Asking whether you should choose organic social media or paid social is the wrong question. The real question is, how can (and should) you use both? Organic and paid social do much of the same things. They get you in front of your ideal audience wherever they’re spending time scrolling. They just do it in
Asking whether you should choose organic social media or paid social is the wrong question.
The real question is, how can (and should) you use both?
Organic and paid social do much of the same things. They get you in front of your ideal audience wherever they’re spending time scrolling.
They just do it in slightly different ways.
Where one is about building brand trust and awareness with interesting content over a longer period, the other is about getting specific messages and offers in front of the right people.
Organic social is any post, comment, or reply that you haven’t put money behind.
It’s like being invited to speak on stage at an event. You’ve not paid to be there. People are there to listen to you because you’ve proven you’re interesting.
Your audience thinks you’re worth listening to, so they follow you and pay attention when you post something. Organic social is more about being authentic and creating credibility with your audience.
Whether that’s posting interesting thought leadership in B2B or creating top tips for summer wear as a fashion brand, your audience trusts you based on the quality of your content.
The potential problem with organic is that you’re at the mercy of algorithms, which change all the time. What worked one month may bomb the next because the algorithm is looking for different types of content.
You can see in this research from Hootsuite how, on LinkedIn, video content is getting the best engagement in 2025, because it’s being pushed by the platform as a preferred type of content.
Compare that to this study in 2024 from Socialinsider, which showed multi-image carousels were the most engaged with and preferred type of content on LinkedIn at the time.
Follower vs interest reach
One of the big changes on social media, definitely in the last year at least, is the shift away from just seeing posts and content from the people you follow, to seeing more “suggested” posts.
You can see this example, LinkedIn has suggested this post based on the interests or engagement on the account.
This is content from accounts or people you don’t follow, but that the algorithms think you’ll like based on who you follow now or the content you engage with.
You’ve probably also noticed on LinkedIn that a lot of the posts you’re seeing on your feed are two or three weeks old (because the algorithm is pushing content that’s got engagement that it thinks you’ll like)
And on Instagram, you might notice more suggested content from people you don’t follow, again because you’re being shown content an algorithm thinks you’ll like, rather than content from the people or accounts you actually follow.
This shift from follower-only engagement to interest engagement has a couple of effects.
Technically, it can make it much easier for your content to reach a wider organic audience because it’s not just limited to the people who follow you.
If the algorithm thinks you’re content is interesting and relevant, it will put it in front of people who otherwise might never have found you.
The difficulty is getting the early engagement you need on a post to “qualify” for this free push.
Because social platforms don’t tell us how their algorithm works (that would be too easy for us), there’s no solid research on how quickly you’re likes, clicks, or comments need to come, but it needs to be as early as possible – definitely within the first hour.
This means growing an account’s following can be way more difficult and unpredictable, but you can also get huge reach from a single popular post.
If organic social is being invited to speak on stage because you’re interesting, paid social is about paying to get on stage, and vetting the audience before they come in.
It’s not that you’re not interesting, you’re just being very particular about what you want to say, and who you want to hear it.
By paying to have your content or message put directly in front of a specific audience, you can reach new customers quickly and at scale.
This isn’t about building trust or creating communities of loyal followers. It’s about getting commercial results quickly with a clear ROI (we spent X and got Y).
And because you’re paying for your audience, you have more room to test different parts of your ads to see what your audience responds to.
If you’re launching a new product or have a time-sensitive offer you need people to see, paid social is the way to go.
The downside is that costs for all paid media are rising all the time, so it’s becoming more expensive to advertise.
You’ve also got the risk that your ads wear out quicker as users become used to seeing them, meaning you need new creative constantly.
And then when you stop paying for ads, your visibility and reach stop with it.
| Factor | Organic | Paid |
| Reach | Volatile, sometimes viral | Predictable, scalable |
| Cost | Time and creative resource | Direct financial spend |
| Longevity | Evergreen, compounding | Stops when budget stops |
| Control | Limited by algorithms | Full targeting control |
| ROI | Trust, credibility, loyalty | Conversions, speed, awareness |
Best for:
Organic social should be more of a long-term strategy. It’s about building credibility, or being seen as a brand that’s interesting and worth paying attention to.
