Marketers have acknowledged the importance of utilizing social media in marketing since it was created. Social media is a useful resource that allows your message to instantly reach millions of people simultaneously which is impossible to do with traditional marketing tactics. Although its significance is widely recognized, businesses often overlook the benefits of social media marketing.
Because there are several types of social media and different platforms to choose from, businesses often opt out of using it to avoid the overwhelming process of establishing an online brand. However, choosing the right social media based on the specifications of your business and your target audience can be a simple process that yields effective results.
Paid social
Paid social media is an advertising technique that utilizes a company’s advertising budget to implement targeted advertisements. These advertisements are intended to reach potential customers who are not yet following your social media platforms and encourage them to be a part of your online brand.
Advantages
Paid social media typically has a higher immediate return on investment, which can be helpful if you want to rapidly increase your customer base in a short period of time. Because paid social media can be filtered to target your specific audience, the user engagement tends to be much higher compared to general advertisements. The best part about this type of social media is that it exposes your content to a wide range of people as opposed to just the users that follow your accounts.
Disadvantages
One of the biggest drawbacks of paid social media is the expenses that could accumulate over time. Paid social media can have a positive effect, but sometimes, it doesn’t contribute as much as you’d hope, adding risk to the investment. Another disadvantage of paid social media is that there are only so many people you can reach and once your content is seen by all of your target audience, you can’t reach any more users. It also needs to be constantly monitored so you’ll need to set aside plenty of time to manage your efforts.
Organic Social
Organic social media refers to any posts, videos, or stories that are posted for free on various social media platforms. This type of social media should be used to post current content that fits your brand, helping establish your digital footprint. Social media connects your business directly to your target audience. By interacting with your followers through comments, likes, shares, and reposts, you can create meaningful relationships with your ideal customer base.
Advantages
Organic social media is not confined to a set period of time which means you can always update your strategies to meet the needs of your audience. Because organic social media is free, it is a useful tactic for businesses with a small advertising budget to continue marketing their brand.
The most successful social media advertisements are the most creative and eye-catching to the audience. Organic social media is beneficial because it relies on the innovative advertising strategies that a company creates for itself rather than a large budget to connect with users.
Organic social media provides a company with the freedom to be creative with their social media accounts and more room to grow as a brand. Organic social media is all about showcasing a positive image to your target audience. In this way, it is easy for a brand to maintain and repair its reputation. User-generated content is another advantage of organic social media. By encouraging followers to create their own media related to your brand, you can increase brand loyalty, connect with new customers, and get a break from creating your own content.
Disadvantages
When using organic social media, you can control who follows you but there is no way to directly target your audience. Generally, organic social media content can only reach the users who are following you, limiting the possible number of people that could see your posts. Social media posts are often shown to a small percentage of your followers which means that your content is reaching even fewer people than you think it would. In fact, Instagram only shares your posts with 10% of your followers while Facebook shares your posts even less with only 2% of your followers.
No matter what business you have, social media can be an invaluable tool if it is used the proper way. Unfortunately, there is no “one size fits all” approach to social media marketing so it may take time to understand your place on social media. Paid and organic social media are both great options in their own ways. A common misconception is that marketers should choose between paid and organic social media; however, the best digital marketing approach is to leverage both techniques. This creates a balanced media strategy that maximizes the benefits that social media can have on your brand.
How we can help
As a full-service marketing agency, Inner Spark Creative has the ability to leverage the latest marketing tactics to benefit your business. By utilizing paid and organic social media strategies, we can help you establish your digital brand and increase foot traffic which will ultimately result in a higher return on investment for your business.