No doubt, if you’re a business in 2025 without a social media presence, you’re missing out. Big time.
Social media has been proven to increase business exposure, traffic and sales leads1.
Personally, I’ve been quite surprised to have made around 30% of my client bookings for the next three months over social media.
In fact, I got my very first lead on Facebook when I started my business.
Follow me on Instagram @hhmwriter for an insight into my own organic social content.
In this article, we’ll explore organic social content as part of an authentic brand strategy. This is so important in modern times with AI, less trust in sales pitches and influencers and a craving for human connection.
First up…
What is organic social content?
Organic social content is any content that is created without the use of paid promotion or advertising and then distributed on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.
Organic content is largely viewed as more authentic and has the potential to create long-term connections with current and new customers.
This is in contrast to paid advertising which is more beneficial for quick, short-term success in specific goals.
I’ll cover paid ads in a later blog, as they need their own space!
Why authenticity is integral to your content strategy
Authenticity is being genuine, real and human. And it’s got to be one of, if not THE main driving force behind your strategy.
A huge 88%2 of consumers prioritise authenticity when deciding which brands to support, meaning a shift to be more authentic on social media can make a huge impact on your business success.
Let’s take a look at some more reasons to prioritise organic social content.
Top reasons to use organic social content
It’s absolutely true that you need patience if you’re using an organic approach to your content. Building a genuine community (as opposed to a band of bots) takes time.
It can also be tricky when the algorithm changes, and suddenly, some of your content isn’t as visible.
Plus, it’s a challenge to keep producing really high-quality stuff when you’re not an expert in writing, video or design yourself.
It might be tempting to aim for sky high metric in a number of weeks by buying followers or likes.
Guess what?
There’s probably lots of little bots hidden in your numbers.
Are those bots going to become customers? No.
If you’re focused on consistent leads, sales and growth your social content needs to play a long game.
Here’s why brands, including the very top ones, choose to use organic social content.
💰 It’s cost-effective
You don’t have to invest large sums of money into your organic content. Sure, you can buy design tools like Canva to help with elements that aren’t your strengths, but it is much more accessible to businesses of all sizes and ones who are smart with their financials.
✅ It’s authentic
Organic content gives you that approachable persona, people get to know you and build a relationship of trust.
📈 It maintains sustainable growth
Your connections will be stronger through organic content and you’ll not only get new customers but loyal returning business as well as those golden referrals.
📢It establishes personality and voice
With organic content, people are less likely to expect perfection. You can relax and let your brand personality and voice come through, which is fun for you and entertaining for your audience.
💞It builds relationships
You might think posting about your favourite way to use a product or complete a process is not important but it’s these small details that real people connect with. They may have similar habits, likes, dislikes and this relatability is incredibly powerful for trust.
👀It engages customers at different stages of the buying journey
The different organic content you put out can target awareness and consideration (for potential clients who are still getting to know you) as well as retention with informative, entertaining content that customers come back to again and again.
🤝It supports customers
Your authentic insights, opinions and tips are helpful for customers. Whether it’s support on how to do something, the best way to achieve certain results or more general information from your industry – your value is high and your customers will keep returning to get that reliable support.
Okay, now you’re convinced.
But how do you strike the balance between oversharing and organic content?
Getting the content writing balance right
There are a couple of things to consider here.
- Sharing authentic content without getting too personal
- How much of your total content should be organic and how much purely focused on sales (paid or otherwise)
The first one will depend on the individual. Ask yourself – how much am I willing to share with my business audience? What are my non-negotiables that I absolutely do not want to share?
Some people are happy to share images of their kids, for example, on their business platform, some aren’t.
Some business owners happily post home workout videos, shopping trips and off-the-cuff lives.
Set your boundaries based on your comfort level and remember it’s okay not to share loads of personal information. You can still be authentic as it’s your brand authenticity that people care about most.
So, what about the balance between paid and organic content, then?
I went to CopyCon a few months ago and saw some amazing speakers.
Award-winning copywriter, Mel Barfield, shared her advice on ‘indicating’ – making yourself visible by posting authentic content and not overthinking too much.
She suggested an 80/20 rule, with 80% of your content organic (to inform, entertain, etc) and 20% salesy. Personally, out of 4 or 5 content pieces a week, I try to have only 1 specifically directed to promote sales.
Now, to achieve an effective content balance, you’ll need to have good organisation. It starts with a plan…
Plan your content strategy and calendar
Just like my earlier blog posts about email marketing strategy, your social content needs a guide too.
Aligning your social content strategy with your business goals is essential. And, it’s good practice to make goals super specific so you can measure them.
Here’s what that looks like (because I’m a visual learner, too)…
For example, if one of your business goals is to gain 10 new clients in the next 6 months, your social content strategy could be:
- Posting four times a week
- Post at least one video a week
- Publish one poll a week
- DM/comment 10 potential clients a week
Once you’ve got your ‘what’ and ‘how’ you can get into the details with a social content calendar.
If it feels intimidating to think about a whole year, chunk it up and go 4 months at a time. I like to give each month a theme and mini-goal and then plan a couple of months at a time in detail.
When planning your calendar, think about seasons. Every business has busy and quieter seasons. During busy periods you won’t be able to do as much ‘off-the-cuff’ content so have some good ideas to schedule.
You can also consider seasonal themes. For instance, I know that the beginning of the year is a good time to promote my web copy services as people are thinking about fresh starts and updating their businesses.
If you’re a wedding event company, you might decide that the gradual autumn wind-down is a great time to publish some content about wedding planning and inspiration for couple’s who are getting married in the following year.
That’s not to say things won’t change as you go through the year – they almost certainly will as you respond to what works and what falls flat. But be careful of making too many big changes as it’ll put a question mark next to your brand’s integrity.
