How Content Marketing and Social Media Work Together
While social media and content marketing may seem to be two different things, in reality, they work in tandem. Brands can increase the impact of a large piece of content, such as a blog post or white paper by sharing small snippets on their social media channels.
A strategy helps you to concentrate and optimize your efforts so that you get the most out each piece of content. It can also help you avoid vanity metrics and measure what really matters to your business, like the brand's recognition or website traffic.
1. Identify Your Audience
Social media marketing can be a great tool to build relationships with potential customers. Before you can develop the most relevant content for your audience you must first learn about their needs. This will allow you to develop a strategy that is more likely to reach your goals and improve your bottom line.
Begin by watching who follows and interacts with your company on social media. What are their interests? What do they want? What information do they seek and why? This information can help you target similar people on other social media platforms.
You can also learn more about your audience by studying the content of the companies in your field. What kind of posts do they publish and share? What type of content is proving successful for them? This will give some insight on how to create content.
You can also directly reach out to your followers via social media to learn what they want to know from you. For example the clothing retailer ModCloth regularly asks its followers to submit photos of themselves wearing their clothes. The company then posts these pictures on its social media channels. This approach makes the brand feel more connected to its audience and helps increase engagement.
It's time to write and share content after you've identified and defined your audience. Keep track of your metrics, but only those that are related to your SMART objectives and KPIs, which you established in Step 1. Be aware that not all of your content will work flawlessly in the first few days, but you will eventually see the results if you are consistent and adhere to your plan.
2. Create a Strategy
You require a plan to expand your social media presence. You will not gain new followers, persuade them to come back or convert to your site by releasing random content with no purpose or strategy. Create a plan of action for content that you and your team can follow. This will aid you in setting SMART goals, develop and share content regularly and track your progress.
To create your social content marketing strategy for your media, start with your buyer personas for social (or fictional representations of your ideal customers). From there, think about the types of content that they like and the formats that resonate most effectively on each platform. For example, Instagram and TikTok are excellent platforms for visual content such as photos or short videos however, Twitter is better suited for content that is text-based and includes links.
Consider how you can use each platform in a unique way to showcase your brand. Instagram is an excellent platform for fashion brands that want to showcase their unique products and designs. Similarly, Stumptown Coffee Roasters uses their Facebook page to promote events and locations across the country.
Another effective way to boost engagement on your social media profiles is to get your followers to interact with you through the use of calls-to-actions within your posts. For example, if you have an announcement or a giveaway ask your followers to leave comments, tag their friends, or share the post.
Finally, remember that social media is an excellent location to showcase testimonials from customers and reviews. They can be very beneficial in increasing the trust of your followers, especially if they come from social media users that use or recommend your product or service.
3. Create Content
You need to create content that is relevant to your intended audience in order to effectively promote your business on social media. This can be accomplished by many different methods, including videos, blogging or podcasts, as well as infographics and infographics. In addition, it's crucial to think about the type of content your target audience wants to see and share. For instance, research suggests that fun and personal content is a great fit for social media, whereas promotional and information content score lower.
Once you have a clear idea of your target audience and your marketing goals then you can start planning out the types of content you'd like to create. You should try to combine informative, entertaining or educational posts with promotional posts. This will allow your audience to connect with your company and increase your chances of converting them into customers.
Interviewing thought leaders is a popular way to produce content. This is a great way to learn about the latest trends and strategies within your field, and it also allows you to promote your business by sharing the article on the people who were interviewed on their personal social networks.
Other types of content include industry news tips, tricks, and hacks. Consider adding images to your posts. This has been proven more effective in attracting attention and increasing engagement.
It is important to monitor your content performance, and make any necessary adjustments. If a particular format of content performs poorly, you may need to change its subject or angle.
4. Share Your Content
If you've devised a strategy and crafted engaging content, it's important to share it on social media. This is an excellent way to increase your reach and get new customers. Just make sure that your updates are short and include appealing titles. Don't forget to change the type of content you publish - images, videos texts, and links are all good options.
It's also recommended to try to get people interested in your content by putting it up on various platforms at different times of the day. This will ensure that your content is seen by the greatest number of people.
You might also think about partnering with influencers, or even running a competition. This could be a great method to drive buzz and traffic for your business.
Once your audience begins to view you as a trusted source of information, they'll be more likely to engage with your content and eventually become customers. This is why it's crucial to concentrate on quality instead of quantity when you're marketing your content.
It's important to note that if you are using a pillar strategy to content marketing, it's an excellent idea to share links to your lengthy content on social media. This will give your audience an idea of what's coming and encourage them to click through and read the entire article or blog.
It's not always clear why a certain content is shared more frequently than other content. It's nevertheless worth studying the psychology behind sharing to find out what drives people to share specific pieces of content. This will help you develop a a better strategy for marketing content in the future.
5. Keep Track of Your Results
After you have created and published your content, it is crucial to keep track of your results. This is how you will be able to tell if your strategy effective or needs to be tweaked. For instance, you might observe that one kind of content is performing better than others or that certain platforms have more engagement than other platforms. You can make use of tools such as Mention and Hootsuite to track your social media reach and see how your content is performing.
It is also important to keep in mind that just because your content is performing well doesn't necessarily mean you should keep sharing it on every platform. Each platform has its own audience and its own best practices, therefore it is essential to tailor your content to each platform. You can avoid irritating your audience by not causing unnecessary stress.
When analyzing your results, make sure to look at all the metrics that matter to you and your team. Choose metrics that are aligned with your SMART objectives as well as KPIs. Make sure you differentiate these metrics for each of the social media platforms you use.
You can combine content marketing and social media effectively if you have the right strategy and strategies. This will help to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website and increase leads, boost sales, establish authority, and much more. Take a look at this free guide from DemandJump for more details about how to implement a successful strategy in content marketing. It offers examples, tips, and more from companies similar to yours that have beaten the algorithms and achieved success in content marketing. Join sickseo.co.uk to receive your copy today!