Organic social isn’t dead – you just need to know how to use it

“Organic social is dead, there’s no point doing it.” 

It’s a phrase that has been heard from marketing departments across the world numerous times over the last few years, but is it really the case? Before taking a look at how businesses can still utilise organic social media to great effect, it’s important to understand why there is the feeling of contempt towards it. 

Organic traffic has been ‘revamped’ by social media companies in a bid to push brands towards spending their marketing budget on paid for marketing over the past decade, with the first attack from Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm in 2011. Along with the Last Actor algorithm, what this did was give prominence to pages that you’d interacted with recently. It also gives higher priority to photos and videos, as well as comments over likes. 

Subsequent tweaks to this algorithm, and eventually a new algorithm all together in 2013, prompted an all-time low for organic reach for branded pages in 2015, with average reach being just 2.6%. That has since risen again, with average reach rate for an organic post at 5.2% at the end of 2020. 

Essentially, Facebook had too much content to promote to every single user, and so dialled back on promoting content for free. Paid promotion instead was given more prominence, and with Facebook’s advertising revenue rising 56% to $28.6bn in Q2 2021, it’s easy to see why they made that change. Twitter, for comparison, made $1.15bn in Q4 2020, whilst LinkedIn makes $90m per quarter.

So, what happens to organic social now? It’s clear social media is giving less prominence to organic, and that trend is only going to continue as the money rolls in, so it’s no surprise to see that it’s an area that often gets neglected by brands. 

This is totally understandable and is a classic mistake that organisations are making all over the world, day in day out,” says Reeve Social Media founder, Chris Reeve.

“Organic is being neglected because companies can find it hard to see the straight-up ROI. Social media changes so quickly it’s often hard to keep track of so it’s more important than ever to focus on getting those customer touch points out there. It doesn’t need to be a perfect post, but organic social offers the perfect way to do it.”

However, organic can still be incredibly useful to both established brands and those just starting out on social. 

“Organic social offers businesses the chance to be super reactive to current trends and the opportunity to go viral overnight. One well-placed tweet could be all it takes.”

Paid and organic drive those different metrics so their success must be measured by other things. Even with hundreds of thousands of followers, you can’t expect every organic-only post to boom and receive thousands of engagements. Instead, you can use the opportunity to put down building blocks for your brand. 

The people who see these posts are likely to be your core audience, so gauging their reactions to a new product launch or a rebrand will yield early public perception and can be used to influence and optimise decision making. 

Your core audience is key to organic, as it’s how they communicate with you - it’s how they voice those concerns and any discontent they may feel. Customer service will never be a paid for endeavour on social, and it’s easy to get wrong. Leave a customer on read, or simply miss their tweet or comment? You’ll get a negative review and, even worse, lose their trust.

“It’s about using social to have real conversations with your customers. Ask them questions, find out what makes them tick, and listening to them can have huge benefits to your company. The power of community management through organic social is still unrivalled.”

Utilising organic social to properly engage with your audience means listening to them and not just posting then thinking your work is done. Engaging and creating those conversations with your current – and potential – customers is the most important metric to drive sales and create brand ambassadors that will advocate your brand to friends and family. 

“Ultimately, it costs less to retain existing customers than it does to acquire new ones. Use organic social to engage with your existing page audience, whilst having a healthy mix of paid in there as well so you can reach new prospective clients every day,” says Chris.

Responding doesn’t always have to be limited to replies and complaints, however – brands such as Aldi and Dominoes utilise the reply function to great effect on Twitter when calling out competitor brands in a humorous way. For example, the Colin the Caterpillar lawsuit by M&S against Aldi was dealt with in a way that softened any negative connotation, with the German supermarket chain making light of the situation and successfully painting M&S as the villain of the piece, to great effect. Aldi furthered their social media cause when announcing they would be donating profits from their Cuthbert cakes to cancer charities across the UK. Situations like this aren’t just an opportunity for the brands involved the boost their engagement numbers either, with Monzo tweeting about a fundraiser for Cuthbert’s legal fund.

Whilst organic social is primarily used for promotion of products and replying to customer complaints, some companies often forget what they can really drive organic engagement with: promoting themselves and their brand.

There has always been a desire to show how “fun” a company is, and how it’s actually more like a “family” than anything else. The coronavirus pandemic, however, has prompted a shift in working and a reshuffling of priorities. Gone are the days of companies simply being able to promise “great” benefits such as snacks, a break out zone or “Fiesta Fridays” – they actually have to deliver on making it a great place to work. The average employee turnover rate is 15% - in 2021, 38% of employees say they will be looking to change jobs in the next year.

It is key that companies do as much to promote themselves on social as it is to promote their products, but they also need to do it legitimately. Companies need to realise this isn’t a simple fix though – claiming to have all the benefits in the world but still being a terrible place to work means word of mouth will soon spread to all prospective employees. All the social media promotion in the world cannot fix that.