Is investing in organic social media worth it? Yes, absolutely! Organic social is one of my great marketing loves.
Think of this as a courtship. If you focus on your paid social program and neglect the organic, it’s like asking someone to marry you on the first date.
Organic social is where you create a spark with your customers. Where you charm them with your brand’s fascinating personality and ability to understand what interests them. Where you make the space for two-way conversations.
This year in particular shows the importance of a strong organic social presence. People have less interest in ads on social media right now, especially in the United States and the UK. For paid social, we’ve seen a drop-off in results for some categories, and the ads that do perform well tend to look like organic content. At the same time, we’ve seen improved organic reach for entertaining, creative social content across multiple clients.
Have an organic program but not seeing results? You’re not alone. Even great brands can have problems with organic content. Recently, we had a client that needed our help here. The brand has a really fun personality, but the client wasn’t using it on organic social. Rather than leveraging fun trends and interesting topics that didn’t directly relate to its products, its content was very branded and always about itself. In addition, it repeated content a lot.
We encouraged our client to let us create a couple of fun organic posts each week as part of its brand campaign, which focused on awareness objectives such as likes, shares, and comments. The result? Substantially improved engagement. The overall engagement rate for these posts was 10 times above industry benchmarks, with some posts seeing an engagement rate of 9% or higher!
Have a little fun. It’s called social for a reason.
To help you get started beefing up your organic social content, here are a few tips.
Do's
Do be honest and real.
Do entertain and tell stories.
Do create a mix of fun, promotional, and industry-led content.
Do customize your content based on your audience’s feedback.
Do incorporate appropriate trends.
Don'ts
Don’t ignore the community and talk only about yourself.
Don’t brand everything.
Don’t create cookie-cutter content that repeats every week.
Don’t post too frequently. That’s considered spamming, and it can lead to you losing followers.
Don’t jump on a trend that isn’t aligned with your brand. And if your brand doesn’t have the authority to speak about a topic, avoid it.
What does great organic content look like?
I always see these as a bright spot in my feed. It’s clear the brands remember their communities are composed of people, giving them entertaining content and a platform for discussion. Check out these organic posts that produced enviable results:
Nike: Best for storytelling and staying true to the brand.
As a brand, Nike stands up for the greater good. Being a continuous supporter of social justice movements, it has the authority to post about these topics. Here’s a recent example. The post is simple and poignant. Organic doesn’t have to be fancy. It just needs to be true to the brand and honest.
Burger King: Best for unexpected moments and having fun.
The creativity from the Burger King team is impressive. They take risks and have pulled off some of the best socially led stunts. This integration with TikTok for a Whopper challenge garnered favorable results across platforms.
Oreo: Best for real-time, pithy content.
Oreo is by far one of my favorite brands for organic social. It always jumps in on trending topics while keeping it simple and light-hearted.
Malwarebytes: Best for interactive, industry-led content.
It can be challenging for tech companies to engage their communities. While this post from Malwarebytes is branded, it incorporates a social holiday and fun poll that connects with its industry, boosting engagement (including comments, which are hard to get!).
Bonus: You can use this content as a litmus test.
The added benefit of seeing how your community relates to the organic content is better conversions for your performance marketing programs. If a social post does well in organic, then you can boost it with paid media. We’re finding more organic, interactive, engaging content is performing better in paid social than regular ads.
Of course, it’s not easy to be an organic social maven.
It is time consuming to stay on trend, listen to the online discussions, and craft content that resonates with your audience. After all, it is like a courtship—and it can be hard work to keep a courtship going. But luckily, unlike dating, you don’t have to do it by yourself. You can bring in help.
We’d love to brainstorm how to infuse your social channels with content that engages and converts with your audience. Reach out for a tailored set of recommendations.