Organic is Expensive

In digital marketing, “free” is the big shiny object: ranking on Google, going viral on social media. The truth is “free” has costs… a lot of costs. If you want free eyeballs and attention, you’ll have to invest in expertise, time, editing, and creating. There is no shortcut and it takes a big investment to get free traffic.

For this reason, ‘’organic’ is perhaps the perfect metaphor to describe unpaid marketing efforts. Just as in consumer products, going the organic route will likely be better for you and the world as a whole in the long run, but it won’t be cheap. 

The appeal is that you can connect with your customers for free. Google doesn’t charge you to index your web pages. Facebook doesn’t charge you to set up a business page or to post content. But it would be better to think of these platforms as dirt – potentially useful if you take care of what you plant in it.

Ranking on Google

Yes, you can rank for keywords as long as:

• There is low competition or competition is from low authority sites
• You optimize your content
• Ensure you have proper tags and outline structure
• Your website (domain) has been around long enough
• Your site is secure
• Your site is optimized for mobile
• You’ve earned backlinks from reputable websites

These are a few, but you get the point.

Social Media

In the noise that is social media, it is more difficult now than ever to build a following organically. Of course, impressions of organic posts have been dwindling steadily over the years so it is very much a pay to play game. It’s very tempting to Monsanto your efforts through influencers and paid ads.

I encourage you to invest your efforts in organic but also remember that dinner is a bad time to plant a garden.