When it comes to being active on a social media page for your business, you may be tempted to do exactly what you’re doing on your personal pages: posting this, sharing that, liking other posts here and there. But to be successful, a business’s social media strategy should be aimed at taking advantage of multiple tactics that social media platforms have available to businesses. This includes utilizing both organic and boosted posts. But what’s the difference between the two, and what advantages do they have over each other?
Organic Social Media Posts
Organic social media posts are simply the free posts you make directly on your page. As a business, the people who will see these posts are your followers, people following hashtags you may be using, and the followers of people who choose to share your post to their own page. It may seem basic, but organic posts are the most important part of a business’s social media campaign. It helps to keep your audience engaged with your brand, and nurture a connection between your audience and your services or products. Organic social media also helps you to:
- Establish a brand voice/personality
- Engage customers before, during, and after a purchase
- Provide a new level of service with additional customer service channels
- Build a reputation as an expert in your field
One of the most important things to remember about organic posts on a business page is that you don’t want to be too self-promoting. Posting only about your sales or promotions isn’t going to help you get the attention of your audience, build a positive reputation, or get you a lot of positive engagement. Instead, sales-based posts should only account for a maximum of 20% of your monthly posts. The rest of the time, you should be posting stories, helpful tips and tricks, and other things that help engage your audience and educate them about your industry.
Boosted Social Media Posts
Boosted social media posts are a type of paid advertising, but they aren’t quite the same as setting up and running a traditional ad. Instead, it is a way to promote organic content that your audience has already shown an interest in. Boosting a post is simple: choose a recent post that performed well with your existing audience, narrow down your target audience based on location or demographic information, then boost it with a one-time monetary investment. This gets your content in front of new eyes with less work and a lower budget than traditional social media ads.
Pro’s and Con’s of Organic vs. Boosted
Organic and boosted posts are both great at helping you to gain new followers and new customers, promote your business with quality information, and help you to research key metrics to help you find your ideal customer on social media. But each type of post has its own own advantages and disadvantages. Organic posts help build brand awareness, encourage positive customer service interactions, and build a relationship with your audience. However, organic posting can take a long time to build followers on its own.
Boosted posts, on the other hand, reach a larger audience, can be used to target some aspects of your ideal customers, and can help increase leads and conversions. However, boosted post targeting is less detailed than traditional ad targeting options, and you don’t have the option to include or exclude your existing audience.
Are you wondering if you should just stick to organic social media posts, or if you should be integrating boosted posts on your business page? If so, then Gulf Coast Web is here to help! Gulf Coast Web has 25 years of experience in managing all types of digital marketing campaigns – even for companies outside of our immediate area. Our staff consists of highly-trained digital advertising professionals who are both passionate about their jobs and excel at what they do. Contact us today to book a consultation with our team. We look forward to outlining exactly how we can help you grow your business with our digital media agency services.