When Paid and Organic Social Work Together – Tips & Insights Part 4 of 4


Communication and collaboration between the paid and organic side of social tends to be limited or non-existent. This prevents brands from providing a cohesive message to their customers. When paid and organic social work together, brands see more success for their overall business. Social media is a powerful tool to help your brand reach the right audience. Learn how to use it to its full potential to yield the most success for your brand.

Organic social media receives a lot less exposure than paid social, particularly because the algorithms on social platforms favor organic posts from individual users over brands – driving brands to pay for more exposure. This is why it’s highly recommended to incorporate a “boosting” strategy within organic social. Boosting allows brands to reach a wider audience by putting money behind the best performing organic posts, which is a great way to drive more reach and engagement. While boosting can be considered paid social since money is involved, most brands make it part of their organic strategy since it’s promoting organic posts.

Organic social is primarily used to drive brand awareness and relevancy while paid social is used to drive action with lead gen and conversion ads and sometimes brand awareness ads depending on the social platform. The strategy you implement for organic and paid social depends entirely on the goals of your brand. Before launching a new strategy have a set goal in mind and the exact metrics you plan to report on. Common organic social metrics to report on are impressions, reach, engagement, social following, and social traffic to the brand website. Common paid social metrics to report on are the number of conversions, CPC (cost per click), CPM (cost per impression), CTR (click through rate), and ROAS (return on ad spend).

When organic social and paid social work together, brands receive better insights for their overall strategy. Use both to understand what your audience wants. When you listen to your audience it’s easier to respond with the exact content they’re looking for. Paid social provides insights on which type of creative and messaging really makes an impact on customers. Use these insights to curate more effective creative for organic social and vice versa.

Need more of a reason to make these two parts of social media collaborate successfully? 84% of millennials say they’re more likely to buy from a brand they follow on social. If you’re running social media ads with zero organic social presence you’re missing out on an opportunity to convert more customers.