Organic vs. Paid — what’s more valuable? Both and neither!

I keep hearing the debate of ‘Organic vs Paid content, which is more valuable’?

And this — to be fair — is a valid question. And, since you’ve taken the time to read this article, I’ll give you the answer to this question… the answer is that BOTH can work brilliantly.

Conversely, the answer is that BOTH can be an utter waste of time. And that’s because the success (or sometimes failure) of organic or paid content is based on how well it resonates with your ideal buyer / customer / client.

And understanding the answer to that question is more than just a case of looking at how good your content is, it’s about having a genuine understanding of your brand.

Let’s clear something up here immediately — branding and marketing are different things.

You can think of your content as marketing, but your brand is something deeper than that; your brand is your reputation.

And, when I say that ‘brand is deeper than marketing’, please don’t mistake that to mean ‘more important’. Both these elements are essential in order to attain success in my opinion, you just have to understand the difference between the two.

I like to think of the brand as being the foundations and content / marketing is the house. For the house to be amazing it has to be built on something solid, firm and substantial.

Marketing should be driven by brand, not the other way round. Of course how you market your product, service, business, organisation — or even yourself — can have an effect on the perception of the brand, but marketing should not control the direction the brand. In my humble opinion.

There is a lot of misconceptions about what brand actually is and it’s no wonder that’s the case frankly, even the dictionary definition is outdated, to say the least… it is stated that a brand is “a type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name” or “an identifying mark burned on livestock”. Sure, that might have been the case 100 years ago but the meaning of brand has evolved since then.

Even the term branding suffers a similar level of confusion, with it being defined as “the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design”. Urrrrm, no. Promotion is promotion, advertising is advertising and design is design.

People think a brand is their logo, their name, their fonts, their colour palette, their website, their business card etc. but, again, this doesn’t quite do the power of understanding what it means building a brand justice. Those things listed above are simply a visual representation of your brand. They may well be valuable artwork, graphics, assets but they are not your brand.

Your brand is your reputation — yep, it’s that important I’ve said it again.

So having said my reputation rant a few times you may well be asking yourself “ok, so if my brand is my reputation what’s the first step?”, and this is a great question — I am glad you asked!

The first step is deciding what you want that reputation to be. Who are you, what do you stand for, what do you stand against, what value do you bring to the world.

We’re living in a strange world where brands want to come across as more human and humans like to positioning themselves as brands, so when I work with clients — regardless of if they are global businesses or solopreneurs — I like to humanise this aspect of things. Think of it like this; what do you want people to say about you (or your business) behind your back. When you are not in the room, what are they saying.

This first step might sound a bit too simple to be impactful, but I promise you this is the first key to creating a brand that has clout. Too many people and businesses try and become everything to everyone and when you do that you inadvertently become nothing to no one.

So, back to the ‘Organic vs Paid For’ debate, don’t even worry about that until your brand is clear in your mind before you try to get attention towards what you are doing.

In future articles I’ll cover off a few more of the basics you need to understand to make sure you brand is solid and substantial, but the above task will be enough to get you started!

Happy Brand Building.