Using social media for your business has become an essential part of entrepreneurship, especially for small businesses. The entire customer journey can happen through social media, from the initial researching of their needs to the final acquisition of the product or service. You, as a business owner, must therefore make sure that your ideal customer sees your product or service in a sea of overwhelming options.
So, what is more important: investing on paid or on organic social media?
What are Organic and Paid Social Media?
First, let’s define the two terms. To put it very simply, organic social media is the use of free social media tools to build an online presence. This means your standard Instagram or TikTok profiles, or Facebook and LinkedIn pages.
While paid social media makes use of any type of advertisement in those same platforms, which requires payment. This includes pay-per-click advertisement, display ads and even influencer promotions.
Both types of marketing efforts present benefits for your business. Although one can exist without the other, a hybrid approach to this aspect of your social media strategy is recommended. Let us take a look at the benefits of each type and why it is smart to invest in both of them.
Benefits of Paid Social Media
Paying to advertise your content and your product on social media can be a very smart move. Promoting your posts has become an essential step for online businesses. Boosting your content will expand your current reach as well as help reach a larger audience, and even a specific audience if desired. Besides, it makes it so that your content will always be present on your customers' social media feeds, instead of buried under thousands of posts on their timelines.
Benefits of Organic Social Media
The first immediate benefit we can list is that organic social media is free. It costs nothing for you to create an account on your platform of choice and start your business’s online presence. But an organic approach to social media is not just simply the creation of a new profile on a platform. It is also the care and effort put into it for your audience to see. People do not log in to their accounts to see product advertisements, but they do follow their favourite brands nonetheless.

In this day and age, it is essential to have an organic approach to your social media if you want to build trust. Having a reputation that new customers can see, and a community that can attest to your authenticity can be vital in the decision making process of a customer that is interested in your product or service. It does also allow for direct feedback to be given to you, allowing you to know all about your customer experience first-hand.
Organic social media is indispensable, and as such, it also requires some investments. Being in the form of time or effort, the investment you make on your social media is integral to your success. Having a strong presence online can be essential. Sometimes, it may also require a monetary investment if you find yourself in need of professional help to handle the aspects you may not be an expert on.
Should I Invest In Paid Social Media?
Is it worth it for you to invest money on promoting your content? Is it truly a smart business choice?
Most of the time, yes, if you can.
Your marketing efforts towards what you are selling cannot reach their maximum potential without having your content promoted to those who may actually be interested in you, or that do not still know about you. The goal is always to grow, and to reach as many people as possible. So, with careful planning and budgeting, the return from the investment in paid social media is surely worth it.
However, the first step to being successful in your paid social media endeavours is to make sure your organic efforts match it. Your organic social media must be strong and cohesive to back up and match the expectations set by your advertisement. When a customer clicks on your ads, they will expect to be met with a certain level of professionalism, and will not complete the purchases if they do not trust what they see, regardless of which platform you choose to use.
Are you planning on investing on your social media? We can help you in every step of the way.
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