One More Time Y'all! Organic Social Media Isn’t Dead, Never Was, Never Will Be!

Every few months, someone declares, “Organic social media doesn’t work anymore. You only need ads if you want leads.” If you’ve ever felt tempted to believe that, this one’s for you. Because I’m here to tell you, as loudly and kindly as possible, that organic social media is very much alive. The problem in most cases is not the algorithm. It is the lack of a real strategy.

I was a guest in this episode of the Rocky Mountain Marketing podcast with host Katie Brinkley, a seasoned social media strategist, author, and CEO of Next Step Social & Podcasting.

Together, we dug into what it actually takes to make organic social media work for your business, not just your ego. Katie has been doing this work for over 20 years, and I have been living and breathing organic content and social media strategy for more than 13 years, so this was not a “hot takes” chat. It was a deep dive into what is working right now for real businesses.

If you have ever wondered whether you should just turn on some ads and skip the hard work of organic, I want you to read this, then go listen to the full episode embedded above. Because when you understand how to build an organic social media strategy that is rooted in your business goals, your audience, and your data, everything changes.

Why Organic Social Media Isn’t Dead

Let’s start with the big question Katie asked me at the end of the show: Does organic social media still work for lead generation?

My answer was simple: yes.

In fact, I said on the show, “Social media 100% can give you leads.”

But here is the mindset shift most business owners need to make. Organic social media is marketing, not sales.

As I told Katie:

“Sales is for sales, marketing is for leads. Marketing is not for sales.”

My job as an organic social media strategist is to bring you the right people. I can drive traffic, build awareness, and help you show up as the trusted expert in your space.

What I cannot do from inside your social accounts is fix your landing page, rewrite all your website copy, or rebuild your sales process. Organic social media isn't dead, unless you've left it to suffer a slow death on your own!

Katie summed up the frustration many of us feel when brands expect social to do everything:

“We can drive the traffic to where you want it to go, but if you don’t have a landing page that works, you’re not going to get people signing up.”

Organic is not dead. What is “dead” is posting without a plan and expecting miracles.

Start Your Organic Social Media Strategy With Business Goals

When a business owner comes to me and says, “Our social media has never really done anything for us,” I do not start by asking about Instagram, or TikTok, or what kind of posts they like.

Step one is always a strategy.

I sit down with the business owner or leadership team for a 90-minute strategy session and I start with two simple, but powerful questions:

1. What are your business goals?

2. What are your social media goals?

On the podcast, I explained it this way:

“Business goals dictate marketing goals, marketing goals dictate social media goals.”

The biggest mistake I see? Social media managers and even agencies making up goals for a client, hitting those goals, and then discovering they were never aligned with what the business actually wanted.

So before we talk about content, we clarify things like:

• Are you planning to sell the business?

• Are you looking to scale in the next year?

• Do you have a new product or offer launching soon?

• Is your priority leads, brand awareness, or website traffic?

Only when those answers are on the table can we build an organic social media strategy that makes sense and can we proclaim; organic social media isn't dead, yet!

Use Competitors To Inform Your Organic Social Media Strategy

A lot of business owners feel weird about looking at competitors. Some even tell me, “I never look at my competitors. I don’t want to know what they’re doing.”

My response, which I shared with Katie, is that you are not “spying,” you are learning:

“A competitor is somebody who targets the same people, so it’s a case study right there.”

When I build an organic social media strategy, I always do:

• A full social media audit of your current presence

• A competitor analysis of the brands targeting the same audience

Looking at competitors helps you:

• Spot channels they are ignoring

• See which content formats seem to perform for your shared audience

• Understand when you are comparing apples to oranges

For example, Katie pointed out that on Facebook you can now easily see if your competitors are running ads. So if your organic posts are reaching 2,000 people and their content is reaching 20,000, it may not be that their organic social media strategy is better. You might be comparing organic posts to promoted content.

My favorite part of competitor analysis is finding the gaps. Maybe all of your competitors are posting on LinkedIn but ignoring YouTube Shorts. Maybe nobody is using Pinterest. Maybe they are not touching short form video at all.

That is where your opportunity lives.

Metrics: How Organic Social Media Leads Become Sales

If you are doing your own social, Katie asked a critical question on the podcast: how often should you be looking at your metrics?

My answer surprised a lot of listeners:

“If you are doing this on your own as a business owner, you need to do this daily.”

Now, daily does not mean you are building a 20-page report every morning. It means you are checking what is landing with your audience, especially when you are testing new formats or platforms.

Here is how I think about measuring an organic social media strategy:

• In the early stages, look at your data every day and formally review weekly.

• Once you have consistent reports, you can move to biweekly or monthly reviews.

• Always tie social metrics back to website traffic and real business outcomes.

For one of my clients, a divorce lawyer, the main goal is website traffic. We know that more website visitors lead to more consultations, which lead to more clients. It is a very clear funnel.

So what do we do?

• Focus the content strategy on blogs and SEO

• Track which blog topics are driving organic traffic

• Watch seasonal trends, like the January and February spike in searches related to divorce

• Use Google Search Console data to guide future content

In that case, organic social media provides brand awareness and social proof, but the real driver of conversions is organic traffic to the website, fueled by content that answers real search intent.

This is where so many brands go wrong. They post, “Happy New Year!” and then wonder why nothing happened.

