Why combine your organic and paid social media strategy?

What’s better for you? Organic social media marketing producing long-term inbound results, or fast and lucrative gains through a paid social media strategy?

Why not both?

We’re firm in the belief that the most successful growth marketing strategies rely on a number of different inbound techniques. For instance, you can mix organic social engagement, content marketing and biddable media to create a targeted paid social media plan.

More marketers and firms than ever are walking that path - the evidence backs it up. A recent survey by Clutch shows that 86% of marketers offering paid social media services complement this with an organic approach.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. Make sure your social media management is helping not damaging your brand by reading our post "How to boost your brand reputation with social media management"

Why organic is so essential alongside a paid social media strategy

So, why not just throw your budget behind a paid social media strategy and reap the rewards?

It may get results, but this approach would miss the point of social media marketing entirely. The clue is in the name; social media is about engaging with real people, joining real conversations and sparking debate. Social media gives companies a way to offer a personal customer service and, sometimes, just say a friendly hello to prospects.

On-trend social media campaigns

If you follow fashion, then Sherri Hill is a name you’ll be hearing a lot more of sooner than later. The little-known designer rivalled established brands including Tommy Hilfiger, Michael Kors and Marc Jacobs during New York Fashion Week (NYFW), coming third in ListenFirst’s Digital Engagement Rating list.

The designer only made her debut at NYFW in 2011, but managed to amass 3.2 million engagements during her recent show at the end of September. The team may have some paid social media services in their locker, but they also came up with some creative organic solutions that stood out.

Probably their best idea was harnessing the good feeling and patriotism from the Rio Olympics, with gold medal (and viral social) sensations Simone Biles and Aly Raisman in their NYFW audience. This fact didn’t go unnoticed by the public, and led to a lot of attention on social media platforms.

Complement your paid social media strategy with creative thinking

Not everyone can have help from the next big things in gymnastics, though. So how can smaller brands think work creatively as well as promoting themselves through paid social media channels?

Let’s take another look at the Clutch survey. No one business is the same when it comes to growth marketing, just like no one social marketing platform is the same when it comes to paid social media. However, according to the survey, over 60% of paid social media marketers head straight to Facebook when they want to spend some budget. YouTube and Twitter follow in second and third position with 34% and 33% respectively.

That’s quite a gap, but easy to explain once you understand how extensive Facebook’s targeting options are, satisfying even the biggest companies. Proctor & Gamble’s paid social media strategy relies heavily on Facebook’s ability to target up to 80 million potential and existing customers.

Meanwhile, only 13% of larger companies are relying solely on organic social marketing, showing how much the mix between paid social and organic has been embraced.

To answer the creativity question? With paid social doing all the hard work when it comes to targeting and reaching new leads, it frees brands up to concentrate on keeping it simple and doing what the competition isn’t online.

Be clever. Be quirky. Think differently. Get out there and engage with people. Consider Crate and Barrel, the furniture chain who recently tried their hand at using a brand new video editing tool to try and be creative in front of new prospects. That bravery saw a 7.9 percent ad-recall lift and 155,000 impressions on Instagram and Facebook posts. Proof that trying something new in a positive way can see almost instant results when combining paid and organic social into your strategy.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. Make sure your social media management is helping not damaging your brand by reading our post "How to boost your brand reputation with social media management"