The purpose of organic social is to authentically connect with your target audience, build brand awareness, engage in meaningful conversations, and create a loyal online community.

In this article, we’ll discuss…

What is organic social?
How can organic social help my Shopify store?
What is the difference between organic social and paid social?
Organic social content examples
Top tips to improve your organic social content

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What is organic social media?

Organic social media (sometimes shortened to just organic social) is any content or engagement that takes place on a social media platform without paying or advertising.

The focus of organic social is to create and share valuable content with your followers to build relationships and gain brand recognition for free. It’s the authentic, community-driven side of social media marketing.

Organic social media efforts prioritise building relationships with your audience through meaningful content and interactions. You can showcase your businesses’ personality, values, and expertise through what you share on your social media accounts, making it an invaluable tool for brand storytelling and showcasing.

However, the benefits of organic social media extend beyond just brand visibility, it’s an opportunity to deliver informative, entertaining, or inspiring content to your audience. Whether it’s sharing insightful blog posts, behind-the-scenes glimpses, video and image-based content, stories, or user-generated content, organic social allows you to directly connect with your customers through their feeds.

When you post organically to social platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, the people that you can expect to see and interact with your content come from:

Your ‘organic reach’. This is a percentage of your existing and loyal followers.
The followers of your followers. If people find your content valuable enough, they may choose to share it with their online friends.
Those who follow your hashtags. When users search for, or follow your hashtags, then your posts will appear in those hashtag feeds.

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What is the difference between organic and paid social media?

Organic social vs paid social - what’s the difference?

Although both organic and paid social have a similar goal - to gain new customers and followers by promoting quality content - they do differentiate as marketing strategies.

The main difference between organic and paid social lies in their reach, investments, goals & objectives.

Organic social involves the creation and sharing of content on social media platforms without a paid promotion and relies on building a genuine, loyal following through meaningful interactions and engagement.

On the other hand, a paid social strategy involves using your marketing budget to promote your content and messages to a wider, often targeted audience who may never have come across your social profile otherwise.

But to succeed in paid advertising, it’s incredibly helpful to have an effective organic social media marketing strategy.

Organic social creates the foundation for your brand’s online presence, building that ever-important, crucial connection with your followers. Without this, paid social efforts may come across as purely promotional and fail to resonate with the audience.

An organic strategy also allows you to better understand your audience, as you can identify what content resonates most with your following, and which demographics are most engaged. This is super important to know when creating paid social campaigns, as you know how to target the right audience with the most effective messages. And paid ads can be costly, so it’s the best way to ensure you aren’t wasting your time or resources.

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What are boosted posts?

Some people get confused with how organic social and paid social overlap when it comes to boosting content.

Boosting your social media content is where you spend money to promote selected posts that have already been organically shared on your profile.

The overall aim of boosting your posts in paid advertising is to increase your existing organic content’s effectiveness, maximising its impact on your social media platforms.

By boosting these posts, you’re extending their visibility beyond your current follower base, reaching people who may not have come across your brand otherwise. You can boost any type of content in your feed, including product launches, special promotions/discounts, and user-generated content.

Similar to standard social ads, you can customise your targeted boosted audience to align with your businesses’ marketing objectives, whether that’s reaching a specific demographic or even retargeting to existing followers.

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What is organic social good for?

It sounds pretty simple, but the reason that organic social is the foundation of many digital marketing strategies today is because it’s one of the best, cheapest, and most effective ways to nurture a connection with your customers at scale.

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1. Building brand awareness and trust

Organic social is a great and easy way to build brand awareness and trust among your audience, which naturally creates valuable customer relationships.

However, this connection goes way beyond one-sided or ‘salesy’ marketing messages, and allows for meaningful two-way interactions. As your followers interact with your organic content and see your brand consistently delivering value, transparency and authenticity, trust will develop.

A study by Oberlo found that 46% of surveyed consumers would pay more for a brand they trust, and another study found that around 74% of consumers trust social media to guide their purchase decisions. So it’s important to consistently deliver content that speaks to your audience’s interests and needs to create this trusted connection.

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2. Showcasing expertise

Your social media profiles are also excellent platforms for showcasing your unique expertise, helping you to establish authority within your industry. By sharing informative and engaging content, such as how-to videos and tutorials, insightful articles, and posts full of hints and tips, you’re demonstrating to your followers that your brand provides real value.

For example, a clothing business could share fashion tips, styling guides, and new trend alerts - providing value to your audience that entices them to keep up to date with your posts.

Additionally, they might showcase behind-the-scenes glimpses of their design and production, video content featuring members of the team, and posts focused on brand storytelling.

Not only does this provide the audience with insights into the brand’s dedication, expertise, and story, but it improves the brand-audience connection.

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3. Driving website traffic

One of the best ways to utilise your organic social presence is to drive traffic to your Shopify store.

