What's the difference between paid ads and organic social media posts?

It's important to understand the difference between paid social media ads and organic posts because they serve very different purposes.

What's paid social media advertising?

Paid social media advertising is the process of displaying advertisements on social media platforms to promote products and services to specific audiences. A paid ad allows you to have more control over who you want to see the ad to create quality leads. By creating audience sets on your ad manager you are telling the social media platform exactly the type of person you want to see the ad. Essentially the better you know your customers and the more you tell your ad platform about your audience the higher the results.

How should you use paid ads?

Paid ads should have one or more of the following objectives;

• Generate brand awareness

• Increase followers

• Increase web traffic

• Sell and promote a product or service

• Increase conversions and generate quality leads

With a paid ad you are trying to reach new followers and draw them to your social media pages and website. A paid ad should be used to reach new customers with the intent of showing up in someone’s newsfeed who otherwise probably wouldn't see your post. You are trying to reach potential customers that may not have heard of you before. Boosting a post, on the other hand, pushes an organic post to your existing followers. A boosted post is very different from a paid ad, boosting posts isn't an effective way of reaching new followers but it is a good way to let your existing followers know of important news.

What's an organic post?

An organic post is anything posted on social media that you have not paid to post. You can boost an organic post to reach more followers but it is then no longer classed as organic.

How should you use organic posts?

Use organic posts for everyday interaction with your followers. Use organic posts to manage customer relationships and support queries. Organic posts should be engaging and informative. Organic posts shouldn't be used to relentlessly sell to your followers, this will irritate your followers and they will ultimately unfollow you. You should think of your followers and customers on your social media as a community. A paid ad should attract new customers who will ultimately join your community. Organic posts should be engaging, interesting or informative content that you share with your community.

Paid ads get people to your social media platforms, organic posts keep them there. Paid ads help build your community and organic posts maintain trust and relationships between your brand and your audience.

Claire Singleton

Managing Director

Up Post Digital

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/69511776

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