Organic Social Media Growth Strategy: A Comprehensive Playbook

Organic social media growth is essential to establish yourself on any platform. It’s budget-friendly, helps achieve your goals, and builds a steady foundation for long-term success regardless of who you’re up against. Learn the secrets to limitless growth with our expert advice to take your profile to influencer-level heights.

“We saw immediate increased engagement with PathSocial, and that helped catapult our personal training recruitment.”

Verified review

“We saw immediate increased engagement with PathSocial, and that helped catapult our personal training recruitment.”

Verified review

What Is Organic Social
Media Growth?

Organic social media growth means increasing your engagement, followers, and reach without using paid ads. This approach relies on an organic social media strategy that focuses on creating valuable content, consistent posting, and active community engagement. Key elements include sharing content that resonates with your target audience. Also, using relevant hashtags for visibility, and interacting with followers through comments, likes, and messages. This strategy helps naturally attract and retain followers while building genuine connections.

Organic growth tends to be more sustainable by building genuine relationships and fostering a loyal community. This approach leads to long-term success on platforms like Instagram. This method requires time and effort, but it cultivates a more authentic and engaged audience, which is crucial for lasting impact.

Why Does Organic Social Growth Matter?

Incorporating organic strategies into your social media growth plan ensures long-term success and genuine connections with your followers. Organic social growth is essential because it builds a loyal, engaged audience and strengthens your brand’s credibility. Here’s how:

It brings in real people who show genuine interest in your content.
It helps build strong relationships with your audience as they find your posts valuable.
It sheds light on the effectiveness of your content and social media marketing strategies.
It builds a loyal community who actively engage with your posts.

It increases your reach as your followers share your content with their followers, friends, and family.
It attracts high-quality leads, especially when you address your audience’s pain points.
It levels the playing field, letting you compete with anyone on any platform, regardless of their resources.
It focuses on customer-centric content, ensuring authentic interactions and engagements with your audience.

A Brief Look Into the History of Organic Growth on Social Media

When platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) launched, your feed only had posts from people you followed. Your content could only reach non-followers if your followers shared your posts on or off these platforms. In other words, organic growth was the only game in town.

This changed with the introduction of algorithmic feeds. Instead of showing posts in reverse chronological order, i.e., the newest content first, the focus shifted towards engagement.

The platforms showed posts you’re more likely to find interesting to keep you on these sites as long as possible.

Along with this shift, these networks launched paid promotional services to ensure they generate sufficient revenue. These tools gave businesses and users various options to reach new users and grow.

In the meantime, organic growth became harder as these changes transformed social media completely. Fortunately, it was still worth the effort, as the rewards you gained from these strategies outweighed everything.

Currently, platforms show posts from people you don’t follow, as their content aligns with your interests. On the flip side, you can appear in non-followers feeds by focusing on organic strategies.

In today’s social network landscape, a perfect blend of organic and paid growth is essential, as they complement each other.

Common Phrases in Social Media Growth

There are two relevant terms to know when learning about social media growth. Understanding these phrases is essential for anyone looking to build a strong online presence. They provide the foundation for strategies that help grow followers organically and maintain a healthy, engaged audience.

What Is Organic Growth in Social Media?

Organic social media are non-promoted posts from brands and people that appear in your feed. It refers to posts, comments, stories, images, and videos users publish without using paid services to promote them.

You’ll see them in your feed if you interacted with the user recently or if the algorithm boosts the post. Sharing an image in your Instagram Stories is an example of organic social media content.

Paid Social Media

Paid social media involves using a platform’s advertising services, like Instagram promotions, to reach a user’s feed. They are generally advertisements or sponsored content to increase your reach and engagement quickly. It’s similar to the advertisements you see on TV or when you go online.

Sponsored posts you see from people and brands you don’t follow on Instagram are an example of paid social media.

Organic vs Paid Social Media: What is the Difference?

Understanding the difference between organic and paid social media is crucial for effective Instagram growth. Social media organic growth involves building your audience naturally over time through consistent posting, engagement, and community interaction. It focuses on creating authentic connections with real followers, leading to sustained growth.

On the other hand, paid social media uses advertisements and promotions to boost visibility and follower count quickly. While this can lead to rapid growth, the engagement might not always be as genuine or long-lasting as with organic methods. Both approaches have their benefits, and the best strategy often combines both to maximize your social media presence.

Pros and Cons of Social Media Growth Strategies

Weighing social media growth strategies’ pros against their cons helps you decide if this is what you need. Each method offers unique advantages and potential downsides that can influence your success. Before choosing a strategy, it’s important to understand how it aligns with your goals and whether the benefits outweigh the risks. This overview will help you make an informed decision on which approach best suits your needs.

Pros

Builds Trust: To ensure your posts are visible to your audience, you must create authentic, high-quality, relevant, and valuable content. Your followers’ trust in you will increase as your posts resonate with their interests. They’ll also see that you aren’t active on social media just to promote your brand, products, or services.

