In a world where every company is advertising on digital, it can be easy to forget the business impact that organic social media has. It’s easy to dismiss posting several times a day, adding the maximum possible number of hashtags, and moderating every comment as time-consuming tasks that “don’t provide any direct profits.”
Trust me: I’ve been down that train of thought, myself. But after several years of seeing the positive effect that managing social efforts has had on my clients’ paid social efforts, my perspective has done a complete one-eighty.
Check out these five ways managing the organic side of your Facebook and Instagram accounts can improve paid ad performance.
1. Making a Good First Impression
When people engage with your brand on social media, one of the first things they do is check out your profile to learn more about you.
Treat your profile picture and cover photo as the first impression of your brand. Use high-quality images that draw the user into your profile. Profile photos are small and usually best suited for logos, but the larger cover photos can be changed out regularly to be seasonal and timely.
Make sure your company “About” page or bio is completely filled out, so that new prospects are able to learn as much about you as they can without leaving your profile. On Facebook, you can also customize the CTA button below your cover photo to encourage people to take action or visit your site.
Always monitor and respond to comments on Facebook and Instagram, and keep an eye on the reviews on your Page. You can hide negative comments if necessary; but ultimately, people will just want to see that you care enough about your customers to respond and troubleshoot in a timely manner.
Respond to Facebook messages and DMs as quickly as possible. For the best responsiveness ranking, respond within one hour of receiving new messages. This not only helps the algorithm favor your profile organically, but it again shows new prospects that you are trustworthy and willing to get them the answers they need quickly.
2. Bringing Your Brand to Life
With increasing saturation in the digital space, it’s more important than ever to find ways to stand out. Posting to your organic social platforms can add a sense of personality and relevance to your brand.
When someone is served your ad, it may spark an interest in your brand and lead them to check out your Facebook Page or Instagram account to learn more about you.
Make sure people know there are people behind the scenes, as this can add more dimension and relatability to your brand. Some ideas include posting in the first person, including clips of your company in action behind the scenes, or even live-streaming a big event.
Posting two times a day is ideal for keeping followers engaged and instilling a sense of trust in your audience. To benefit your paid campaigns, post organic content at least three times per week to keep your accounts looking current. Posting to Stories at least once a day can help your brand stay top-of-mind as potential prospects flip through their daily Stories.
3. Providing Creative for Paid Efforts
Post quality content over a higher quantity of content, especially because the creative you use for Facebook posts or Instagram Stories can be repurposed into ads for your paid efforts.
On Facebook, you can also boost an existing Page post to reach new audiences and increase engagement.
Instagram Stories allow the addition of fun stickers and text overlays that can create a more organic and relatable feel to your video. These Stories can then be downloaded and reuploaded into Ads Manager to create Stories-optimized video ads.
Make sure to use correctly sized images for your organic posts. For more detailed information, see “Creative Specs for Facebook and Instagram Ads.”
4. Growing Your Audience
By creating engaging posts that people react to, share, and comment on, Facebook’s and Instagram’s algorithms begin to favor your profile organically. Additionally, people who are tagged in your posts or ads may be exposed to your brand without already being a follower or someone you paid to show your ad to.
Adding hashtags to new videos and posts allows them to be found by new audiences outside of your Page following.
When relevant, collaborate with other brands and tag them or use the cross-post feature. This enables your content to be shown to other brands’ followers, in turn increasing your own followers count.
Don’t forget to also include your location when posting, as this helps users find your content locally.
Consider the timing of your efforts: Post more frequently at the specific times your audience is most active or engaged.
As you continue to grow your audience, be sure to stay top-of-mind by posting engaging content. Remember, this content does not have to be strictly business! People love to engage with news stories, memes, polls, etc., as long as the content is supplemental to your business efforts rather than instead of.
5. Increasing Conversions
Optimize your organic Facebook and Instagram content to provide your audience a seamless user experience. It may only take one look at a company profile for users to be inspired to convert on your product or service.
To make the most out of your paid social efforts, take a look at your Facebook and Instagram accounts holistically. Without optimized organics, you may be paying for users that are less likely to convert based on a less-than-optimal organic interaction with your brand.
Keep these five considerations in mind and you’ll have your organic and paid social media working synergistically to create a well-balanced approach to social media marketing.
