Paid social is social media activity that uses advertising spend to reach selected audiences.
Paid social can include boosted posts, feed ads, story ads, video ads, lead ads, retargeting, and creator amplification.
It helps brands scale reach, test messages, promote offers, and target people beyond their organic followers.
Paid social should have a clear funnel role, whether the goal is awareness, traffic, leads, sales, retargeting, or amplifying content that already works.
Organic social is unpaid publishing to your audience and whoever discovery brings. Paid social uses ad budget to guarantee distribution to targeted audiences beyond your followers.
Start small enough to test several audiences and creatives, then scale what proves itself. The right budget is the one where the last dollar spent still returns more than it costs.
Wherever your audience actually is. Meta offers the broadest targeting, TikTok excels at discovery, LinkedIn reaches professional audiences at a premium, and the answer differs by product and market.