For instance, you might share your most engaging blog posts or articles on LinkedIn alongside an eye-catching image, heading, and caption. These topics can spark the interest of those who see your feed, showing them that you provide valuable content, which prompts customers to click through to your website for more information.

By showcasing your new and existing products and services and highlighting their unique features or benefits, you can provide a link to your website that has a more of a natural feel, as opposed to super 'salesy', which will only drive your audience away.

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4. Driving more app downloads

You can also utilise your social media to drive more app downloads and sales in the same, or similar way.

The key is to provide a seamless path from your organic social content to your website or mobile app by offering valuable content, app-only incentives, website deals, or information that encourages your followers to take the next step and visit your app or Shopify store.

With more and more people shopping by mobile devices, this will prove very popular among your customers. In fact, 70% of customers prefer shopping via mobile apps than they did a year ago. So if you haven’t already created an app for your Shopify store, now is the time to do so.

StoreLab allows you to create a professional, custom, and fully optimised mobile app for your Shopify store that will help you to boost sales, improve customer satisfaction, and increase conversion rates. For more information, feel free to drop our team a message, or learn more about our plans.

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5. Encouraging user-generated content (UGC)

One of the main goals of organic social media marketing is to build engagement and create a sense of community amongst your followers, and when this is achieved, you can naturally get a good amount of user-generated content in return:

Customer reviews and testimonials - these can be directly given or sent to you by customer, or even simply taken from the comment sections of your posts.
Social media posts from followers featuring your products
Customer submitted photos or videos showcasing their experience with their purchase

For example, continuing on with the example clothing brand, they might encourage their customers to post photos of themselves wearing or styling their purchases, tagging the brand or using a specific hashtag. This would generate a wealth of UGC, helping them build an engaged community through their social profiles.

User-generated content can be incredibly useful, especially for small-medium sized businesses who are still establishing themselves in the market.

A recent study found that 79% of people say that user-generated content highly impacts their purchasing decisions.

This is because UGC provides first-hand testimonials, reviews, and social proof from your existing, satisfied customers, creating trust and credibility with new customers.

So by creating meaningful, relatable, and shareable content, you can inspire your followers to share their opinions, experiences, and ideas related to your product or service.

You can learn more about the power of user-generated content for your Shopify store in this guide.

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Examples of good organic social media

Organic content can vary across different brand’s social media platforms because there’s such a wide range of possibilities as to what you can post.

However, each form of organic content has common characteristics that help it to reach the right goals and target audience. Your posts need to be informative, engaging, credible, and customer-focused:

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Product/service showcase

You don’t want your social feed to become a product catalogue, and people don’t follow brands just to see the same photos they can look at on your website. Instead, your followers want to see your products and offerings presented in a compelling way. Through engaging imagery and brief copy, you can showcase your offerings’ features, benefits and unique selling points to your audience.

This type of social content aims to resonate with your followers, sparking their interest and encouraging them to explore your offerings further and, ideally, make a purchase. They usually take the form of product images, videos, or even user-generated content.

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Organic social media examples — Source: StoreLab

Customer testimonials

Creating social media posts based around customer testimonials is a great way to organically build trust and credibility for your brand. It typically features feedback, reviews, and success stories shared by your existing customers who’ve had an amazing experience with your product that they’d like to share.

By showcasing real voices and genuine interactions, these customer testimonials will create organic social proof. Opposed to customers hearing about how great the products are from you, they can hear about it from customers just like them who have tried your offerings and have found them beneficial.

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Behind the scenes

Offer a sneak peak into what goes on behind the scenes at your company, such as how your products are made, your team at work, and the day-to-day activities that make your brand unique.

This type of social content works to humanise your brand, offering a candid look into your business, which helps you to build a personal connection with your audience. Behind the scenes posts often feature images or short videos, and focus on an insider or employee's experience that you know will resonate with your followers and create a sense of authenticity.

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How-to guides

How-to guides are one of the most engaging forms of organic social media content because they serve as a valuable resource for your customers.

These posts are designed to provide step-by-step instructions, tips, or tutorials on something specific to your niche, helping your audience to solve common problems, learn new techniques, or achieve a goal.

By offering solutions and sharing expertise in your field, you can easily position your brand as a valuable resource for information.

Social media posts featuring how-to guides and helpful tips also encourage engagement amongst your followers. This is because after watching, reading, or looking at your content, they may ask questions or share their opinions and experiences.

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Company values and mission

^‍You can also post content that talks about, promotes or reflects your brand’s values and commitment to social and environmental causes that are likely to resonate with your audience.

It’s increasingly becoming the case that more and more shoppers want to buy from brands that are aligned with their values.

In fact, new research shows that 82% of shoppers want a brand’s values to align with their own, and that 3/4 shoppers reported parting ways with a brand over a conflict in values.

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Interactive content

Interactive content, including giveaways, contests, games, and challenges, are a great way to engage with your audience on your social media platforms. This is because they encourage active participation which creates excitement and a sense of community.

