The other day I mentioned organic engagement in a casual conversation with a neighbor, and it took me a minute to figure out how that led to a tangent on their favorite fruits.
In offline conversations, the term organic may have some very different connotations. But when it comes to digital marketing, organic reach is the cream of the crop. Let’s talk about why organic engagement is so powerful, and how you can use it to supercharge your social media strategy.
What is the difference between organic engagement and transactional engagement?
The two big terms regarding engagement are organic and transactional, and the difference between the two centers around the prompt—or lack thereof.
Much like the term suggests, organic engagement occurs naturally without any “add-ins,” so to speak. For example, when someone is searching for information online and happens to come across one of your relevant blogs on social media, that’s considered organic engagement.
In transactional engagement, however, user actions are prompted either directly by an ad or via another incentivized user to engage with your products or services. For instance, if someone is scrolling through social media and clicks an ad you paid to have placed there, that’s a transactional engagement.
Or, if you offer clients a referral link to share with friends—usually accompanied by some sort of bonus or discount to incentivize—any clicks on that link would be considered a transactional engagement. The “transaction” aspect has nothing to do with any actual purchases, but is the exchange itself. You placed the ad, and they responded: that’s the transaction.
Both forms of engagement have their uses, and a solid digital marketing strategy will include a healthy mix. That said, transactional engagements can sometimes be perceived as a mere sales pitch, which can lead to resistance from users.
The fact that organic engagement is built by potential consumers interacting simply because they want to can be quite powerful. These genuine connections formed through organic engagement tend to create a better return than a transactional approach alone.
When should you focus on organic vs. transactional engagement on social media?
Optimizing organic reach is an essential part of any social media strategy. Simply put, your organic reach is the number of people who see your post without the use of paid promotional tools.
Yes, social media algorithms push paid advertisements over organic posts—that’s what makes them worth paying for. But that doesn’t mean that your entire social strategy is decided by your paid advertising budget.
At its core, social media is still a popularity contest. Whether or not something is a paid post, algorithms determine what content to show users based on a wide variety of factors.
And with 4.48 billion people actively engaging on social media sites, there is a lot of potential to get your business noticed. All it takes is a balanced social media strategy to get you seen and heard by the right people.
That said, with so much content clamoring for attention online, the competition can feel overwhelming. You’ve got a seemingly endless virtual crowd to wade through, and when you’re first starting out, it can seem impossible to cut through the noise and get noticed.
Leaning on paid advertising can provide a boost in making sure that you aren’t shouting into the void. However, it can’t define your entire engagement strategy.
Though budget plays an important role in informing the number of paid advertisements you choose to place, it isn’t the only consideration in organic versus paid approaches. Throwing money around to essentially buy an audience is not an effective strategy—no matter how tempting that may sound.
Organic reach is what gives you the opportunity for long-term success. Content that does generate a lot of organic engagement will get boosted, naturally. That’s the good part of playing the popularity game with social media algorithms.
But how does one create a social media presence that generates the organic engagement that you need to boost your business above the competition— while also cutting through the sheer volume of content?
Quick Tip: HubSpot has a comprehensive Facebook Advertising Checklist that is a great place to start when considering your strategy on that platform. (Don’t forget that Facebook remains the social media platform with the most active users to date!)
Though some of it is a numbers game—posting consistently is absolutely essential—it is also a matter of quality. Sacrificing the quality of your content to increase the number of posts you generate can easily backfire.
For one thing, spamming your existing followers with repetitive, low-quality content is an easy way to get yourself unfollowed. On top of that, if you’re losing followers—or even just posting content that users aren’t interacting with—the algorithms will take note and be less likely to show your stuff to users moving forward.
Regardless of how much you can spend on transactional engagement, expanding your organic reach will always pay off. Once you get the ball rolling on organic engagement, your social media platforms can be an ongoing source of essentially free promotion for your business.
But you need to strike a delicate balance between quantity, quality, and consistency of content to achieve that.
5 Tips for Building Organic Engagement on Social Media Platforms
1. Find the right fit for your particular business.
I often think of this consideration as the “Goldilocks Principle.” There are a lot of choices you can make in regard to your posts. What will work best will depend on what you want to achieve with your approach as well as the platform you intend to use it on.
For instance, on Twitter, keep it short. Not only are you working with a limited character count, but also, it’s just not the place for long pontifications. Catchy titles and hashtags do well here.
For Facebook, lean more towards images and media to avoid your text getting cut off by the dreaded “see more” link, which most users will not click.
You can post longer content on LinkedIn, where extended text posts are more commonplace.
No matter the nature of your business, varying your choices and applying formats that fit your specific needs, platform, and audience preferences will be the most effective strategy.
2. Work towards creating genuine connections.
We are social creatures. It is why over half of the world’s population spends so much time on social media. Creating content that feels like a genuine connection—a conversation versus a sales pitch—will go a long way in improving your reach.
You could start by asking your existing audience different questions and engaging with their responses. Posts that ask its audience to engage authentically are vitally important to giving your social strategy the edge you need to succeed.
For example, asking your followers how they feel about a current event in your industry can be a great way to get people talking. Plus, this is also an opportunity to better understand your audience’s interests and needs, which you can use to further inform your overall strategy.
3. Don’t forget the CTA!
It cannot be overstated how important your Call to Action buttons are—and not just for your website. Remembering to include them in your social media posts will help bring users to your site and increase your traffic.
Ending your post with the direct action you wish them to take is an invitation to engage. Even something as quick and simple as, “You can read more about this topic in our latest blog post!” can be a powerful conversion tactic.
Still, not everyone who engages with your social media content will click your CTAs, but the ones that do will make a difference. Either way, you won’t get anyone clicking anything if you don’t at least put it there!
4. Make sure your content aligns with wherever you want users to go.
Showcasing what makes your services or products unique in the posts you create is basically the whole point of having a social media presence as a business. But that won’t do you much good if your social media content doesn’t align with your landing pages.
It is just as important to make sure that when they click on your post or ad it takes them to the product or service featured in the post. If the post was about shoes, but the landing page after clicking takes users to coats, you’ve got a problem. Always double-check that your post content aligns with where you want them to go when clicking further.
5. Keep reviewing your analytics and shift your strategy accordingly.
Tracking your engagement tells you a lot about what is working in your strategy and what isn’t. Reviewing your social media analytics will let you see which posts do well and which ones need more work, as well as when your posts are getting attention. This type of information can help you create higher-performing content in the future.
Perhaps adjusting your deployment is in order? Or maybe your video content outperforms your photos? Whatever the verdict is, being able to make observations like this is critical to improving your strategy.
Adjusting your tactics without an understanding of the effectiveness of your current approach is like playing a round of pin the tail on the donkey with your social strategy. But it doesn’t have to be all that complicated.
An easy tactic for this is simply reviewing your old posts to see what users responded to, and then making more content like that. Most social media platforms offer some form of analytics tracking internally, but for more in-depth options check out this list of social media analytics tools.
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P.S.— the above is an example of a CTA! Happy strategizing!
