You’re trying to grow your business, and all you’re hearing is that you need to pay for ads on social media to extend your reach and find your audience. A lot of the pressure is even coming from the social media networks. But you may be overlooking a key component in a successful comprehensive social media strategy – organic growth. While we can’t deny the effectiveness of some paid ads, an organic social media strategy can be wildly successful.
What is An Organic Social Media Strategy?
An organic social media strategy uses your social media platform’s free services and tools. These services include posting updates, images with captions, and links. With these, you can build a community of followers around your brand and product. You then have an audience for your relevant content, product info, and you can interact with your followers, creating brand loyalty.
For instance, you can post about your process for creating a new product or service. Your audience gets to see ‘behind the curtain’ and relate to you and your brand. This has a completely different effect than paid ads.
Paid social media ads are when the platform displays your post or sponsored message to users across the network based on their profiles. Your ads will reach a broader audience, so we aren’t against them. But if all you do are paid ads, you are missing out.
Why You Need An Organic Social Media Strategy
Here are four reasons you need an organic social media strategy:
Organic Will Validate You
An organic strategy will get your posts liked and shared, which means word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing in social terms. WOM is an excellent way to boost your validity among new potential customers. They’ll know you’re for real when they hear about your product or service from other customers.
More than 88% of people trust online reviews from other customers as much as they would people they know. And a further 81% of people admit that they’re influenced by what friends share on social media. Together, these two stats mean that your organic strategy can reap great rewards in positive brand perception.
Organic also encourages engagement with your followers, which is perfect for when your paid ads send people to your profile and other posts.
Organic is Cost-Efficient and Sustainable
Whatever the size of your business, you probably don’t have money to waste. An organic strategy means you take full advantage of your chosen social media platforms’ free services and tools. These are more than enough to reach and build your audience with creative, clever, and transparent content. The only thing that will limit your growth is your own creativity.
Organic Connects You to Potential Customers
One relevant stat says that social media marketing has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than does paid marketing. This staggering stat is because your brand can get to know your audience at the same time that they get to know you. After all, you’re both posting and sharing content that reflects who you are.
If a potential customer has a question about your product, they can contact you directly on your social media – even if they learned about you through your paid ads. You can also use the information that you gain from your paid ads to apply to your organic strategy. Then your organic posts can be more targeted and relevant to your audience.
Get Ahead & Stay There
One recent stat says that 97% of Fortune 500 companies rely on social media to promote their business and generate positive communication. They all understand the value of an organic strategy, and so should you. No matter how big your business is, you can’t afford to miss out on the power of an organic strategy.
Conclusion
An organic social media strategy is a golden opportunity to find, connect, and grow a community of followers who become loyal to your brand. With organic, you can create engaging content that your audience will love!