Giveaways are very popular on Instagram and TikTok, enticing your customers with the idea of winning a prize or receiving something for free. These initiatives not only boost engagement but also expand your reach as those who participate often share their involvement with their networks, such as by tagging their friends in the comments section or sharing the post on their story.

Interactive content breathes life into your social media presence, showing that you care about your audience and want to engage with them.

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3 top tips to improve your organic social content and strategy

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1. Follow the 80/20 rule

When writing your organic social posts, it’s important to follow the 80/20 rule for both your informative and promotional content. This means that 80% of your social media posts should be aimed at providing valuable information, or showcasing entertaining and educational content, whilst the remaining 20% can be dedicated to promotional content related to your products and services.

That 80% will bring new followers and build trust, and then the 20% will allow your audience to buy into what you’re selling.

This approach places your audience’s needs and interests at the forefront of your social media strategy. Think about yourself as a social media user - you don’t want to be bombarded with promotional sales content.

Today’s social media users are constantly inundated with endless feeds of information. By dedicating the majority of your posts to content that genuinely resonates with your audience, you are showing your commitment to delivering value and addressing their interests.

When it’s time to think of a brand that will act as a solution to their problems or needs, your audience will remember the brand that really stood out to them and the one that might have even made them smile!

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2. Optimise your content and profiles

Optimising your content and profiles involves refining your social media presence to increase visibility, engagement and consistency by aligning what you’re sharing with your target audience’s interests.

This not only ensures that your social media efforts are reaching and engaging your target audience, but that you’re also maintaining a polished brand identity and driving more traffic, and therefore, sales, to your website or Shopify store.

Here are 5 ways you can optimise your social media content and profiles:

Research and use relevant hashtags: Using hashtags on your social media posts increases the discoverability of your content, helping you to reach an audience that you know will be interested in these specific topics or trends.
Make sure your messaging reflects your brand values to build a trusted relationship with all of your followers: You can do this by incorporating your brand’s ethical practices, principles, and unique selling points into your content.
Keep your branding consistent across all of your posts and profiles: This means using the same colours, fonts, and styles so that your audience can recognise your brand across various social media channels.
Use external links across all of your social channels: These can include links to your website or Shopify store, blog posts, relevant articles or guides, or partner/collaboration sites. This has SEO benefits as it works to increase the organic traffic to your website.
‍Note: On some platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram, you can’t use links in your captions, only in the bio of your profile. This means that if you do have a link that you’d like to share, you can include it in your bio and direct followers to it from your posts.
Use keywords to appear in non-hashtag searches: Social media users enter keywords or phrases into their search bar to find relevant content or accounts without using hashtags. This is why it’s important to use keywords throughout your posts, captions, bio’s and other descriptions to improve your discoverability to these people.

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3. Don’t spread yourself too thin

When selecting your social media channels, avoiding the temptation to spread yourself too thin is essential for maintaining a focused and successful strategy. If you attempt to develop a presence on all social networks, you’ll end up spending zero time effectively focused on any of them.

Instead, just choose a couple of social channels to engage on, and spend time developing a clear and in-depth engagement strategy for each, keeping in mind the demographics of each platform.

Concentrating your resources and efforts on a select few platforms that align with your target audience and goals allows you to create high-quality content, engage meaningfully with your followers, and build a strong presence.

This ensures that your social posts are well-crafted, consistently managed, and tailored to the specific needs and preferences of your audience, which not only leads to better results, but is a more efficient use of your time and resources.

Want to improve your social content and SEO strategy further? Our guide, SEO Tips to Boost your Shopify Store’s Organic Traffic discusses 3 more tips that you can use to improve your brand’s social media and content strategy.

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Organic Social Media FAQ

How do you create an organic social media following?

Building a following on social media takes time, but it's worth it.

We heavily recommend against buying followers, likes or interactions, and social platforms frequently remove fake profiles, which can impact your ranking in their algorithm.

Here are 5 ways to create an organic social media following:

Post frequently whilst maintaining quality
Encourage your audience to like, comment and share
Run competitions to increase engagement (and make one of the entry requirements that they have to be following you)
Reply and interact with comments
Listen and act on audience feedback

We also have a full guide on how to build an Instagram audience for your Shopify store.

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How can I use organic social to boost my Shopify sales?

Organic social is a great way to boost your Shopify sales long-term through successful brand building and community engagement.

Here are 3 ways to boost your Shopify sales with organic socal:

Know your audience: just like with any marketing channel, a successful social presence relies on understanding your audience. What content do they comment on? What content do they share? The more you know your audience, the easier it is to get them over to your website.
Engage & interact: Organic social is a two way conversation. If you want to build a brand that customers will buy from, you need to be replying to their comments and DMs.
Create Shoppable Posts: Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok all offer shoppable post features that allow users to purchase products directly from your content.Utilising these features not only helps to highlight your products to those who may not have visited your Shopify store yet, but creates a more direct purchase experience for your customers.

Click here to read the full article.

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