We are living in a digital age, where content marketing and social media marketing are inseparable. Many marketers think that these two are just the same. There is also a confusion between content creation and content marketing.
Content marketing is an umbrella term for everything we do to educate, inform and entertain our audiences. And social media marketing is a method to distribute your content, so it reaches the right audience.
Anything you write on your blog or website is content creation. When you market your content using different channels like SEO, PPC, or social media, it’s called content marketing.
Now let’s see how social media can help you in content marketing in order to achieve your business goal.
#1 - Create a content hub for your business:
Your website and blog should be the center of your content marketing. No matter what happens, your prime focus should be to direct your social media audiences to the content hub. Let’s a take a look at how experts do it.
Hubspot is best known for their inbound marketing tips. They create exceptional content on their blog and mainly use Facebook and Twitter to promote them. They write great description for a post, so that their audience feels an urge to click on the link. They use link-format on Facebook marketing. So, whenever a reader clicks on the image, they are redirected to the website.
#2 - Know which social media channels work best for you:
Social media offers a vast scope with hundreds of networks. If you are just starting, concentrate on the top ones like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+. Consider your target audience to choose your social networks.
For example, if your target users are students, LinkedIn would not be a good idea. Analyze your business and TG well, before jumping in the social media wagon.
Our advice would be, go slow and steady. Less is more when it comes to social media content marketing. Before making any plan, check if you have the required resources. Think practically. There is no point starting it with 1000 jobs, when you only have capabilities to complete 10 efficiently.
Now answer these below-mentioned questions to understand social media scope for content amplification.
What’s your goal?
What do you want to achieve through social media marketing for your content? Is it brand awareness or traffic back to your content hub? Is it increasing your email database or converting sales leads? Choose your goal wisely.
For example, if your social media goal is to getting email subscriptions for your monthly newsletter, you need to create your content accordingly. The rule of thumb is, you must provide them enough value in exchange of their email ids.
What’s your desired action?
Decide your actions, depending on your goal. Remember, your action is subject to change according to the goal.
Social Media Examiner wants to sell tickets for its social media conference. So, they created a landing page, exclusively for the event, promoted it on social networks, offered a discount to make it look even more attractive and targeted the post to social media savvy people. We call it content marketing with a purpose!
Here is another point to remember. You need to customize your content for each network. So, the messaging would be different on Facebook from the one for Twitter.
What would be your post frequency?
Every channel works differently and so are the audiences. The person, who acts in a certain way on Facebook, acts differently on Twitter. The same person, who sends 20 updates a day on Twitter, might get pissed off with your third update for a day on Facebook. Judge your audience and goal for each channel to decide post frequency.
This covers the content sharing part on social media. But social media is a great tool for social listening. Don’t make it go waste. Listen to what your existing as well as potential customers are saying. Interact with them, offer solutions and suggest tips. Commenting and interaction with your audience is also a big part of content marketing. Look how Levi's is doing it.
And then there is the never-ending debate between created content and curated content. Content curation has a big role to play in content marketing. But marketers face the real dilemma when they cannot find out why and how they should curate.
Why Content Curation:
The main reason that content curation has reached the main-stream content marketing is, lack of great content. In this age of content overload, it’s very important to collate and share valuable content with your target audience. Creating so much of great content is definitely a problem for this-age marketers. And the only solution to the problem is content curation.
How to Curate Content Effectively:
According to Convince and Convert, curated content wins when it comes to clicks. Posts that link to third-party websites get 33% more clicks than created content. But it’s entirely reverse when it comes to conversions. Posts linking to your site receive 54% more click-to-conversion rate than curated posts.
What does it mean? What way should you go? Any social media expert would advice you to choose a balanced way. But the real question is, what’s that?
Convince and Convert says that 50% to 75% curated content forms the perfect balance in content marketing. So, it means if you are planning to post 5 days a week, at least 3 posts should be curated.
#3 - Have a distribution plan:
You have your goals, you know your audience, you know what channels you will use. Now all you need to do is, create a content calender, both for your content hub (content creation) and social media (content marketing).
When it comes to content hub, you need to take care of factors like what to write, how to write and how many posts you need every week. Always plan ahead. Always keep your target audience in mind while planning your content.
During content promotion on social media, make a weekly calender. Remember, you need to include all your new content along with some old content and curated content. Integrate all the social networks in the calender and draft a detailed plan for everyday.
Hot tip: Always add a CTA to each of your content pieces. And follow the rule while sharing it on social media as well.
Now it’s your turn.
Merge your content marketing efforts with social media marketing to get the maximum reach. This article will help you a lot in the process. If you face any issue or have a confusion, contact us or fill in the form below. One of our experts will give you a call soon.
Category