Social media is one of the toughest nuts to crack as a marketing manager.

We all love social media for its intuitive, organic nature. When trends and events unfold on social media platforms, it often feels exciting and unforced. Social media’s origins are embedded in this organic ideal.

Brands, meanwhile, need to use social media to reach audiences. Gone are the days when a TV ad and press release isenough to generate brand awareness and leads. These days, any effective marketing campaign also needs socials.

The conundrum is: do you opt for an organic social media strategy or paid ads? It’s a decision brands always grapple with – and usually, the solution is a mix of both.

Global social media ad spending has roughly doubled from 2019 to 2024, while 79% of marketers have increased investment in organic social over the past three years. Clearly, organic and paid social media each play a vital role.

This guide breaks down what organic and paid social media mean, their pros and cons, and how to craft a balanced social media strategy leveraging both.

We’ll also show how Brandwatch can help social media managers deliver a paid and organic strategy that drives real results.

What is organic social media?

Organic social media is content and interactions you share on social platforms without paid promotion. Brands effectively replicate how standard social media users use the platform.

Posts, stories, videos, and updates on Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, and other social profiles are free. While you might pay a designer or a videographer to create the posts, you don’t pay the platform to promote them.

Organic social also includes how you engage with users by liking or commenting on posts and responding to messages – all without spending money to boost or advertise the content.

Do it right, and you’ll build a social media presence through genuine, one-to-one interactions.

Benefits and challenges of organic social media

Organic social media offers a lot of promise but is hard to execute well. Social media managers need to be diligent in how they work and create a strategy that can support rises and falls in engagement.

CostsThe biggest benefit of an organic social media plan is its low up-front costs. You don’t pay for each post or engagement. This makes it extremely cost-effective for brands, especially those with limited ad budgets. In fact, 70% of marketers say organic social can generate cost savings of up to 50% (by reducing reliance on ads).

However, an organic social media strategy can be costly even if you don’t pay for ads. You might still have to pay staff and designers to create and publish your content. What’s more, reaching your targets with an organic social strategy might take longer than with a paid one. You might end up paying more overall.

Trust of organic social media

Organic social posts are the best way to build trust among your audience. Sharing helpful tips, behind-the-scenes content, or responding humanly to comments helps humanize your brand. Over time, this authentic engagement builds trust and loyalty.

Just make sure you don’t abuse that trust. If you’ve built an organic following based on honest social posts, suddenly pivoting to a ‘hard sell’ strategy might look inauthentic.

Audience of organic social media

You’re more likely to achieve better, more genuine engagement with organic social media posts. Audiences like to interact with brands that feel human and are more likely to remember you. Using a tool like Brandwatch means you can also track engagement and measure how well each post is doing.

However, it’s harder to target posts to specific audiences via the organic route. You might need to use different strategies, such as changing your content or using different hashtags, to find new audiences. It would be great to hook a new audience, but you risk alienating your existing one.

Algorithm of organic social media

Social media algorithms can be really unpredictable, especially when you’re deploying an organic strategy. Platforms often prioritize personal connections and popular content. This means brand posts can get deprioritized, and a large portion of your followers might not even see your updates unless those posts receive quick engagement.

This is an obvious negative, but you can escape the clutches of the algorithm with smart organic content. You just need to be aware of the changes and be willing to tweak your strategy. Do it right, and you’ll jump ahead of the competition still reeling from an algorithm change.

Reach of organic social media

A brand that has grown an audience based on its organic posts should have a high level of engagement. There’s a lot of value in an organic group. However, it’s often hard to grow beyond that group with an organic strategy because you’re posting to the same people.

Over time, it also makes it harder to keep your existing audience interested because you’re only speaking to them. The solution is to use a tool like Brandwatch to find similar audience profiles and grow your follower base while considering a paid social strategy to give you a bump.

What is paid social media?

Paid social media is advertising content that is published on social platforms. Your aim is to reach a specific audience, using budget to boost your message’s visibility.

This includes formats like sponsored posts, banner ads, video ads, Stories ads, and any other form of advertisement that you pay social networks to distribute to users.

Brands operate paid social strategies on platforms like Brandwatch, TikTok For Business, and Meta Ads Manager. You can create targeted campaigns and set objectives like website clicks, app installs, or lead generation.

Audiences expect social platforms to feature ads these days but don’t want to be overloaded by them.

Brands need to be savvy about how they deploy paid social media strategies in order to avoid negative reactions.

Paid social costs money but can be really effective. What’s more, social media sites prefer it if a brand pays for advertising rather than going down the organic route.

Benefits and challenges of paid social media

Paid social media isn’t easier to execute just because you’re paying for it. It’s just as complex as organic socials to get right – but the big benefit is you’re more likely to hit your targets eventually.

Social media managers need a clearly defined strategy before jumping into paid social media. Otherwise, it can quickly become costly.

Costs of paid social media

Social media advertising naturally comes with costs – but it doesn't have to be expensive. Platforms allow you to set budgets and targets to keep costs manageable while tracking core metrics to prove your return on investment (ROI).

You might find the cost is worth it. If a campaign costs $1 per website click but generates $1,000 in sales from just 15 clicks, then it is a cost-effective campaign. As a social media manager, your task is to determine a justifiable ROI.

