Organic Growth

This is an old term that’s garnered a new twist in the era of social media.

Organic Growth in Business

Organic growth for a business dates back to at least the 1950s and refers to the growth in a business that relates to improvements from its normal operations, here’s how Scottish craft brewery company BrewDog has increased their growth -organically – over the years.

• increased output
  In 2012 BrewDog moved to a state-of-the-art brewery, their output in 2013 was double the output of 2011. With developments to the brewery production was more than doubled by 2015.
• increase in customer numbers
  BrewDog is UK-based gained new customers in 2008 by expanding exports to Sweden, Japan and America.
  They have also grown by opening their own bars, and now have a total of 44.
• a new product release
  BrewDog began with one beer, Punk IPA, and has added dozens of others,  including the punny Jack Hammer, seasonals such as Hop Fiction, and the alcohol free Nanny State.

Organic Growth in Social Media

Organic growth in social media usually applies to growth in number of followers that comes from what you provide on your account, rather than paid promotion or paid advertising. It’s a baseline growth in your account figures before you look at the impact of campaigns.

• effective content
  Philips worked on creating an instagram account filled with wonderful content around the theme of #LightIsLife, and increased their follower number by 50% in six months (engagement figures also went up)
• Word of Mouth or Great PR
  When the JoeBama memes caught the imagination of a nation during a fraught election campaign they were featured in all sorts of standard publications, earning the originators thousands of followers.
• Crisis
  Less happily when your company is in the news for negative reasons the number of followers might increase, along with the number of comments and negative reactions.

Although it’s getting harder and harder to grow an audience based on organic growth alone, it’s increasingly a case of “pay to play”, it’s worth monitoring your organic growth. Unless you’re in a crisis it does tell you something about the appeal of your content.

It’s a useful term and one that’s easy to understand in social media terms if you know the general business use.

Image:  Seedling  |  US Dept of Agriculture  |  CC BY 2.0