Organic vs Paid Social: Where Should Brands Invest?

Organic or paid?

It's often presented as a choice.

For most established brands, we think that's the wrong way to look at it.

Organic and paid social do different jobs. More importantly, some of the strongest results happen when the two actually speak to each other.

Organic earns attention

Organic social gives brands an opportunity to reach people without paying for every individual impression.

But that doesn't make it free.

Good organic social requires strategy, ideas, production, community management and time.

And the distribution still needs to be earned.

You're not entitled to reach because you've posted something. The content has to give somebody a reason to stop.

Organic is particularly powerful when you're trying to build familiarity, relevance and a community of people who actively choose to engage with the brand.

Paid gives you control over distribution

Paid social lets you deliberately put content in front of selected audiences.

That can make it incredibly powerful for driving awareness at scale, generating leads or delivering sales.

But there's a fairly important catch.

Paying for distribution doesn't make bad creative good.

You can have brilliant targeting and a significant media budget, but somebody can still scroll past your ad in half a second.

Organic can make your paid activity better

This is where we think brands sometimes miss an opportunity.

Organic gives you a constant source of audience feedback.

Which hooks work?

Which topics get people talking?

What gets shared?

What makes someone watch until the end?

That information shouldn't stay inside the organic team.

It can influence paid creative.

And paid performance can give the organic and creative teams useful information in return.

Shaka in practice

For global watch brand Time + Tide, building on their existing community was key, as they were opening physical store locations. Commerciality had to be part of this for the brand to evolve and take this exciting next step. 

A combination strategy of paid media and organic socials was perfect for their ambitions of scaling the brand.

Our role at Shaka Social was to make their social channels feel like an extension of real watch culture, not a sales counter. 

Founder and team-led content, culturally relevant content for their new and established communities of watch enthusiasts, and product story-telling to translate the true value of their time pieces. 

This is what got the collectors following.

Next was creating the sales engine. Studio-specific ads, campaigns optimised for conversions, and premium product creative were just some aspects of this strategy that worked alongside the organic social to ensure all aspects were reflecting Time + Tide’s ambitions and scalability. 

A great example of our Organic and Paid social teams working together to ensure the most effective strategy for our client.

Don't make customers care about your internal structure

From the customer's perspective, there isn't a “paid social department” and an “organic social department”.

There's just your brand.

They might first encounter you through an ad, visit your profile, watch three organic videos, follow you and eventually buy something six weeks later.

The customer doesn't care which budget line each interaction came from.

Your strategy shouldn't either.

Organic and paid have different roles.

But they're much stronger when they're pulling in the same direction.