Organic vs. Paid Social Media: Part 02

Last week, we dove into all things organic and paid social media, highlighting each's pros and cons. And that you need to utilize both to some extent to maximize your social media efforts. 

For organic social, think of that as the content that will entertain and inform your existing followers. And paid social will be used to reach potential customers or clients. Today, I'm going to dive into exactly how one can implement an organic and paid social strategy.

Turning an organic social media post of mine into a paid social post.

Let's level set with some useful guidelines to follow regarding social content, both organic and paid: 

You Don't Need to Promote Every Organic Post 

I get it, budgets are tight, and we're asked to run lean as marketers, even more so now during COVID-19. Whether you have an established budget for paid ads or just looking to get your feet wet, know that you don't need to promote every post. 

A good rule of thumb to follow is to look to run ads when you genuinely believe they will help achieve your business goals and are not just looking for more engagements on your post. For example, if you are announcing something new, paid ads are great to raise awareness around a new product or recipe.

Your current followers and customers will already be interested in what's coming next for your brand, so now you need to focus on reaching people who aren't aware of the great news you have to share.

You've likely seen many brands, big and small, pausing their ad spend in June due to social unrest and the misinformation campaigns occurring on those very same platforms. However, almost every brand is still creating and publishing organic content.

A piece of top-performing content on Windy City Cannabis shot at my home featuring a Grassroots Cannabis pen.

During my time at Grassroots Cannabis we still created content to go out live organically. Nevertheless, we put a more refined lens on the message we were sending out with the hope of reaching new medical patients and recreational customers.

While you shouldn't go chasing Reach or other metrics like engagements to pad your metrics for the month, if you're not seeing the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you're expecting, paid social media may be able to help.

How can you do that?

Boost Your Top Performing Organic Content  

Let me give you a little insider tip. If you are either strapped when it comes to creative resources for new creative for your paid ads or aren't sure what you should put money behind, look at your top-performing organic content. You already know that this content is well-received with your current audience, and if your product or brand is right for a potential consumer, it should resonate positively with whoever new you reach through paid social.

And because it is high-quality content, you should not have to pay as high of a cost per click (CPC) or cost-per-1000 impressions (CPM).

For instance, I put $15 behind this Instagram post, highlighting my speaking engagement at SocialRock Conference 2019. It's now the most engaged post on my feed, and I hope it lends to my credibility as a subject matter expert when someone views my profile.

One of my top-performing pieces of content on my Instagram page organically. I later put $15 behind it as a paid ad to increase it’s reach.

Things to try: Look at the top-performing content (engagements and impressions) for the last three months and see if there are any clear posts that you think would resonate with your potential customers or clients.

Target Your Ads to People Similar to Your Target Customers

Alright, you know what content you want to promote. Now the real question is, how do you reach the individuals who are similar to your target customer, but are unaware of your brand?

Leverage the information you already know about your ideal customer and create 'lookalike' buyer personas for this paid social. You already know useful data like "How old are they?" "Where do they live?" "What are some of their other interests?" Now you need to fill in the blanks.

For example, if you run a skateboard shop in San Francisco, CA, that also makes online sales, and you're looking to expand your customer base, here's what you could do.

You obviously will want to create an ad set that focuses on adults (18-35) that live in California, to hopefully grow your local footprint and stay top of mind through Word Of Mouth Marketing (WOMM). However, just keeping your ad set focused in California, you are likely to pay more per user due to competition for that specific audience.

We also know that there are skateboarders across the United States, but to make our job easier, we add the "Top 5 cities for skateboarding" to our ad set. Not only will this help us reach new potential customers, grow our brand awareness in markets you're not active in, and reduce the CPM due to a broader ad set.

Optimize Your Posts By Running A/B Test 

In my recent blog post covering additional social media tips, I championed the fact that we can test social content as if it was a science experiment.

A common way to test a specific piece of creative performance is to run an A/B test as paid social ads.

An easy A/B test to run is to use the same creative but different post copy on two paid social posts, which you can run with a smaller budget and targeted a much smaller audience. This way, you can see which post copy appears to resonate most with your target audience, and then run your actual campaign with the superior-performing copy.

You can also run A/B testing as a continuous effort, sometimes known as race tracking, where you're using those paid ads' performance to determine which has the best creative to run long-term. For example, if you have Post A and Post B run during October. The winner of October's paid ads would then be up against November's 1st paid ad.

Leverage Retargeting Ads

In my blog post covering organic vs. paid social content, I mention how paid social content can be utilized for retargeting efforts. Retargeting ads are a great way to "show up in your audience's feed when they least expect it."

Specifically, they are a low-cost option because we know the people you're targeting are already somewhat interested in your products. They can be either current customers, those who are at risk of falling out of the funnel, or even just those who engaged with your content or visited your website.

Your paid ads for this specific ad set should be focused on staying top of mind with these individuals and getting them to visit your page or website to take action.

Review Data, Draw Conclusions, Make Changes  

During my talk at SocialRock Conference 2019, I mentioned how fortunate we are to be in an industry where trial and error are not only accepted; and championed when done correctly.

While I wish every ad campaign or piece of content we launched were a complete success, I'd be lying if I said it was. Unlike other forms of art, social media performance is judged quantitatively and not qualitatively.

What I've found to be most useful when trying to reach our target audiences is to "Show up where your consumer least expects it."

What that means is showing up in-feed, often as paid ads or even through influencer partnerships. Can you guess what we're going to cover next?