Organic Traffic vs. Paid Traffic on Social Media

Kassaundra  00:00

As a former ELA teacher, I couldn’t not host a podcast without giving at least one vocabulary lesson. So today we are chatting all about the definitions of organic traffic and paid traffic on social media. 

Kassaundra  00:18

So teacher authors, go ahead and reheat that cup of coffee because I’m your host, Kassaundra Foster, and we’re about to get Schooled in Socials. 

Kassaundra  00:28

All right, so today, we are jumping in to some of those buzz words that you hear when you are using social media for marketing your resources, and those terms are organic traffic and paid traffic. So we’re going to talk about what each of those means, and we’re going to talk about my opinion on where you should spend your precious time and energy when it comes to organic or paid traffic. 

Kassaundra  01:00

So let’s start by talking about organic traffic. For those of you who teach ELA and probably those of you who teach science, you are probably already ahead of the game with breaking down what organic traffic means when it comes to social media. For those of you who aren’t, a quick general definition of organic is characterized by continuous or natural development. The word I’m really honing in on there is natural and really that idea of natural development. So when it comes to social media, organic traffic is traffic that comes across your page, naturally. People who naturally are able to find you and who naturally navigate from your social media to your paid offers like your TPT store. So these are people who might find you on the reels page or through search or from a hashtag or from a suggestion that the platform gave them, they were not your follower, they were not part of your audience, but they saw your content somewhere, and they connected with it, and they navigated to your page and hopefully became an audience member. The thing I really like about organic traffic is that the only thing you’re doing to get this kind of traffic from social media to your store is creating free content. You are building a community so that people naturally want to navigate to your paid offers, because they know that you have something that can help them based on the content that you have already created. You have shown yourself to be an expert. You have shown yourself that you can give them value and that you can help them. And so they have found you because you’ve created all of this free content and posted it strategically, and now that they know what you can offer them, the next natural step is to navigate to those paid offers that you have. 

Kassaundra  03:34

Okay, now let’s talk about paid traffic, basically the antonym of organic traffic. So it is the exact opposite. You create targeted content, so usually some sort of ad, like a Facebook ad or an Instagram ad, and you pay that social media site and to run that ad in order to encourage people to head to your paid offers and purchase them. So like I said, for a good example, here are Facebook ads. Usually create a graphic and a caption that’s geared towards promoting one resource or one piece of your business, and then you pay a platform like Facebook to place your ads along people’s home feed. Usually, ads are placed towards the top of pages or in kind of prime real estate on a social media website, which is why you pay for them, right? Location, location, location. And the thing about this strategy is that this strategy requires your dollar bills and also an understanding of how ads work on social media, because, unfortunately, it’s not as easy as just making an awesome graphic, writing a killer caption, paying Facebook, and then hoards of people coming for your offer. There’s a little more learning involved and a lot of moving pieces that you have to be aware of in order to make an ad campaign really work, in order to get that paid traffic to either your store or your offer.

Kassaundra  06:37

What is my preference? I bet you can already guess what it is, but here’s what I think you should spend your precious time and energy on. Organic traffic, and here’s why. Number one, it doesn’t cost you anything. So even if a piece of content you create quote, unquote flops. You didn’t lose any money, right? You created it for free. You put it out for free. You didn’t pay any of your dollar bills in order to host it on that social media site. So even if it only gets a few views, oh, well. Paid traffic is focused on the sale. Your number one goal with paid traffic, with getting an ad, is you are focused on the sale of that resource. Now organic traffic is mostly focused on establishing you as an expert and building your community. So meaning organic content helps to boost your credibility, and can ultimately lead to more people navigating to those paid offers. When you do an ad, someone is probably going to see it once, and you’re going to want them to act on it. Maybe they’ll see it a few times, and that would be great. But most of the time, with that paid traffic, you are creating ads, someone is seeing it once, you’re trying to pull them in, and you’re trying to get that sale. And usually what happens is, you can pull some people in, you can get those sales, but they might not come back because they’re not continuing to follow you, they have not become a part of your audience, so they’re not getting all of that awesome free value that you have to offer to them. You’re not able to as easily position yourself as an expert if you are using paid traffic as your main means of getting people to your offers. So utilizing a strategy that focuses more on organic content really builds up that community. And this is imperative, right? Because, like I said before, they might not come back if they’re not part of your community. And we want them to come back. We want them to come back time and time again, to purchase from us, right? We want them to know that we are the go to when it comes to middle school vocabulary, right, or the go to when it comes to special education paperwork. We want them to know that where are their person. On the other hand, paid ads only run for so long, and so they’re rarely bringing people into our community to stay, just because their nature is promotion of the sale versus community building.

Kassaundra  09:55

Also another negative of paid traffic is to do paid traffic marketing well, there is a whole new layer of social media to learn about and master. Things that I don’t even want to touch with a 10 foot pole, and that’s saying something, because I am usually willing to jump in and learn anything. But you have to learn how to run ads, how to specify the audience for an ad, how long you want to run your ad – there are so many things, okay? Don’t get me wrong, organic traffic, and using your content to bring in organic traffic take some learning, too, but it’s really hard to be doing that paid traffic marketing and have it work well if you don’t have your organic marketing down first, so essentially it becomes more work. Finally, organic traffic is more beneficial to your ideal customer. You create free value and you give them valuable content. And as teachers, we all have a helping nature, so I’m always team do what benefits teachers. Now this isn’t to say that you cannot do paid marketing and focus on paid traffic to your social media channels. There are definitely times when this can be beneficial, like when you’re launching something big, like a course, it might be something that you look into, but I want you to know that for everyday marketing of your resources, you should not have to pay your dollar bills. You can do that all through organic traffic. Okay, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little vocabulary lesson. Just remember, organic traffic comes to you naturally through the content you already create, and paid traffic requires you to pay to get eyes on your content. So whether you decide to use organic, paid, or a mix of both, just make sure you’re always keeping that teacher on the other end of the screen in mind.