>> Read more about social media advertising costs

Trust of paid social media

Paid ads don’t necessarily harm a brand’s trustworthiness. In fact, if you create professional ads, your brand trust could increase. Audiences respect professionalism and quality.

What audiences don’t respect is a brand that pivots too quickly between organic, chatty content and a massive advertising sales push. Social media users don’t like to feel they’re being sold to, especially when they’ve come to a brand via the organic route and feel a sense of attachment. There are smart ways to merge organic and paid strategies that maintain high levels of trust, which we’ll get into later in this guide.

Audience of paid social media

Audiences by default don’t love ads. However, they are willing to accept them and even come to crave them if you do them right. Movie studios generate huge audiences for upcoming blockbuster releases by dropping trailer ads on X, Instagram, TikTok, etc. This is an example of how an ad can capture people’s attention and draw them in.

Of course, it’s also easier to target specific demographics with an ad campaign because social platforms allow you to post beyond your followers. Precise audience targeting has come a long way over the past few years, and businesses have been using tools like Brandwatch to drill down into specific groups.

Algorithm of paid social media

The great thing about paid ads is you don’t have to worry about the algorithm tripping you up. You set the parameters of your ad posts, and the social platform does the rest. Do it well, and you’ll get fast results and feedback.

However, you still need to understand how the advertising platform on each site works. Social media managers should know the details inside out; otherwise, you might miss a trick. Of course, you could also use a tool like Advertise to make the whole thing easier and even launch automated social media ad campaigns.

Reach of paid social media

Ad campaigns generate wide, immediate reach. If your goal is to get your message in front of many people quickly, paid social is the way to go. With ad campaigns, you can distribute content to tens or hundreds of thousands of users essentially overnight. This instant visibility is something organic tactics can’t match.

However, paid social media is often described as “renting” attention – when your budget runs out, the exposure disappears. If you rely solely on paid campaigns, you might see great results during the campaign but little residual effect afterward.

Combining organic and paid social

Rather than viewing organic vs paid social media as an either/or choice, savvy brands recognize that the two work best hand-in-hand as part of a holistic social media strategy.

Each approach complements the other’s strengths and offsets its weaknesses. The real question isn’t which one to use but how to mix both effectively to achieve your marketing goals.

A useful way to think about it is through the marketing funnel (awareness → engagement → conversion).

Organic social media excels at the upper and mid-funnel stages. You build brand awareness, foster engagement, and nurture loyalty over time.

Paid social media shines at driving specific actions in the mid to lower funnel. You acquire leads, boost conversions, and target the right people at the right moment.

When to use organic social media

Most brands will start with a focus on organic social media, with the aim to weave paid ads into the mix later down the line. This is a good idea, especially for new brands who have to watch every dollar they spend.

Organic social is great for day-to-day audience engagement and keeping your community updated. Growing a community is easiest with a strong organic approach that also builds trust and brand loyalty.

It’s also ideal for customer service and feedback, which feeds into your wider brand personality.

If you can respond to customers and interact as part of your audience, then that’s another tick for the brand loyalty box.

Organic posts also help maintain your brand’s presence in between campaigns. You don’t always have to be running a sale or a product launch. Perhaps you just need to remind audiences you’re there.

For example, a small business might run Facebook ads for a spring sale one month, but in the months before and after, they keep posting organically to stay engaged with the audience they attract.

Organic sustains your visibility and keeps your audience warm at the top of the sale funnel so that when you do run ads or promotions, people are primed to respond.

When to use paid social media

Brands use paid social media to convert, which is usually why it comes later than organic posts. You might lay the groundwork with a month’s worth of organic content, raising awareness of a new product or feature, before forcing the issue with ads.

Indeed, if you’re planning to launch anything on social media, then ads need to be part of that strategy. Paid social can jump-start your visibility and quickly attract your first few thousand followers by promoting them into action.

Paid ads are also better for time-sensitive moments when you need to secure an audience fast.

Sometimes, you might have a short window to execute a sales strategy based on a limited edition item. You can’t wait around for organic content to slowly do its job.

Of course, reaching new audiences in a relatively fast time frame is another reason to choose paid ads. You can chooseyour demographic and track ROI in real-time during a campaign.

Paid ads also help organic posts go viral. If you’re riding on the wave of a high-performing organic post, a little boost from your advertising budget could help it go viral.

Time to unite organic and paid for a winning strategy

In the end, organic vs paid social media isn’t a battle to be won by one side or the other. The real victory comes from using both in tandem to achieve your marketing objectives.

Organic social builds the heart and soul of your brand on social media through authentic community engagement.

Paid social media is the accelerant that can drive growth and concrete results when you need them by reaching the right people at scale.

So long as you do the groundwork on a social media marketing strategy, your paid and organic campaign stands the best possible chance of working.

Brandwatch’s suite of social media tools can help you execute a balanced approach.

With Brandwatch Social Media Management, you can plan and schedule content, engage your audience, and analyze performance across all your social networks from a single interface – saving you time and ensuring consistency.

And with Brandwatch Consumer Research, you gain access to deep insights from billions of consumer conversations, helping you refine both your organic content strategy and your paid targeting with data-driven intelligence.

By leveraging the right tools and a smart mix of organic and paid tactics, you can build a social media presence that reaches your audience and truly resonates with them.