I rarely post anything political on social media. But when I reshared a news story on Linkedin about how a letter from US Secretary of Education to Harvard was posted online with a bunch of proofreading markup—it racked up almost 70k impressions. For context, most of my LinkedIn posts get maybe 500. I didn’t boost it. I didn’t plan it. But for LinkedIn’s community of professional communicators, the story hit.
Compare that to a paid campaign I’ve been running for a healthcare client. The goal? Influence federal public service policy—so we’re targeting government decision-makers with an advocacy brief. We’re getting the impressions we need, no problem. But engagement? Meh. Click-throughs and conversions are underwhelming, despite carefully crafted copy and precise targeting. It’s the classic case of paid reach without real traction.
That’s why I often blend the two. On LinkedIn, when I see a post start to take off organically with good engagement and solid traction, I throw a bit of budget behind it. Nothing major. Just enough to give it a nudge. And it works. I’ve done this with a higher education client: a timely, well-written post sparks conversation, then we boost it to extend the momentum. That mix of authenticity and amplification is often more effective than starting with a cold, purely paid post.
These days, I tell clients that paid has to be part of the mix. Going all-in on organic is noble, but not particularly effective. You’ll spend more time creating content, tweaking timing, and chasing engagement than you’d save by skipping the ad budget. And honestly? It’s just not worth the effort. You need both.
Boosting content for visability
That doesn’t mean you need a big spend. A few bucks a day can be enough to push good content into the newsfeed where it gets seen. And once people start engaging, the platform does some of the heavy lifting. Paid gets you seen. Organic gets you believed. Together, they get results.
One of the biggest traps I see? Posting too much organic content. Some clients are churning out four or five posts a day. It’s a huge investment of time and energy—and for what? Most of it reaches only a tiny slice of the target audience. The effort-to-impact ratio is way off.
In most cases, less really is more. A single thoughtful post, backed by a modest budget, can go further than five organic ones. When you bring even a little paid media into the mix, you boost reach, impressions, engagement—and ultimately, your impact.
If you’re still hesitant about paid promotion, maybe because of tight budgets or the idea that organic content is more authentic, I’d suggest you may be stuck in 2016! Social media has changed drastically since it first was adopted into marketers’ toolkits and our approaches have to change with it.
Authentic storytelling matters
Yes, authenticity still matters. But let’s not be naïve. Authentic storytelling and smart paid promotion are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the best digital marketing today, in 2025, uses the full toolkit to make the biggest impact. That’s not selling out. That’s just being effective.
So, here’s a challenge for this week: Look at your analytics. Find one organic post from the past week that performed better than the others. Then boost it for seven days at $10 a day. Track the results. Compare it to your fully organic posts from the same period. See what you learn.
Chances are, you’ll come away with new insights that will shape your future content planning. It’s not about throwing money at the problem. It’s about working smarter—with a strategy that matches the way social media works today.
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