Content marketing is a pivotal tool in every digital marketers’ arsenal while social media is a vital vehicle to reach a wider audience. Content marketing and social media can work together to grow your business by developing an engaged following. Here’s how content marketing and social media go hand-in-hand.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a form of marketing with the intent to create, publish and distribute valuable information to educate audiences online. This marketing approach is different from cold calling or paid advertisements because it freely gives consumers information or education while creating a call to action at the bottom of your pieces promoting your products or services. Much of content marketing includes these “soft sells” and focuses not on rapidly filling the pipeline but on the consumer’s needs — in addition to positioning your organization as a thought leader, thereby increasing trust in your business.
Marketing Lingo
Thought leadership is the practice of creating content that provides value to your audience by answering their most pressing questions or sharing fresh insights on trending topics. Establishing yourself as an industry thought leader can improve your brand credibility in the eyes of both consumers and search engines.
A great example of content marketing is a lawyer who creates a blog that identifies the major pain points of DIY legal cases and what to avoid. At the end of the piece, they add a link to their calendar or contact form for a free consultation, should the reader need more guidance after reading the article. Not only does that blog post offer valuable advice, it gives readers an easy way to get more professional help without sounding “sales-y.”
Related article: What Is Content Marketing?
Why is content marketing important?
Content marketing is important for a variety of reasons:
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- It builds your audience: If you’re consistently providing valuable and unique content, your audience is more likely to engage with or share your website with others.
- It’s inexpensive: Instead of paying for digital or print advertisements, content marketing can be done in house, customized to your messaging and essentially free(especially if you have a dedicated in-house content writer).
- It generates new customers and leads: Optimizing blog posts for relevant search queries to your products and services will drive more traffic to your website thanks to search engine optimization (SEO).
- It’s a potential source of revenue: You can utilize your blogs or content sections for affiliate programs to make some extra money or promote your own products in your content pieces. You can even feature other products or influencers in your content to grant both parties exposure.
- It creates brand authority: By offering content important to your consumers, it enables your business to become a thought leader in its industry. The more high-quality content you create, the more you set yourself up as the “go-to authority” for your audience’s questions.
What is social media marketing?
Now that we know what content marketing is, what is social media marketing?
Social media marketing utilizes social media platforms to share content on various platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Social media marketing allows brands to engage with followers and promote offerings, products and services. You can use various content forms when sharing on social media including videos, images, infographics and more. The comment features on the most popular platforms gives your consumers a chance to converse, ask questions and provide insight into how you can better serve them.
Further Reading
In addition to giving your audience a platform to share their voice with you, social media enables you to engage directly with consumers. Learn how to build meaningful customer relationships and inspire brand advocacy in this in-depth guide from Buffer.
Related article: How We Approach Our Social Media Marketing Strategy
How content marketing and social media go hand-in-hand
While content marketing provides the actual content including valuable information, how-tos, guides and more, social media promotes that content to a wider audience.
Overall, your content strategy should be holistic, encompassing optimized blog content, social media, email marketing. This provides a consistent experience — no matter which platform on which your customers congregate. Brand consistency matters because it takes time and repetition for consumers to recognize your brand, understand it and trust it enough to make a purchase (or take another form of heightened engagement).
Lightning Lesson
Popular marketing wisdom suggests that consumers need to hear a brand’s message at least seven times before making a purchasing decision. By curating a consistent brand presence across digital channels, you can build brand awareness and increase your odds of landing a conversion.
Content marketing collaborating with social media marketing also saves time and recycles resources by repurposing great content in different forms for each platform.
There are many different ways to combine social media and content marketing. One of the best rules to follow is to spend 20% of your time creating new content and 80% of your time promoting it. Sometimes, you can even refresh older, well-performing content with new metrics or updates to build on past success.
Here are a variety of ways social media and content marketing work together:
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- Repurpose your blog content in a Facebook post by linking back to your website.
- Post a summary of your content in an Instagram caption.
- Create an infographic from your content to post on social media.
- Quote your content directly into either a graphic or caption to post on Instagram or Pinterest.
- Create video content to post on YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook.
- Bring your content to an Instagram Live or Facebook Live video.
- Host a webinar and post links to your social media platforms of where to find it.
- Create a long post series with blog content, posting to your social media platforms each time you have a new post or quote to add to your series.
- Post a how-to video on your Instagram or Facebook from an educational blog post.
- Produce a podcast of takeaways from blog post content.
- Transcribe your existing podcast into optimized blog content.
- Post a photo or a screenshot of your content and post to Instagram or Facebook.
- Tweet a link directly to your blog content.
- Create an eye-catching image from your content through software such as Canva to post to Pinterest.
- Use the Reels function in Instagram to promote your blog content with your followers.
- Post an Instagram story each time you have a new blog post to share.
If you’re ready to start utilizing the power of content marketing, check out LMP’s content marketing services. We offer packages in a wide range, from small business content needs to large digital publisher contracts. With SEO-driven- content and a strategy customized to your business needs, we work side by side with your team to drive leads by creating engaging content and positioning your business as a thought leader in your industry.
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