Boosts Awareness: A consistent social media strategy is necessary for organic growth, which works in your favor. When your audience sees your posts regularly, you will be in the back of their minds.

Long-Term Sustainability: Everyone gravitates towards these strategies because of their long-term sustainability. You don’t need to set aside a budget or continuously invest in organic growth tactics. Also, by creating evergreen content, new followers will always find your posts helpful, even after discovering them after several years.

Loyal Followers Become Brand Advocates: Having a highly engaged audience means they’ll also show interest in your offerings. They’ll recommend your products and services to people they know and their followers.

Fosters Strong Relationships With Followers: Engaging with your followers is vital to the success of your organic growth strategies. Responding to your audience’s messages, replying to comments, and sharing follower-generated content strengthens your relationship with them.

Cons

Time-Consuming: A significant drawback of relying on organic growth is that you don’t enjoy the results immediately. It takes significant effort and time to build a faithful following on social media. This means being active and posting regularly. Unlike paid strategies, organic growth doesn’t offer quick results.

Algorithm-Dependent: The success of your growth strategies depends not only on user engagement but also on the platform’s algorithm. Social media networks update their algorithms regularly to ensure the right post reaches the right people at the right time. These tweaks can reduce your engagement and visibility until you figure out what changed and adapt your content accordingly.

Minimal Control Over Reach: You don’t have much control over whether the social network shows your posts to new audiences. While your followers sharing your posts can somewhat mitigate this risk, you’re still heavily reliant on these platforms.

Best Practices To Kick Start Social Media Engagement

Boosting social media engagement starts with implementing the right strategies that resonate with your audience. By following these best practices, you can build stronger connections and create a more engaged community around your brand. Incorporating a social media boosting strategy with organic social media growth services can amplify your efforts and ensure genuine, long-lasting follower interactions. This combined approach not only enhances immediate engagement but also lays the foundation for sustained growth. Let’s explore the key practices that will help you kick-start your social media engagement and drive meaningful results.

1. Focus on a Handful of Channels Depending on Your Target Audience

Find out where your audience is before you join any social channel. When making this decision, think about who your target audience is and what kind of content you create.

For instance, according to Statista, 62.6% of Instagram users are 18-34. You must create an Instagram profile to promote your products to a younger audience.

At the same time, you don’t have to open an account on every network. Some platforms may not work well for you, and it’s harder to be active on all of them regularly. This makes it challenging to hit your targets and maintain focus.

It’s better to pick one or two platforms and spend all your energy establishing yourself on them. Create in-depth and unique strategies for each network to get the best results from your efforts.

2. Make a Great First Impression by Optimizing Your Profile

Your content is what convinces people to visit your profile page. Users won’t tap the follow button if their username looks bot-like or if there are missing details. Also, if you don’t include the right keywords, your profile won’t appear at the top of the search results page.

Here’s a list of things to do:

Create a relevant username that’s easy enough to remember. If you find this challenging, use Path Social’s free username generator. It helps you pick the perfect username that makes your profile easy to find and remember.
Use a high-quality and relevant image as your profile photo. Make sure it fits within the platform’s profile picture specifications so that you don’t have to crop relevant details. Remember, this image is the first thing people will see when they see your posts and profile.
Your bio should give visitors all the information they need to know about you within a glance. Think of it as how you can describe yourself and what you do as quickly and clearly as possible. Use relevant keywords, as it can increase your visibility, both inside and outside the social network. Also, you can easily draw people’s attention to your bio with our free font generator.
Use the pin feature to showcase your best-performing posts and anything else you consider important. For example, if you’re hosting an event, pinning this will ensure people see when they visit your profile. You can also cycle through different content to keep your pinned posts fresh.

3. Your Competitors Have the Answers if You Ask the Right Questions

Your competitors teach you a great deal about what you should and shouldn’t do on various platforms. For instance, how do you know if posting the same content on different social networks is okay? You can analyze your competitors and see if they do this or change their posts based on the channel.

Here’s another question—what kind of content category will help increase your Instagram engagement? Again, the answer lies in what your competition posts about regularly. Go through their posts and separate them into different categories. This should make it easier to understand what you should focus on. Give it a shot and see how your audience reacts to it.

The more you examine your competitors’ profiles, the more you learn what to do on different channels. However, don’t copy them outright, as this won’t bode well with your followers or reputation. Instead, use your observations to fine-tune your strategies to get better results.

You can start doing this on Instagram with our free profile analyzer, which gives you information like:

Target Audience

Budget

How To Get Social Media Followers: 3 Simple Tips

Followers are the lifeblood of a successful social media profile as they engage and promote your content organically. According to Statista, Instagram has 2 billion monthly active users, roughly one-fourth of the world’s population.

In other words, there are always users who can become your followers despite the immense competition. Here are three tips to help you get social media followers who will show genuine interest in your posts.