Organic social is ideal for tactics like B2B thought leadership, posting consistently about industry trends and changes, insights and research, and providing opinions and answers to the questions customers are asking.
They may not lead directly to a sale, but they create more awareness and make it more likely customers will come to you when they’re finally ready to buy.
Organic is also great for community engagement or building a following around what your brand stands for, rather than just what you sell.
Patagonia are a good example of this, with their Instagram page full of creative content not about their products, but about what they stand for as a brand.
And while organic social isn’t necessarily about selling, it can help with lead nurturing by posting social proof like case studies, testimonials, and new client wins.
Best for:
Paid social media is for the short game when the objective is to get in front of a specific audience, with a specific message as quickly as possible.
For example, if you’re planning to launch a new product or create a new offer, paid social can speed up the process of getting this out to your ideal audience, rather than posting about it and waiting for people to find it.
It can also be better when you want to target a specific segment of your ideal audience (because you’re running an offer on a specific product that not everyone will be interested in, for example).
Social media targeting is highly specific, allowing you to pick certain aspects of your audience (demographics, behaviour, interests) and target just those people with your content.
It also means you can target more than one segment of your audience at once and scale activity much quicker, as long as you have the budget.
Paid social also works well for time-sensitive campaigns, like events or conferences. As you get closer to the end date, you can target more urgent messages to your audience and start to create incentives.
From a brand-building perspective, you can also use paid social to expand the reach of popular organic content by boosting posts to reach more people.
I wouldn’t recommend putting too much budget into this (unless your end goal is reach and followers), but it can help you build audiences quicker and make more use of your organic content.
The thing to be careful with for paid social is that even though you’re paying for placement, you’re still competing with all the other content your audience is scrolling past.
Which means you need to invest in great creative, and also focus on your target audience to get in front of the right people.
Boring creative that doesn’t grab attention, or targeting the wrong audience, will just end in your burning through budget before you’ve seen any real results.
While paid and organic social run on the same platforms, they do different things, and combining them means you can get the best of both worlds for long and short-term gains.
Organic is an ideal credibility builder and helps you create awareness and trust with an audience who is following you because they like you. If they already know who you are, they’re more likely to pay attention to your paid ads, compared to a brand they’ve never heard of.
And paid can improve the results of top-performing organic posts, cutting CPC compared to cold ads, as well as helping you target personalised offers at different segments of your audience.
Ultimately, it’s going to come down to what your goal is. If you want long-term brand building and a loyal audience of followers you can tap into, then using organic social is the best tactic.
If the goal is quick wins and sales with a reportable ROI, then you’re going to be looking at paid social.
But given most brands want to both create long-term brand loyalty and get short-term sales spikes, it makes sense to have organic and paid social media as part of your strategy.
Do you want to build more awareness and engagement? Or get leads and sales?
Of the content you’re creating, what’s working and getting the best reactions from your audience? What format of content do they like? Or what messaging do they respond to?
You can start by boosting popular organic posts to start building more awareness. After that, save budget for creating specific paid social campaigns around promoting products and offers.
Measure metrics like click-through rates, CAC, and ROAS for paid campaigns. Also, monitor engagement like likes or comments to see what your audience responds to organically.
Use the data you gather from campaigns to make improvements.
Whether that’s tightening the targeting of your paid campaigns to reach the right audience, or putting more resources into organic content that gets engagement with your audience long term.
Organic is your long-term, brand-building strategy that slowly compounds the interest and awareness your brand can get online.
Paid social is a short-term sales activity that can get immediate results, but dries up when the budget stops.
The brands that see the best results are the ones that run both brand-building and sales activity together.
If you’ve read The Long and the Short of It by Les Binet and Peter Fields, you’ll recognise the graph below, which shows how results compound when using long-term and short-term tactics.
Admittedly, they’re not talking about social media marketing in the book, but it fits in well with the comparison of using organic social as the long-term brand-building activity that compounds and grows over time, and the short-term sales activation with paid social media that gives you the temporary spikes in sales for specific campaigns.
By balancing both, you get the best of both the long and the short results of social media and raise awareness, while achieving sales results.
If you’re struggling to get the most out of your paid social advertising, you can get a free strategy session with our Director of Growth and Strategy, Sam, who’ll audit your existing paid media activity and provide a detailed report of where you can make the biggest improvements to improve results quickly.
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