What's the best way to balance organic and paid social media for optimal ROI?

This is absolutely the right strategy. With the social media platforms the additional aspect is the brand can be hyped at any platforms. For the conversion to happen and the brand reach the right target audience we also need to categorise the SM based on the age group, profession, time spent, level of education, geography and other factors. Ex: FB is now considered to be used only by baby boomers. And Instagram is by millennials and GenZ while Twitter is used by those who want crisp and fast news. Content and conversion needs to be customised for each SM and the demography of a brand targets with a strong dose of consistency. The power of suggestion is stronger than we care to agree.

In this context both the organic and paid media need what we can term as 'a pizzaz' element. But both cannot be the same. While dealing with an organic approach the content needs to fit the context and relevancy in the market. Showcasing company culture, adding client and employee testimonials, publicizing brand success. In a paid activity we need to weigh which is a quality spend and which is necessary at a particular junction. Ex: Let's say a brand wants to highlight the success of a baby product, do you choose an ad or multiple mommy influencers and paid listings on SM pages dedicated to baby products/brands. An analysis needs to be done on cost and impact of both the choices and ROI and then a decision needs to be made.

This is exactly true. Apart from the age group the demography of viewers and the time spent is also different for each SM platform where the preferences also change based on rural, urban, town, tier levels of cities and towns, economic factors etc. A rich business owner from a town may not be on LinkedIn but he sure would be using applications along with SM where targeted ads can be set.

Before going for paid social media reach, you must understand the platform and should have optimized for organic reach, otherwise, you will get reach and views with paid, but when they come, majority wont stay or convert.

Creating relevant content, be it organic or paid is highly important. While many times brands plan right target strategy, the messaging is lost in the content. This would be very similar to certain ads where we think 'is the ad for the car/jewellery/beauty product/gadget?'. Trying to take a very diversified and broad approach sometimes derails the strategy. So first one needs to plan the content/msging, then select what is the budget and then select the target demography and then based on the budget see what different organic and paid approaches can be taken. Key messaging is the winner.