Organic Social Media Agency FAQ

If you are managing an online business, chances are you are already using social media in your marketing strategy. There’s a big difference between an advertising strategy and an organic one, however.

What is an organic social media agency and how can one make an impact on your business? The simple answer is, organic social media agencies focus on user engagement, follower growth, and brand-building as opposed to website traffic and sales.

Confused? Don’t worry, I’m going to break down everything you need to know below so you understand exactly what organic social media services are, and how they can help you grow your store.

Paid vs. Organic: Two Sides to Social Media

Social media platforms are unique in that they offer two distinct kinds of marketing opportunities.

Most people are familiar with the paid side of social media marketing: ads.

These are the sponsored and promoted posts that wind up in your feeds. You may not even be following these brands or pages, but they manage to appear on your feed anyway because they are essentially paying for platform real estate.

By leveraging the different targeting options available on these social media platforms, advertisers can essentially serve ads to relevant audiences in the hopes of getting clicks and sales.

Although social media ads are viewed as spammy for some people, they actually have a relatively strong success rate, especially when you start looking at the ROAS (return on ad spend) generated by professional social media marketers, which can range anywhere from 2x to 20x depending on the niche, products, and platform.

Obviously, social media ads are effective otherwise no one would bother to pay to advertise.

While paid social media is often very effective at generating website traffic and conversions, this isn’t the only kind of marketing available on these social media channels. This form of marketing is what we call organic, because it doesn’t rely on any ad spend.

Organic social media campaigns typically have different objectives than their paid counterparts. Specifically, brand-building is the main reason why a business would want to focus their time and energy here.

What exactly does organic social media even look like? Are these kinds of campaigns even effective or worth it? These are some of the questions we’ll be looking at below.

How an Organic Social Media Agency Develops a Campaign

When you build out a paid social media strategy, marketers utilize the business manager or ads manager of the respective platforms. There, ad sets are built out, targeting and budget is added, advertising creatives are developed, and the ads are set live.

The organic social media campaign process works completely different.

With organic social strategies, there is no targeting. No budget, no ad sets, no ROAS or conversions.

This can be tough for some marketers (and business owners) to wrap their heads around. How do you know what to implement and what to track if there are no ad sets or conversions?

The important thing to note about organic social is that it is just a fancy way of referring to social media how it was meant to be used.

An organic social media campaign essentially seeks to mimic the natural behavior of a successful business on a given social media platform, backed by a strategy that aims to achieve specific goals.

To properly conduct a successful organic social media campaign, you need an entirely different skill set than in traditional promotional advertising.

Not only do you need to have a masterful grasp of the way the actual social media platforms work from the user perspective, you also need to understand community management, you need to know what drives engagement across multiple different industries, and you need to be able to communicate a brand’s story effectively.

No easy feat!

With organic, there’s no pay to play. Which means every follower, every like, has to be won off of genuine connection.

The following FAQ dives into some of the specifics with these kinds of campaigns and what kind of value they can bring to eCommerce businesses like yours.

Organic Social Media Agency FAQ

Is organic social media worth it?

Absolutely. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are the watering holes of the Internet. It’s where everyone hangs out. Many of us use these apps every day to stay in touch with family, window shop, stay on top of the latest news, plan for vacations and holidays, find romance, and much more.

It only makes sense that if you are a serious brand that’s trying to grow, that you would want to get in on the action.

What is an organic social media agency?

Not all agencies manage organic campaigns. Some just post on social media, and others do social media advertising.

Organic social media agencies specialize providing strategic solutions, specifically when it comes to building a content strategy that drives engagement. Organic agencies must be able to build content calendars, grab attention with high-quality creatives, and really listen to merchants and their needs in order to stay relevant and on brand.

If conversions aren’t the focus, what is the most important organic social media metric to track?

The key organic social metrics will differ depending on the goals you have in the campaign. Some businesses may just want to increase their follower count, while others are really interested in telling a certain story so that customers perceive them a certain way. In general, one of the most important metrics that an organic social media agency will track across all platforms is reach or impressions.

The logic behind this is, the greater your impressions, the larger the audience that is receiving your content and therefore the more people that have a chance to engage with you meaningfully.

Engagement metrics, likes, followers, these things can fluctuate, but should see a steady increase as impressions increase.

What are the different types of organic social content?

Informational, storytelling, engagement focused, and memes are the most common examples of organic social media content. There is some cross-over between these different categories, however, as most organic content needs to be engaging in some way and typically helps to tell your brand’s story, even if in a casual way.

Can organic social drive revenue?

We do not consider organic social media campaigns to be primary revenue drivers for businesses. However, they can be looked at as a way of supercharging all of your other marketing efforts through an holistic approach.

For instance, even if your rankings are solid and your Google PPC ads are performing well, there will always be a certain segment of users that will check on your social pages to see how active you are. This is an important trust signal for many people, especially online shoppers.

A dead social media page does not do your business any good.

Also, as your social media efforts scale, the higher the likelihood that you will generate conversions organically. Once you acquire a large number of engaged followers, anything you post becomes a potential sales funnel. Organic TikTok, for instance, is one of the more lucrative social media plays for some businesses right now. It all depends on your niche and how big of a following you already have.

What platforms are best for an organic social media campaign?

This is dependent on your target audience. You want to be active where your audience is active.

If you sell industrial plumbing equipment, TikTok might not be for you. On the other hand, you might see great success on Reddit or Facebook.

Conversely, if you exclusively sell fancy gaming equipment, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch would all be great choices.

You generally want to avoid sinking too much time and money into platforms where you won’t see much traction. If your audience isn’t active on the platform, you have no reason to be there.

However, it is worth noting that there is a social media platform for just about every industry and business, at least from an organic perspective.

How long does it take for an organic social campaign to work?

This is a fairly common question across most marketing services but it’s a loaded one. Organic social media campaigns, much like SEO, PPC, or any other form of marketing, are continuous. They must be constantly worked on to slowly increase performance over time. Once you reach a certain goal, you move onto the next goal.

So if you are interested in social media, don’t think of it in those terms. This is your brand, which means it should be continuously marketed and strengthened.

Do I need an organic social media agency?

That depends. If you have a solid in house team or marketing person that is already growing your socials and seems to get great engagement, maybe not.

However, most organic social media campaigns take a lot of work. Mapping out a strategy, building a content calendar, making the creatives, scheduling posts, watching the metrics.

Chances are, you aren’t properly staffed to manage a social media campaign. There’s a big different between running an organic social media campaign and just “posting” on social media.

If you want your social media accounts to shine with engagement and cool content that resonates with your target audience and helps you build your brand, an agency that specializes in organic social media is not a bad idea at all.

Don’t Neglect Your Social Media

I hope this FAQ answered some of the important questions surrounding organic social media and how you can use it in your marketing efforts.

The main thing to remember is, never let your social media accounts sit idle. People follow your pages for a reason, they expect brands to reciprocate by posting announcements and engaging with them.

While a professional social media strategy is always preferred, at least set aside some time every week to connect with your audience and let them know you are active. It will go a long way.