Most brands are on social media nowadays. You might have heard people talking about organic vs paid social media, but what’s the difference between the two? If you’re setting up a business account or company page, it can be confusing to know where to start and which approach makes the most sense for your business.
In simple terms, organic social media is what you post without paying to promote it, while paid social is advertising or boosted content that you put budget behind.
Organic social media helps you build awareness, show your personality and earn trust over time. Paid social can extend your reach, target specific audiences and support goals such as leads, website traffic or sales.
At VerriBerri, we manage both organic and paid social media for businesses, so we know how easy it is to confuse the two. In this blog, we’ll break down how they differ, what each one can do for your business and whether you really need to choose between them.
Organic vs Paid Social Media
| Organic Social Media | Paid Social Media | |
| Platforms | Instagram, Facebook, Threads, TikTok, LinkedIn, X | Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, X and more |
| Objectives | Brand awareness, community building, engagement and customer relationships | Brand awareness, website traffic, leads, conversions and sales |
| Reach | Generally influenced by your followers, content relevance, engagement and each platform’s algorithm | Usually influenced by your target audience, campaign objectives, budget and ad performance |
| Targeting | Primarily reaches your existing followers and people who discover your content | Allows you to target specific audiences based on factors such as demographics, interests, behaviours and previous interactions |
| Cost | No media spend, but requires time and resources to create and manage | You set a budget for your campaign, with minimum spend requirements varying by platform and campaign type |
| Speed | Reach and engagement can build over time, depending on content performance and your existing audience | Can put your content in front of a targeted audience as soon as your campaign is live and delivering |
5 Key Benefits of Organic Social Media
Let’s talk about the key benefits of organic social media:
- Builds trust to help people feel confident in your brand: When people discover a business online, they may look at its social media presence alongside its website to get a feel for who the brand is and whether it’s active and credible. A professional, polished and up-to-date social presence can therefore help build trust online.
- Shows what makes your brand different: Organic social media is a great channel for spotlighting your brand’s personality. Are you irreverent in your posts and comment sections, like brands such as Ryanair or Duolingo? Or are you more editorial in tone, like Chanel and The New York Times?
- Creates community to build relationships and advocacy: Building a sense of community with your followers and potential customers is also vital. One great real-world example is the social channels for the Alive by Whitney Simmons app. Not only do they share brand updates, but they also host community challenges, stay highly engaged in the comments section and reshare customer content on Stories.
- Builds a loyal audience with a long-term presence: Going viral can be exciting, but a spike in views doesn’t always translate into long-term value. Building a smaller but highly engaged audience that returns time after time can be much more valuable for some businesses.
- Content testing and learning to gain useful insights: Organic social media also gives you plenty of opportunities to test and learn. What made one post successful? Why did another not perform as expected? These insights can help shape future content and messaging across your other marketing channels.
5 Key Benefits of Paid Social Media
Let’s break down some of the key benefits of paid social:
- Target the right people: Paid social lets you choose who you want your ads to reach, so your content is more likely to be seen by people who are relevant to your business.
- Scale successful content: You can set up a specific social media advertising campaign, but you can also put budget behind top-performing organic posts. This can help your content reach people beyond your existing follower base and get more value from content that’s already performing well.
- Drive traffic and generate leads or conversions: Paid social can help you get your business in front of relevant audiences and encourage them to take action. Depending on your campaign, you can ask people to visit your website, follow your page, make a purchase or fill in a form.
- Set campaign-specific objectives: You can also choose campaign objectives based on what you want to achieve. Do you want to raise brand awareness and stay front of mind? Or do you want to drive website visits, leads or sales?
- Retarget to re-engage potential customers: Retargeting lets you show ads to people who have already interacted with your business, such as visiting your website, engaging with your social content or viewing a product. This gives you another opportunity to re-engage warm audiences and encourage them to take the next step.
Which is Right for Your Business?
When it comes to organic vs paid social media, rather than asking which is better, think about what you actually want social media to achieve for your business.
Think about your goals, your budget, the platforms your audience uses and what role you want social media to play in your wider marketing strategy.
It might make sense to use organic social media to build brand awareness, engage your existing audience and build a community, while using paid social to support objectives such as driving website traffic, generating leads, increasing sales or retargeting potential customers.
Of course, the two can also work together. For example, if you’re launching a new product or running a specific campaign, you could use organic social to tease the launch, build excitement, share behind-the-scenes content and share customer content. You can then use paid social to extend your reach and encourage your target audience to take the next step, whether that’s visiting your website, signing up or making a purchase.
As you can see, there isn’t a universal answer. The right mix of organic and paid social media really depends on your business goals, budget and audience, and there are a few things to consider when deciding what’s right for you.
At VerriBerri, we’ve managed organic and paid social media for hundreds of brands, so we can help you choose the right mix and build a strategy around your goals. To find out more, drop us an email at amy@verriberri.co.uk or get in touch today.