The world of social media can be daunting for businesses, no matter their size and stage of life cycle. 

In the latest episode of MECast, Jamie Martin, our Marketing Executive, discusses the key role of authentic social media for businesses. He emphasises that organic social media should focus on educating, informing, or entertaining the audience, rather than just pushing sales.

Be Authentic

Authenticity is crucial, as it builds trust with customers. 

Businesses should feature real employees in their content, not just the leadership team. This allows you to draw on the knowledge of your whole team, and provide an insight into your business’s culture. “After all, people buy from people!”

However, the content must align with the brand’s true values and practices to avoid being called out for “greenwashing” or other inauthentic claims. Those who do not reflect their values will be labelled as untrustworthy, and once you lose your trust online, it’s very hard to gain it back. “The internet never forgets..”

Jamie outlines three ways businesses can be authentic on social media:

• Reflect your brand values in your content
• Include a diverse range of employees, not just management
• Engage with your audience and incorporate their feedback

Organic vs Paid

He also explains how organic social media can supplement a paid advertising strategy. Organic should focus on brand awareness, while paid drives more direct lead generation. A real social strategy incorporates both in tandem.

Many business owners expect direct leads from organic social alone, “it should form part of your marketing mix.” Jamie went on to say that “Businesses should focus on 2-3 key organic social channels where their target audience is, rather than spreading themselves thin across all platforms.”

This should then be supplemented by a paid approach. Use your organic to build trust and your paid efforts to drive leads and therefore business growth. Nay organic leads you pick up along the way is a bonus.

Repurposing Content

Additionally, Jamie highlights the importance of repurposing content. Not everyone who follows your pages will see your content, meaning experimenting with repurposing the posts that do well will not have a negative impact, in fact, it will be a positive one.

“Video content especially is great to repurpose” Jamie says “We have seen the original cut of videos not performing as well as the repurposed bit of content, and then we are able to tweak our strategy.”

Overall, the key message is that businesses must be authentic, strategic, and collaborative with their social media approach to effectively connect with and build trust with customers.

Key Takeaways 

• Authenticity is crucial for organic social media – it builds trust with the audience. Featuring real people from the business, not just the leadership team, helps create authentic content.
• Ensure their social media content aligns with their actual brand values and practices – Greenwashing or making claims they can’t back up will get them called out.
• Organic social media should focus on educating, informing, or entertaining – It’s best used for brand awareness, while paid ads are better for lead generation.
• Repurposing content is key – organic social posts only reach a small percentage of a brand’s followers. Finding what works and reusing it in different formats is important.
• Focus on 2-3 key platforms – For startups, social media is crucial for building awareness, don’t try to be all places at once

Watch the full MECast episode with Jamie here: