How to Create & Align your Paid and Organic Social Media Strategy

Some brands try to do all of their social media marketing organically, avoiding paying for ads. However, this approach will, these days, lead to slow, interrupted, frustrated progress compared to brands that use at least some paid social media promotion.  

Ahead of LEARN: Paid Social on Wednesday 24th of July we share four key points to make paid social advertising work with your organic social media strategy.

Focus your budget on the channel(s) that make the most difference

It is better to do one channel really well than to do several channels passably.  In reality, many businesses, even small ones, will be active on more than one channel to at least some extent to utilise one piece of content in many ways, for example, the same picture could be used for your blog, your Instagram and a YouTube thumbnail.

All the same, you should still concentrate your efforts where they make the most difference and you should certainly direct your budget where it will have the most impact, which is generally your strongest channel, which will translate into higher conversion rates rather than trying to take a few steps further on your weakest one.  

For luxury fashion brands, this channel is usually Facebook and Instagram and even though Facebook seems co covert more as a platform, Instagram may be better for brand awareness and also includes stories that get great active visibility of your brand.

Make sure your messages are aligned

The basic idea behind paid social media is that it extends your reach quicker and gets your core message(s) in front of more people faster.  Your audience would be confused if they see one message in your paid posts and a completely different one in your organic content and this can cause people to turn away and lose confidence in your brand.

If you want to use organic and paid social media to emphasise different aspects of your business make sure there is some kind of link between them.  For a new audience, paid social will probably be the first interaction with your brand. If they like it, they will then investigate your organic social content and they will then decide whether they engage with it or not.

For existing brand fans, they are likely to see both, organic and paid content throughout their customer journey which is why the message should be aligned. For example, if you use your organic content to share the lifestyle of your brand, your paid content should also reflect that, but by adding a stronger call to action (CTA).

When doing paid social, you must consider your objectives behind it, whether is brand awareness or increasing sales and add a call to action such as “See More” or “Buy Now” that reflects that.

Have a consistent look and feel

Similar comments apply to the look and feel of your content.  You want a good degree of consistency across both your organic and paid content so that your target audience better identifies your brand.  

Nonetheless, it is fine to ring in the changes from time to time, as long as there is a clear reason for doing so (such as Christmas or Valentine’s day) but for the most part you want both your paid and organic content to be variations around a common theme and to be in harmony with each other.

Boost your organic content

Another simple way to ensure that your paid and organic content is aligned is to do paid boosts of your better performing organic content. When a post is performing well, Facebook is quick to inform you. It can be a smart idea to pay to boost those posts to reach a wider audience.

Using video on organic posts is also a good way to help you reach a bigger audience than pictures alone and also helps to increase the post’s engagement.