As Katie said so well, randomly putting content out there is no different than pushing out white noise.

You do not need more noise. You need a strategy plus data.

Katie was a guest on the Strategy Talks podcast as well, where she shared her Four Post Strategy.

Long Form Content: The Engine Behind Organic Social Media

Another big theme in our conversation was the role of long-form content. Katie and I are in total alignment here.

You do not have to do everything. But you do need one strong, long-form content pillar that feeds your organic social media strategy.

That could be:

• A weekly or biweekly blog

• A podcast episode

• A YouTube video

On the show I shared how I talk to clients about this:

“I tell my clients, do you want to have a blog, do you want to have a podcast, or do you want to do YouTube videos? You have to pick one.”

From there, we:

1. Use keyword and topic research tools like AnswerThePublic, Pinterest trends, and Google search suggestions to find what people are actually looking for.

2. Map those topics against your business goals and the questions your clients are already asking.

3. Create one strong piece of content around that topic.

4. Repurpose the long form piece into multiple short form posts for social.

One great blog can turn into:

• 3 to 5 LinkedIn posts

• 2 Instagram carousels

• 2 short videos or Reels

• 1 email newsletter segment

• A thread or post for another platform

You are not posting just to post. Everything you publish ladder ups to a search term, a question your audience is asking, or a step in your buyer journey.

Making Organic Social Media Feel Lighter With Themes

At some point in the episode Katie said what many business owners are thinking: this sounds like a lot of work.

She is right. A real organic social media strategy is work. But it does not have to be overwhelming.

Here is the simple planning framework I shared that you can steal today.

First, zoom out:

1. Look at your next 12 months.

2. Give each month a theme.

For example:

• February: love

• March: renewal or “birthday month” for your business

• September: anniversary or “back to business”

• November: gratitude or client appreciation

Then zoom in:

1. Break each month into four weeks.

2. Give each week a sub theme that fits under the main one. If the theme is love, you might have:

   • Clients we love

   • Tools we love

   • Services we love

   • Teammates we love

3. Create one long form piece of content per week (or even per two weeks) around that sub theme.

“All you need is one piece of long form content and that will generate enough stuff for the rest of the week.”

From there, it is all repurposing. Quotes, short videos, graphics, behind the scenes posts, FAQs. It is the same core idea, told in different ways, across different platforms.

This is important: the strategy does not change every time Instagram rolls out a new feature. As I said on the show, tactics can change, but:

“Strategy is not ‘let’s produce some Reels.’ That’s a tactic.”

Your strategy might be “drive qualified traffic to the website” or “build authority with ideal buyers on LinkedIn.” Reels, Shorts, carousels, and polls are simply tools that help you get there.

Your Next Step With Organic Social Media

So, is organic social media dead?

Absolutely not.

Here is what is true instead:

• Organic social media without a strategy is exhausting and ineffective.

• Organic social media with clear business goals, strong content pillars, and ongoing measurement can be one of the most cost effective ways to build brand awareness and generate leads.

If you take nothing else from this conversation, take this:

“If that social media manager says, ‘I can bring you sales,’ run for the hills. They can give you leads.”

Your organic social media strategy should:

• Start with your business goals

• Be informed by competitors, not copy them

• Be fueled by long form content

• Be measured against real outcomes, not just vanity metrics

• Be built for humans, featuring humans

As Katie said so beautifully, we are in a world where AI is everywhere, but that only makes the human side of your business more important. Your audience wants to see the people behind the brand, hear your reasoning, and feel like they know you before they ever book a call.

If you are ready to move beyond random posting and start treating your organic social media as a real business asset, go listen to the full Rocky Mountain Marketing episode with Katie Brinkley, then come connect with me on LinkedIn. That is where I share more organic social media strategy, content ideas, and real examples from the work I do every day.

You do not have to burn everything down or suddenly become a full time influencer. You simply need a focused plan, a clear theme, and the discipline to test, measure, and adjust.

Organic social media is not dead. It just needs you to stop winging it.

10 Smart AI Prompts To Help You Implement This Organic Social Media Strategy

Use these prompts with your favorite AI tool to turn this blog into action:

• “Audit my current organic social media strategy based on this description: [paste what you are currently doing] and suggest 3 improvements tied to business goals.”

• “Help me define clear business, marketing, and social media goals for my company. Here is what we sell and who we sell to: [paste details].”

• “Generate 12 monthly themes for my organic social media based on my niche: [describe niche], and align them with typical seasonal trends.”

• “For the monthly theme [theme], give me 4 weekly sub themes and one long form content idea for each.”

• “Turn this blog post or podcast transcript into a month of social media content ideas for LinkedIn and Instagram: [paste content].”

• “Based on my ideal client profile: [paste details], list 10 questions they are likely typing into Google that I could answer with long form content.”

• “Create a simple weekly analytics checklist so I can review the performance of my organic social media in under 15 minutes.”

• “Given this competitor list: [names or URLs], summarize what they are doing on social media and identify 5 content gaps I could fill.”

• “Rewrite this landing page copy so it is more likely to convert the leads my organic social media is sending: [paste copy].”

• “Give me a 90 day organic social media strategy that focuses on lead generation, using one long form content pillar per week and repurposing into short form posts.”