Smart businesses have been using content marketing for years. Content marketing is a part of an overall marketing strategy that helps entice customers to use your product or service by offering resources (content) that customers can benefit from, sometimes without even having to buy anything from the company.
Content Marketing Institute explains it like this: “Content marketing isn’t about the brand, your products, or your services. It’s about your audience. What do they care about? And, more importantly, how can you be the one to provide something no one else is, which in turn elevates your brand from a commodity to something people embrace? Content marketing is different than traditional product marketing efforts like sales collateral and other product-specific info. Content marketing includes things like educational articles, e-books, videos, entertainment, and webinars that answer specific questions people have and provide them with something they can’t get somewhere else. It’s the best way to turn your product, no matter how common, into something that is not like everyone else’s.”
Showcasing your brand as a relevant authority who can help provide real solutions helps you gain more market share and grow your brand. Content marketing is the key to that.
What is the role of social media in your content strategy?
Social media ultimately serves as a driver and distributor of content. There are many different vehicles that can help customers find your content – including digital banner ads and email campaigns – but social media remains one of the most effective, partly because of the built-in functionality of sharing. If a reader finds your content interesting, they may share it right from the social platform so followers and friends on the same platform can also see it – without any extra effort required from you.
What are the benefits of a social media content strategy?
Social media has quite a few ways that it can benefit your overall content strategy and marketing goals.
1. Audience size
First of all, the sheer size of the potential readership is huge. Hootsuite, a social media company, notes, “3.48 billion people now use social media. That’s an increase of 9% from last year. Put another way: 45% of the total world population are using social networks… 26 billion use their mobile devices to access social media, up 10% from last year…Digital consumers spend nearly 2.5 hours on social networks and social messaging every day.” There are too many people using social media to ignore it as a channel of your content marketing.
2. Reach
Social media also offers the ability to segment ads to things like your whitepapers and ebooks so that they’re shown to people who might be interested but aren’t necessarily fans of your business. With email, you usually have some opt-in and your mail goes to those who you know are at least somewhat interested, due to some engagement on their part. With social media, you can reach more people with relevant content who otherwise wouldn’t have heard about you or found your resources.
3. Global presence
Social media offers a global publishing platform. In the past, the effort and dollars that would have gone into an international marketing outreach would be unthinkable for many businesses, but social media has enabled companies to reach people all over the world much easier.
4. Authority
One of the main missions of content marketing is to have customers read or engage with content like podcasts or videos and say, “Okay, this brand gets it. I want to be involved with them.” Content helps build authority and credibility, which can help build customer trust. Social media helps to build on that authority. Not only can you share your own content, but you can also curate content from other reputable publishers and have a more holistic social media conversation.
5. Conversation
Speaking of conversation, social media is one of the only places that has back and forth comments and conversations built in. Most emails from campaigns never reach a real person, but if a brand is sharing content on social med and a customer has a request, question, or concern, these monitored social channels ensure that the customer gets an answer. This greater degree of interaction is good for just about any brand.
One of the best content marketing tips is to ensure that your content gets out there, gets eyes on it, get it to read, and have your brand be better understood as a resource to your customers. One of the best ways to give your content the best chance of engagement is making social media a strong part of your content marketing strategy.
Social media is a crucial part of your B2B content marketing strategy. Growing a social media content marketing strategy is one of the best ways to enhance your digital marketing and help to drive and measure engagement with your content. It also gives customers an opportunity to interact with brands and more readily share the content that they find relevant, potentially earning you more business.
