Weighing the options between organic vs paid social media? We’ll save you some legwork: you’re probably going to want to do a bit of both.

Paid and organic social are different beasts best harnessed for different goals. But for a holistic approach that balances awareness with conversion, it pays off to know the pros and cons of each.

If you’re new to paid social, 2020 is an interesting time to get started. Confinement during the pandemic has people using social media more all over the world. But at the same time, ad spend isn’t keeping up. The major social networks are reporting some ups and downs in their revenues as many brands pause their advertising, either to save money during an economic downturn, or to take a moral stance against hate speech.

It’s a complicated time, but the silver lining is that there’s evidence ad prices are trending lower. For instance, Facebook’s CPC went down from 11 cents to 9 between January and March alone. Just a year before that, Hootsuite’s own numbers had CPC averaging around 40 cents.