How to utilise social media to reach your business goals

Over the last two decades, social media has evolved into one of the primary marketing channels, with over 4.55 billion active users world-wide. It has changed the way that brands are able to connect with their customers and gives you the power to reach a huge number of users within seconds of posting an ad.

Broadly speaking, you can divide your social media activity into two categories: organic and paid. These two types of content serve different purposes but work in harmony together to serve both your existing audience and enable you to reach new audiences.

Let’s take a closer look at these two types of content and how they can work together to help you achieve your business goals.

Organic content

Organic content is free content that you post to your feed.+

This type of content is best for managing your online reputation and connecting with your existing customers. Through your content you can start conversations with your audience, fostering deeper audience relationships, and build trust and credibility in your brand. It’s also a great place to showcase your brand personality and show behind the scenes insights into your business.

Paid content

Paid content is as the name suggests, it is content that you pay to be distributed amongst targeted audiences who are likely to be interested in your offering. Paid content is particularly effective for expanding your reach beyond your existing audience and driving conversions, particularly via retargeting ads (ads that are targeted to users who have already visited your website but didn’t complete a conversion).

How paid and organic content work together 

Whist you can do one but not the other (eg. paid but not organic social), they complement each other and are best when done in unison.

Firstly, paid ads typically perform better when you have a solid organic strategy in place. For example, if you’re running an ad and someone clicks onto your page and sees no organic activity it can make your ad seem less credible and perhaps spark concerns that your ad is a scam.

Conversely, paid ads can enhance the performance of your organic content strategy. For example, if you have a high performing piece of organic content, putting some budget behind it and distributing it further will expand its reach and make the most of your hard work.