Social media is one of the platforms that run our lives in today’s world. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many other social media websites are being used to pass information, to make announcements go viral, and extensively to market and promote services and products. If you want to understand the power of social media better, take an example of large business entities that have been brought down because of poor service, entirely via social media websites like Twitter.

Also, some companies have been grown by social media websites for being outstanding in their products and service provision. So, what is the better way to go for social media marketing between organic and paid social media? What are the differences between organic and paid social media and what is your best bid at harnessing the full rewards of social media marketing?

Organic Social Media

Organic social media refers to the free tools that are provided by social media websites like Pinterest, Facebook, and others, that allow you to create a free page or website. Through your website or page, you then get to interact with other users of the websites. You get to meet and make new friends and connections, and you have the chance to invite friends into your page, as well as the freedom to remove some from your page.

While most of these websites are free in organic social media, it is essential to understand that on top of using the free tools, you can also pay for licenses to use apps like Hootsuite or Buffer to help narrow down your target audience to specific customized searches. The difference here is that even if you pay for the tools, you will not be charged by the social media website like Twitter to post your tweets.

If you use free tools on social media to interact with your fans, to manage and handle your clientele, publish and post all sorts of marketing and promotional info, then that is organic social media. All people on your wall can see all your posts and have not been filtered or separated by any preferences.

Paid Social Media

Paid social media refers to instances where you have to pay to be able to share posts and publications on your social media page, often to people who aren’t even following you. This includes all types of advertisements from images, to texts, and videos among others. The payment depends on what media you publish, and in most cases, the adverts incur the common CPC (cost per click).

The cost per click works in such a way that any person who opens your advert or publication on social media, costs you money. The paid social media works in an almost similar approach with the search engines on websites like Google, and the more relevant your content remains the higher your CPC spend.

As opposed to free or organic social media that focuses more on getting the content to as many people as possible, the paid social media focuses more on the conversions that arise from sharing the publications. The publications on paid social media are tailored to be seen by specific fans on your page, and especially those with interests aligned to the kind of products you market. That is how the conversions are achieved. Organic Marketing Agencies ensure that any view or click on your posts get to convert your publication into monetary net profit. 

Organic Social Media and Paid Social Media Together

In one of the most important things to note about social media marketing, organic and paid social media need to work together to drive the point home. Both tend to complement each other and somehow depend on each other for a successful online marketing venture.

First, organic social media helps gather enough fan base for the paid social media to sell and advertise to. We all know that for you to make more money on social media marketing, you need a relatively large client base. The client base is as a result of the followers created via the organic social media.

Secondly, organic social media helps to build a brand name. Intense marketing and promotion build a stronger and firmer brand name. This brand name is what the paid social media will rely on for its conversions — intertwining the two results in a stronger marketing strategy and as a result more conversions.

Paid social media will use the fan base created by organic social media to narrow down its targets to specific clients that need the service you are selling. As opposed to organic social media where everyone on your page can see the post you make, in paid social media the client base that is targeted is that which is customized and tailored to meet specific needs. If, for example, you are marketing ladies dresses, in paid social media, only ladies get to see your products if you set up the campaign properly. Using gender, age, marital statuses, and jobs of your followers, the products reflect each of the tailor-made needs.

Importance of Paid Social Media

Paid social media helps to magnify and amplify organic social media. By so doing, paid social media marketing strategies bear more fruit in the form of conversions. By focusing on specific target audiences, paid social media maximizes the outcome of the marketing strategies and promotes the essential contents depending on the tailor-made searches. Using paid social media includes remarketing and cross-marketing, including using plugins and links to other social media websites where the same products and services, thereby raising the odds of conversion.

What Is The Difference Between Organic & Paid Social Media?

The constant evolution of social media marketing, as well as the continual creation of the new other social media websites, clearly indicates the growth of marketing strategies. Because using organic social media keeps declining every other day, a change in outlook to focus more on the paid social media is a plus for any marketer out there. The new technologies that come into the picture every other day that include the ‘buy’ buttons on the social media websites are going to take the combination of organic social media and paid social media to a whole new higher level, sooner rather than later.