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Organic vs Inorganic- Harvesting New Audiences 

There happen two ways you can decide to expand your reach and awareness online: organic and inorganic.  

You might be wondering what those terms mean. Organic is 'free marketing.' An organization creates original content to attract followers and earn engagement. Inorganic is paid advertisements to attract followers and gain engagement.  

We will dive further into the benefits and faults of each, so you can decide which one will be more beneficial for your organization.  

Organic Pros & Cons 

• Pro- Organic marketing remains authentic; it comes from the heart of your organization or association. Being authentic will establish trust with the community. This will attract people who generally share interest in the content being displayed.  
• Pro- Organic marketing remains free. This is a pretty unbeatable price. Some free strategies utilize hashtags, stories, live feeds, and DMs (direct messages).  
• Con- Organic content is self-generated. There happens to be a good reason why social platform professionals exist: not all organizations understand what content will bring in the correct audience. With your image on the line, it can end in disaster if done incorrectly.  
• Con- With organic content, originality remains hard to come by. With billions of social accounts out there, how will your organization be different?  ​​

Inorganic Pros & Cons 

• Pro- Inorganic allows you to boost posts and reach a wider audience. This algorithm will suggest your pages to a specific number of people that have been systematically categorized with the same values. 
• Pro- Inorganic will help your organization with micro-targeting particular audience groups, allowing you to find the individuals you want.  
• Con- Inorganic marketing has costs. You can set aside a budget, but you still spend money at the end of the day.  
• Con- With inorganic, boosted posts may leave a bad taste with certain audience groups: they might believe you are trying to sell to them. 

Considering each concept's underlying pros and cons, an organization's strongest approach often is a combination of organic and inorganic content. This will allow a broader reach of individuals to see the content and micro-target the correct audience. A good mix between paid and original content will draw new audience members interested in the things your organization is doing. ​

Further reading

For more information on how Cobalt can help you adapt and thrive in the changing demographic, economic and social environment, visit the Cobalt website or reach out to us by email. Let us know if you need anything at all for benchmarking or research data; we are here for you. 

Cobalt Community Research is a national 501c3 nonprofit, non-partisan coalition that helps local governments, schools and membership organizations measure, benchmark, and affordably engage communities through high-quality metrics, mobile geofencing data, surveys, and dynamic population segmentation. Cobalt combines big data with local insights to help organizations thrive as changes emerge in the economic, demographic and social landscape. Explore how we can help by calling 877.888.0209, or by emailing Information@CobaltCommunityResearch.org.