“Follow me on Instagram.” “I sent you a friend request on Facebook did you accept it yet?” These are things that we ask people after making a connection with someone. We fill our spare time scrolling through various social media channels. We also follow pages of businesses that we like and every so often, have our feeds interrupted by an ad that a company has paid to be there. This time in #wwudigimark, we are talking about organic social media. No need to pay for those ads when you can create and post content for free. Let me teach you about how your company can use organic social media to their advantage-oh yeah and did I mention that it is free?

What is Organic Social Media?

What if this sign flashed before you as you posted on social media? Did you know that you’ve basically been creating organic social media for as long as you’ve had an account or profile? Organic social media is content that is created and posted on social media that is not boosted or sponsored – so in other words, like the sign says: it is free. Organic social media is primarily seen by followers and loyal customers of the brand because it is not being promoted financially to be shown to people not following the brand.

Organic Social Media Strategy

A good organic social media strategy answers all customer questions. It includes informing your customers with updates, links, images, and anything that will inform them of how the brand is doing. A good organic strategy should increase the word of mouth marketing from your customers. Creating organic social media content allows for connecting with your customers and this can only become possible once they are followers of your account. A good strategy should:

• Create engaging content that followers want to see

• Should answer all their questions they may have about your company and your brand

• Utilizes all of the free services and tools that each social media platform provides to its users

• It should build followers of your organization or business

• Interact with the followers that you continue to have to ensure that you continue to keep the relationship you have with current followers

A good social media campaign should be integrated into the marketing plan. It should give the company feedback as to what it needs to change and what the consumers are looking for.

Organic Social Media or Brand Building?

Organic social media is more than just brand building because it is all about creating a community for your company.

While it is important to represent your brand well through social media, you should use organic social media to entice customers to understand your brand. If a customer finds you through a paid social media ad but has no information about what it is they are looking for, then organic social media should answer all of the questions that they may have. Social media is a tool that enables customers to understand exactly what they are getting from a brand. People follow their favorite brands on social media because they want to be the first to know when something happens to that brand.

Value of Social Media Management Platforms (Hootsuite)

Hootsuite, a social media management platform is very beneficial to building a strong organic social media campaign. Hootsuite allows you to manage all your social media platforms from one site; scheduling posts, filtering comments, and tracking engagement on your posts. This is extremely valuable when using organic social media because it allows for consistent posting across all your social media channels. It also assists in integrating the social media into your marketing campaign.

Shit that I Knit and Lessons for Organic Social Media

Shit that I Knit – a company that was started by Christina Fagan after her hobby of knitting became more of a career path started out when Christina started a blog about her projects. The social media channel for the company promotes all sorts of products that they have as well as consumer posts that they have tagged the company in. It also promotes current events such as thanking healthcare workers for their work in the current COVID-19 pandemic. Their Instagram channel is very organized so that consumers can watch their stories and learn more about the company. The company stays true to their mission through their posts and continue to promote their brand, their influencers, their customers, and their company.

Conclusion

Organic social media is extremely valuable to a company. It allows information to be passed on to customers through one given location that is easily accessible for them. It also is FREE! Organic social media allows for customers to follow their favorite brands so that they can keep up with the latest and greatest that have been happening to the company. Who wouldn’t want some free advertising for your company as a way to create and maintain relationships with your current customers? Stay tuned for next week’s blog in #wwudigimark, and remember, always utilize your free advertising!