Paid vs. Organic Social Media: You don’t need to choose

When you publish an organic post on social media, it reaches only a limited audience. This includes a smaller percentage of your followers, as well as those who perform a search or click on a hashtag within the social platform.

Currently, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube Shorts, as well as Facebook and Instagram Reels can gain traction within the first 1-2 hours without initially backing the posts with a paid social media campaign. These platforms consider how long a video was watched, or how many shares and saves the post receives before deciding to show the content to even more people organically (without ad spend).

Paid social campaigns can increase your content's visibility to millions within hours, depending on your ad budget, and increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive traffic to a website. You can reach an audience based on their interests and behaviors, rather than relying solely on the platform's organic algorithm.

Regardless of how much money you spend on paid social media campaigns, it won't matter if the audience is not interested in the post. While more people seeing the content is guaranteed, it doesn't guarantee that they will like, share, save, comment, or click.

At the core, the content needs to resonate with your audience's interests and values. Many companies test various versions of their posts by running them as ads-only, visible to their targeted audience, before posting them to their organic feeds.

To determine the best performing post, run a paid campaign test for at least 72 hours. The winning post will be based on the lowest cost per engagement, click, or conversion (i.e. subscribers or buyers). Publish the strongest performing ad on your social media feed as an organic post. Back the organic post with spend to ensure it remains searchable and visible on your feed with a lot of visible likes, shares, comments, and views.

To maximize the impact of your social media strategy and channels, combine organic with paid. Paid social media helps you reach a larger audience fast, while organic social media helps you get seen by your followers and keeps your feed active. Achieve the balance between reaching new audiences, and nurturing your community.