SPARKS
July 2023
Tying the Knot: Marrying Paid and Organic Social Media to Reach Your Target Audience
Social media is an essential communication tool for brands to connect with their target audiences. However, with the ever-changing algorithms and limited organic reach, it has become increasingly challenging for brands to effectively engage with their followers. This is where the integration of paid and organic social media strategies comes into play.
As Grace Tobin, our Resident Social Media Expert and one of our Digital Account Managers here at Hopkins Communications, aptly puts it,
“Doing organic social without having a paid social strategy in place at the beginning is like screaming into an empty room and expecting someone to scream back at you! It’s not that no one cares about what you’re saying, it’s that no one knows you’re there to listen to!!”
By combining the strengths of both approaches, brands can achieve a higher level of audience reach, maximise social metrics, and gain valuable insights for optimisation. In this latest Sparks, we’ll explore why it’s crucial for you to marry paid and organic social media and how it can benefit your overall marketing efforts.
Reaching Your Target Audience
A huge challenge any brand faces with social media is making sure their content reaches the intended audience.
Social media platforms use complex algorithms to determine the visibility of organic content. These algorithms consider various factors such as user engagement, post popularity, relevance, and timeliness to decide how many users will see a particular post.
However, due to the immensely vast amount of content being generated every second and the limited space available on people’s newsfeeds, the reach of organic posts is often quite limited.
On average, a typical organic post only reaches around 5.2% of a brand’s followers. This means that if a brand has 10,000 followers, their organic post may only be seen by approximately 520 people. Then, think about how likely it is each of those 520 people were actively engaged rather than just doomscrolling. This limited reach poses a significant challenge for brands looking to effectively engage with their target audience.
Building a Foundation
Organic social media serves as the foundation for establishing a brand’s online presence. It involves publishing content on brand channels and leveraging current trends to engage with your audience.
Through organic posts, brands can communicate their values, share behind-the-scenes stories, and engage in conversations that foster authenticity. This helps to humanise the brand and build trust with the audience, leading to stronger relationships and brand loyalty.
By curating a diverse range of content types and placements, brands can adapt to the demands of different social media platforms and effectively connect with their followers. However, relying solely on organic reach can hinder a brand’s ability to achieve maximum exposure. Unfortunately, organic reach is too often like your charismatic friend who tells you to speak up at a party but forgets to introduce you to anyone.
Enhancing Reach and Targeting
Paid social media allows brands to target specific audience segments effectively. By leveraging the advertising tools provided by social platforms, brands can create highly targeted campaigns aligned with their objectives. This level of targeting allows brands to reach the right people based on demographics, interests, behaviours, and location, maximising campaign impact and return on investment. Paid social media targeting is like having a superhero’s power to hit the bullseye every time. It’s like having X-ray vision for finding your ideal audience, minus the spandex suit!
On the other hand, solely relying on boosting organic content without a clear strategy can be ineffective. Boosting lacks the advanced targeting options available in paid social media campaigns, resulting in inefficient ad spend and limited engagement.
By avoiding the temptation to solely boost organic content, brands can optimise their budget and enhance targeting. Paid social media campaigns offer advanced targeting capabilities, enabling brands to tailor their messaging to specific audience segments. This targeted approach increases the chances of driving meaningful engagement and achieving campaign objectives.
Tying The Knot
When paid and organic social media strategies are combined, brands can unlock a host of benefits. Firstly, integration enables brands to extend their reach beyond the limitations of organic posts, ensuring that their content is seen by a larger portion of their target audience.
Additionally, the data and insights gained from paid social campaigns provide valuable information about how the audience reacts to different types of content. Brands can leverage this information to optimise their overall social media strategy and create more engaging content. Furthermore, the increased social metrics resulting from the integration of paid and organic efforts can support ad campaigns, reinforcing their impact and effectiveness.
To conclude, brands can no longer rely solely on organic reach to connect with their target audience. By marrying paid and organic social media strategies, brands can maximise their reach, gain valuable insights, and ultimately enhance their marketing efforts.
Embracing the power of both is key to achieving social media success in today’s digital world.
Do you need help with your digital strategy or have a specific topic you want us to cover?
If there’s anything you want us to cover in our future Sparks Roundups, or if you need help planning and implementing your digital marketing campaigns, just pop judy@h-c.ie an email, and we will be happy to get back to you.
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