1. Valuable Content Will Boost Organic Reach

Creating valuable content helps establish yourself as a credible source and earn the trust of your followers. People will be more than happy to share your posts, as they know others will also benefit from them. This will boost organic reach and bring more views to your account.

They know they will learn something different that benefits them with every new post. In the long run, not only will they stick around, but also become your brand advocates.

2. Relevant Hashtags Make It Easier for People To Discover You

Hashtags have an impact on your content’s visibility. These special phrases help categorize your posts.

A common practice is to use popular and trending hashtags, as they attract loads of attention. While this can work, people may not see your posts, as thousands of other users use the same phrases.

A better way to make it easier for people to discover you is to use hyper-specific hashtags. As they aren’t trending, you won’t have a lot of competition for these phrases. The people searching for these hashtags may be looking for something similar to your content. Because of this, they are more likely to follow you and engage with your posts.

We have a free hashtag generator for Instagram that tells you how many posts use the same phrase. This helps you identify hashtags with high competition levels, which can reduce your visibility. You can easily ensure your post appears at the top of hashtag search results.

3. Use a Social Media Growth Service To Do All the Heavy Lifting

A social media growth service can help you find the right followers for your niche. When choosing such services, look for companies that focus on organic growth. They won’t get bots to follow you, nor will they ask you to follow someone in exchange for a follower.

This way, you won’t have to worry about any platform suspending your account for breaking its rules.

You can use our organic growth service on Instagram to build a loyal following. All you need to do is tell us the demographics, and we’ll take it from there. We use our specialized AI algorithm and team to look for high-quality, real users interested in your niche. They will follow you because they like your content and will continue to engage with your posts.

Don’t worry about losing these followers after you stop using our service, as your content aligns with their interests.

FAQs

What does organically grown mean in social media?

Organically grown in the context of social media refers to increasing your following and reach without paid advertisements.

How to organically grow social media presence?

Growing your social media presence organically is possible if you do the following:

Posting high-quality and evergreen content regularly
Following the latest trends and weaving them into your posts
Being consistent and posting every day
Putting out your content when your audience is online
Joining relevant conversations and engaging with people
Hosting Instagram polls that ask questions where your audience can chime in with their opinions
Using different types of content to keep things interesting and exciting
Forming relationships with your followers by engaging with them and sharing their content

How to grow social media organically

To grow social media organically, focus on creating high-quality content that resonates with your audience. Be consistent in your posts. Create valuable, engaging content that encourages likes, comments, and shares. Use relevant hashtags to increase visibility and reach a broader audience. Engage directly with your followers by responding to comments and messages, building a loyal community. Regularly analyze your performance to refine your strategy and ensure continuous growth. By focusing on these organic methods, you can steadily grow your social media presence without relying on paid advertising.

What is the organic reach rate on social media?

The organic reach rate on social media depends on the platform, the type of posts, and the number of followers. According to Statista, posts with images can reach 2,002 users on average. Adding several photos, i.e., the carousel format, increases the reach to 2,641.

Do you need a social media manager?

Whether you need a social media manager or not depends on your requirements. You should start looking for an expert if:

You can’t keep up with all the changes taking place on various social media platforms.
Managing your brand and sticking to your social posting schedule is overwhelming.
You don’t know what to do with all the performance metrics you see in your posts’ analytics.

When starting your social media journey, you can rely on services like our free Instagram tools. They will help you grow until you need a professional to manage your account.

Is Path Social legit?

Yes, Path Social is legit. We don’t use scripts or bots, nor do we need your login credentials to increase your Instagram follower count. Instead, our team of experts uses AI to find your audience and promote your content in the right channels.

This method is 100% reliable as it never breaks Instagram’s rules. Also, your account only receives new followers who want to see more of the same from your profile.

Results of Organic Social Media Growth

How do you know if investing in strategies that help you grow social media organically is worth it? You need to look at your key performance indicators (KPIs), which give you an overview of your efforts.

Here are a few things you need to keep an eye out for:

For example, Modern Fit, a fitness brand that offers fitness and meal plans, used Path Social’s Instagram organic growth services. Within a month:

Discover Your Instagram Account’s True Potential With Path Social

An organic social media growth service can make the difference, helping convert your Instagram side hustle into a full-time gig. With Path Social, you get authentic followers who love your content and can’t wait to see more from your profile. Let our experts focus on growing your account while you enjoy what you do best — creating your favorite content.

Use Path Social today to acquire high-quality followers, increase engagement, and unlock your Instagram profile’s reach!

Feature	Organic Social Media	Paid Social Media
Growth Speed	Gradual—over time	Rapid—often immediate
Engagement Quality	High—genuine interactions	Variable—may include less genuine follower
Cost	Free—except for time and resources	Costly—requires a budget for adsr
Sustainability	Long-term—with consistent effort	Short-term unless continuously funded
Follower Authenticity	Real—interested in your content	Mixed—can include less engaged followers
Effort Required	High—requires consistent posting and engagement	Lower—driven by ad performance