Ooh, it’s another tangible takeaway…
Here’s a two week organic content plan:
Week 1
Monday – How to simple steps guide
Tuesday – Quote and poll
Wednesday – Customer testimonial/user-generated content
Friday – Behind the scenes this week
Week 2
Monday – Poll
Wednesday – Share poll results and give your opinion
Thursday – Countdown to launch
Friday – Sneak peek of launch
Saturday – new product sales promo post
Consistent and reliable content
Authenticity is not a one-time thing. It means showing up, over and over again with the same values and messaging.
It makes sense that customers need to see your brand at least 7 times before they make a purchase3 because trust takes time.
Your plan will help you commit to regular content and become a reliable voice of authority for your audience (many of whom are potential customers).
https://www.grahambakerphotography.com/
Replying to comments within a few hours is also a good way to keep conversation and interest in your brand high, again building connection and trust.
Now, even as a writer, I can’t deny that visual (video, photo, infographic) content has a huge impact on the success of marketing nowadays.
But visual on its own is less effective. It needs its pal – the trusty caption to level it up and make it worthy of action. Here’s some more on that.
High-quality social media captions
Why do you need great social media captions when your video or image gives a strong message?
There are a few reasons:
Inclusivity
Briefly summarising your visual content supports people with visual impairments. It also works better for people who don’t want to have the volume on or who find vertical information easier to read.
SEO and discoverability
Using keywords in your caption is another way to get more eyes on your content. Choose the right ones and attract just the right clients.
Value added
Your audience get more than just a visual with your caption. Instead of just repeating the message in the image or video, add extra detail, a touch of humour or insight that feels like a bonus.
Conversation starter
Including questions or prompts can help you start conversations, getting some great feedback from potential customers on your business and boosting your post’s visibility.
Action igniter
A well-placed call to action in a caption is not to be underestimated! If your audience enjoyed your visual content AND gained something from your informative caption, they are much more likely to act on that prompt.
“Wow, this all sounds like a lot of work for something that will take a long time to establish…”
Yes, but we all know the key to sustainable business success is consistent quality whether it’s marketing, products or service.
Also, some helpful tools can save you a little bit of time.
Generative AI
Right here and now, I’m not going to go deep with generative AI – that’s for a future blog (part of my March/April content plan).
Generative AI is a fantastic tool.
“But…. you’re a writer!”, you might be thinking. “Won’t it take over your job one day?”
I’m not actually very worried about AI taking over my writing job (at the moment). In my opinion, AI is an amazing technology for efficiency, but it can’t replace creativity and authenticity. So, at the moment, I feel safe.
So, what can generative AI do to save you time with social content writing?
You can, quite literally, write prompts for AI to generate captions based on the images/videos you want to share.
Example time…
Write an Instagram caption to promote my new dog grooming service in Bromley, called ‘Woofabbles’
The result is pretty good – but always question – is it good enough for my brand?
There are some words, for example, that are very ‘AI’ like ‘transform’ in this caption. It makes it sound a bit salesy and generic, in my humble opinion.
I would suggest hitting the button a few more times to get different versions of the caption and seeing which one (or a combination of a few) works best.
With AI, spelling and grammar are usually not an issue but accuracy can be a problem (as you can see in the disclaimer at the bottom). Always check facts, information and statistics.
And, you should always add personalisation and a human touch to any AI generated content. Use your human instinct and think about what would resonate with your ideal customers. Personalise with empathy in mind because that’s what connects us as humans.
If you’re planning on using AI more frequently, you’ll want to train it by uploading some of your best content writing templates and posts so that long-term it can better represent your brand voice and values.
My final point on AI (in this article anyway) is transparency. If you’re using the tool in any capacity to create content, be upfront with your audience and explain why you’ve used it. It’s saved you time on organisation, for example, or helped you generate a few ideas on a day when you’ve got a creative block.
Whether you use AI as a tool or not, you’ll want to know what content is working so you’re not wasting your time. So, how do you track success?
Tracking the success of your social media content
Big, medium or small businesses – your content metrics are oh so valuable. Set a weekly time to check on your previous posts so that you can adapt your plans as needed.
Metrics that you can track include reach or impressions, engagement (likes, shares, comments) follower growth and click-through rates. Click-through rates will be your key metric to see what content actually converts to sales.
Take on board what works and adapt as you go to improve your strategy and business growth.
We’re coming to the end of the article, but before I wrap up, I wanted to share some tangible ideas for organic content because I know how the days fly by when you’re running a business and how exhausted we can feel when it comes to content sometimes.
Here you go!🙌
10 ideas for organic social content
These ideas are versatile – you can represent them as reels, posts, carousels or memes and they work effectively across various platforms.
- Updates to service/products
- Reminder of services
- Behind the scenes
- Customer testimonials
- Quotes/facts
- How to guides
- A recent challenge/mistake
- A story about first-hand experience or learning in your industry
- Explanation of a service/product benefits
- User-generated content, e.g. showcase where real people have posted about your product/service (86% of consumers4 are more likely to trust a brand with UGC)
That’s organic social content in a 2500 word nutshell! 😅
I’d love to hear your thoughts on using generative AI for content writing and how you plan your content. 💡 Drop me a comment!
Thanks so much for reading and I hope you’ve got at least a couple of nuggets to take away.
Next month’s blog puts paid social advertising in the spotlight… we’re coming for you Facebook ads!
Sources:
3 – https://www.huddlecreative.com/blog/21-fresh-statistics-on-the-importance-of-branding#:~:text=Here’s%20what%20the%20statistics%20say,20%25%20(Marq%2C%202021) 4 – https://www.thedrum.com/news/2023/06/06/nearly-90-consumers-no-longer-trust-influencers-new-study-finds
Hayley Hickmott-Maurice | Copywriting Services 