Paid and Organic Social Media Are Better Together—Here Are 5 Reasons Why

Quick. List your top goals for 2022.

If you said brand awareness, acquisition, conversions and retention—you’ve got a lot on your plate (like most marketers).

Luckily, you can achieve them all with social media.

The caveat? Your paid and organic efforts must be integrated or your results could suffer.

You’ll get more out of social by uniting these two strategies—here are five reasons that prove why paid and organic are better together.

1. Paid and organic social media target different goals

Although paid and organic content play different roles in a social strategy, they’re equally important.

Organic posts help you build a social presence and open doors for interacting with potential and existing customers. This is where you’ll focus on increasing engagement, brand sentiment and customer satisfaction, as well as strengthening established relationships.

Paid social, however, is ideal for brand awareness, reaching new audiences, driving conversions and boosting sales, which is why you often see social ads that promote new brands, products, deals and events.

Both contribute to the customer journey in their own unique ways—and all of the above objectives are part of any good social strategy—so neglecting either would be a mistake.

2. Organic reach is in decline

Most social platforms have been tinkering with their algorithms over time, making organic reach more and more challenging for brands. To be blunt, organic reach today is next to nothing.

If you want to reach new, larger audiences (and have a better chance at getting your content seen by existing followers), social advertising is a must—and with the advanced targeting capabilities offered by many networks, ad reach potential is greater than ever.  

But don’t underestimate the value of organic, either. It has a huge impact on your overall social success, especially when paired with ads.

Plus, posting regularly makes a difference. On LinkedIn, for example, companies that post each week see 2x the lift in engagement, and companies that post everyday gain even more traction.

3. Your organic insights can influence your paid initiatives—and vice-versa

Your organic posts can help inform how you should advertise on each platform. This is where tracking comes into play.

Monitor things like page visitors and how they found you, your most engaging content, demographic information and more. These insights can tell you what content to promote, who to target and what ad formats to choose within each platform to generate the best results.

Once you have organic and paid posts running simultaneously, a tool like Hootsuite Social Advertising can help you track both side-by-side to get the full picture of your content’s performance and see how the two work together to drive results. That way, you’ll know if you should stay on your current path or pivot to meet your business goals.

4. Marketers who integrate their paid and organic strategies are more confident in their social ROI

More than 35% of marketers have completely integrated their paid and organic strategies, according to Hootsuite’s Social Trends 2022 report.

Interestingly, the majority of those marketers (65%), say they’re also extremely confident in quantifying the return on investment (ROI) of their social media.

What does this tell us?

When organizations merge their paid and organic strategies, they’re in a better position to show the business impact of their efforts. This can be helpful for making a case for a bigger budget, planning future social activities, or simply proving that your social initiatives are working.

5. The power of social stretches beyond marketing for companies with integrated strategies 

Businesses that report having completely integrated paid and organic strategies also say they’re most excited about the opportunity to “expand social’s impact to other areas of the organization,” according to Hootsuite’s Social Trends 2022 survey. 

These companies recognize the advantages and possibilities of integration on multiple levels. They understand that organic content works best when it’s coupled with ads—and that social as a whole works best in conjunction with other marketing, sales and customer service activities.

Evidently, these brands are forward-thinking by nature and value cross-departmental collaboration because they know it can lead to positive outcomes that span across their entire organization. 

All in all, paid and organic campaigns complement each other to drive results, so brands that don’t combine these strategies risk missing out on new customers, lead generation and conversions. 

LinkedIn, in particular, can help businesses build a compelling organic social presence while increasing reach and engagement with ads. And with 810 million members and a potential global advertising reach of 808.4 million, there’s so much opportunity for growth.

Discover how to combine paid and organic on LinkedIn to unlock your brand’s potential with our LinkedIn Social Marketing Playbook.