Sponsored posts on social media have grown in popularity as an acquisition tool. Brands are better able to reach their audiences and get in front of new audience members with the power of paid promotions. However, despite the popularity of paid posts, organic content is still important. Brands need to strike a delicate balance between paid and organic methods to maintain a thriving social community. Find out how organic growth can benefit your company and help you target customers for maximum retention.
Organic Content Is Deeper in the Funnel Than Paid Posts
Customers who see paid posts are either unfamiliar overall with a brand, or they like the brand but don’t engage with it. Some social media managers promote posts to share news that existing customers didn’t know about as a way to reach a larger part of the audience. However, customers who interact with paid posts typically reside at the top of the funnel. When they move from interacting with your brand through a paid post to interacting organically, they have taken a step deeper into the sales funnel and are more engaged.
With this information, brands can create a social media strategy based around the sales funnel. Organic content can differ from paid posts because it addresses different customer needs. While the paid posts may focus on awareness, the organic posts could drive traffic to a website or educate customers about products they should consider buying. Instead of organic and paid posts fighting against each other, they can partner for the greater good of a business.
Quality Organic Content Builds Your Brand
Brands that use paid promotions to drive customers to engage with them organically need to create a positive experience as a reward. Why would you like a page that never posted interesting or important information? Why would a brand waste money acquiring clients only to lose them with bad content?
In many ways, your organic social media presence is similar to your website experience. If you have a poor website, then customers will bounce. If you have poor organic content, then customers will unfollow, unlike, or ignore you.
To create a positive experience, try to diversify your social media content plans between paid and organic posts. Make room on your organic calendar for catchy, viral content along with informational posts that draw in customers. This strategy will assure them that liking your page and growing more familiar with your brand are good ideas.
Customers Evaluate Brands Through Their Social Media Content
Continuing the idea that your social media platforms reflect your business as strongly as your website, customers turn to your social media channels to learn about your brand and discover what they can expect when they work with you. Customers want to learn how quickly you resolve problems and if your company offers quality services. A few ways they discover these items include the following:
- Reading online reviews left by customers on social media
- Following comments and posts from customers to see how you respond to them
- Checking how often you post and communicate important information about your brand
A brand that posts only good news and hides or deletes negative comments is often criticized more than brands that address issues directly. For example, The Huffington Post recounted a story of one mom who wrote a letter to Party City a few years ago urging the company to move away from highly sexualized girls Halloween costumes, especially for her 3-year-old child. The company responded by deleting the post. This action sparked outrage from parents and customers who felt the company wasn’t listening to them.
The Party City post could have been an opportunity to start a discussion with parents and engage with customers organically, which could have turned a negative experience into a positive one.
Organic Content Reduces Your Overall Social Media ROI
Social media budgets typically include costs for graphic design and video creation, expenses for account management or tools, and money for promoted posts. Together, these costs allow brands to understand exactly how much they can spend to acquire and maintain customers on social media.
According to Social Media Today, the more dependent brands are on paid promotions, the more their ROI could suffer. The only solution a brand could have to grow sales and traffic would be to increase the number of posts and invest more in paid promotions. This strategy can keep the ROI flat, if not declining.
However, developing a strong organic presence means a brand can engage with customers at a lower cost. A company can call on customers to submit ideas, photos, or animated GIFs, and then share the best ones. User-generated content can reduce content creation costs, while a brand can increase its exposure organically through user participation. In this case, costs for creation and promotion decrease, while engagement increases, growing the overall ROI.
Brands are constantly asked to do more with less of their budgets, and building an organic following is a simple strategy.
Brands Can Test Organic Content Before Boosting It
One additional way organic posts boost ROI is by creating a testing ground for different style types. Some brands develop a strategy where their best performing organic posts get promoted. This approach reduces the risk for brands wasting their money on promoted posts that may not work.
To create this testing environment, they share a variety of different video types, memes, and content tones to see which ones audiences respond to in their interactions. By promoting successful posts, companies further grow their ROI and create a strong first impression for their brands.
If a post falls flat in a paid promotion, brands could likely break even on their investments, but a failed social media post is a learning opportunity to learn what customers want and how to deliver what they want to them.
Organic social media was popular before sponsored posts and is still an integral part of your marketing strategy. Brands that ignore their organic engagement through poor content and ignored customer comments can struggle to drive traffic deeper into the funnel and convert that traffic into sales. If you need to grow your organic traffic, set up some time to speak with the social media engagement experts at VivosWeb to create a social media plan that can help you engage with your followers.
