’s search ranking.
Paid Social Media vs. Organic Social Media
There is a subtle, but critical difference between paid social media advertising and organic social media posting. While paid ads are (naturally) for selling, your organic posts should rarely focus on selling. You could announce the occasional sale or special offer on your organic posts. This should be rare, however.
The tone you use on both paid and organic social posts should be consistent and should work with your overall content strategy. The type of post you use will also vary depending on which platform you are using and what target audience uses that platform.
Platforms and What They Excel At
You have probably heard the term “omnichannel marketing.” It means using a consistent message on various platforms, but adapting the message to the platform. In other words, don’t use identical content on every platform.
When you understand the type of content each platform excels at, you can tailor your content to get the best response from each. The following table lists several of the biggest platforms, the type of content each is best suited for, and a good digital marketing goal for that platform.
| Platform | Best Content Type | Best Marketing Goal |
|---|---|---|
| All types | Brand awareness | |
| TikTok | Videos | User-generated content, brand awareness |
| Photos, Videos | Showcasing products | |
| Photos, Videos | Community-building, news about your brand | |
| LinkedIn* | Text, photos | Business development, ebooks, white papers |
| YouTube | Videos | How-tos |
*LinkedIn is probably the best platform for B2B businesses. The other platforms are generally better for B2C.
Steps to Increasing Organic Social Media Influence
Using organic social media to increase your influence and bolster your paid social media advertising takes several steps. However, these steps are generally ones you take for your content strategy and your paid digital marketing strategy, so you’re not reinventing the wheel.
Before Posting:
- Set Goals. What do you want to accomplish with organic social media content? Do you want to build your email marketing list? Drive traffic to your website? Achieve X likes and comments per month? Know what you want to achieve so you can develop the right content for your goals.
- Research Your Audience. What demographics tend to use the platform(s) you want to use? What content speaks to that target audience?
- Choose Your Platform(s). You don’t necessarily have to be present on every platform. In some cases, certain platforms are clearly the right ones and others are not. It’s better to start with one or two platforms with the aim of revisiting and perhaps adding other platforms later.
- Stalk Your Competitors. Are your competitors on the same platforms as you? What is their content like? What kind of attention do they get? Do they engage with their audience? What content types do they tend to use?
During and After Posting:
- Schedule Your Posts. There are many tools that automate posting so you can put up organic content at times when your target audience is likely to be present. Scheduling helps you have a consistent presence, which is far more effective than posting when you can, or when you feel like it.
- Engage with Your Audience. Answer their questions. Offer to speak with them one-to-one where appropriate. Thank them for liking or commenting on your content. Show them you are human.
- Monitor Your Content. Not only should you use platform analytics to measure the strength of your presence on various platforms, but you should also ensure that your social media content aligns with your overall content strategy.
- Revise and Fine-Tune. Only with experience can you understand how to make your social media content more effective. You may eventually choose to add another social media platform to your stable. Likewise, you may find that a platform isn’t working out and drop it.
Organic Social Media and Email Marketing
Organic social media and email marketing can be a match made in heaven. Again, it is important to maintain a consistent tone with your email messages and your organic social media content.
If you have done email marketing for a while, the information you gather from your email subscribers can help you choose the best social media platforms to use. You can also add social media links to your emails and learn which ones subscribers use most.
The occasional social media post inviting people to join your email list can help you build it up. Some brands create social media groups specifically for sharing email marketing content. These groups can give participants a sense of exclusivity and provide opportunities to learn more about your target audience.
Finally, social media can be outstanding for building social proof. Social proof gives people the sense that other people’s actions in regard to your brand are “correct” and that you are a trustworthy business. This can be invaluable for brand reputation.
Results You Can Expect
Pairing organic social media content with paid digital marketing on social media can yield many benefits. With a sound social media strategy, you can expect
- Better overall marketing metrics
- More email subscribers
- More opportunities to engage with customers
- Better brand awareness
- Better audience targeting
- More web traffic
- First-party data to assist with other digital marketing
- More leads and conversions
- Better monitoring of your competitors
Expanding your social media influence doesn’t mean pulling out all the stops and attempting to go viral. It does mean strengthening your paid social media advertising by demonstrating that you want to engage with your audience. It means showing your brand is trustworthy and that it is run by actual people.
If this sounds promising, yet overwhelming, perhaps we should have a conversation. We help businesses just like yours define and achieve their digital marketing goals, both through paid social media advertising and organic social media posting.
There’s no reason to sit back and watch your competitors lap up the attention on social media because you deserve attention too. We can show you how to get it so you can achieve your business goals more quickly.
