Content marketing continues to become more complex as new channels for communication are introduced all of the time. You may already be familiar with the traditional online channels, such as websites, emails, and blogs, but there’s a slightly newer medium for content marketing that is taking center stage and it is, social media.
Social media is only one piece of the content marketing puzzle, but it’s easily one of the most important pieces. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have more than a billion active users every day. More than 70 percent of adults visit Facebook at least once each month. Ignoring such significant statistics could only hurt your content marketing strategy. Put the blog and website on the back burner for just a moment and consider the key concepts of a winning social media content marketing strategy.
Choose Your Medium
Your first step is to choose the social media sites that will suit your needs the most. There’s a fine line between too few and too many profiles. To make matters worse, there are quite a few social media sites to choose from. If you only have time to create a profile, add a picture and then, move to the next site, you are already spreading yourself too thin.
Each profile will take time and attention. There should be information, pictures, descriptions, and regular posts coming from your page. It’s easier to manage a larger number of profiles if you have a bigger business with a dedicated team, but if you’re still a small company, you need to stick with the essentials.
Facebook and Twitter are always great choices. However, if you’re running an e-commerce site, Pinterest might be more suitable. If you want to incorporate video marketing, YouTube could be a better fit. The key is to recognize the strengths of each site and then choose the ones that will help you meet your goals.
Write Down Your Goals
While on the subject of goals, it is important to make sure that you actually have some. Getting 1,000 likes or retweets doesn’t count. It is good to see such high numbers, but how are they actually going to benefit you? You need to create a direct correlation between the metrics and some plausible business goal.
Without goals, you can’t know if your content marketing strategy is actually successful. Reaching a goal should be something that all of your social media profiles can attribute to, which means it can’t be specific to any single site. Goals might include improving sales, increasing traffic or building links.
Understand The Correlation Between Metrics And Goals
Once you have a specific goal or goals in mind, then you can find the correlation between the social media metrics and these goals. The metrics will be different according to the site you are using, but they should contribute to the goal in the same way.
For example, if your goal is to generate traffic, then the metrics you are interested in is how many visitors arrive at your website from the different social media sites. If the goal is to improve brand awareness, then your metrics might be how many different followers you gain on each site.
Create Content To Drive The Metrics
After targeting the specific metrics that you will need to reach your marketing goals, you have to create content that will actually drive those metrics. Creating the actual content is always the most difficult and most important part of any content marketing strategy but social media actually makes it easier by encouraging you to keep it short, sweet, and simple.
You will need to define a voice for your company. If your business could talk, then your posts should sound like what it would say. Every business has its own personality and it should be reflected accurately in your posts if you want to attract people who are more likely to follow your page.
Social media posts do not have the burden of always needing to be informative. They can be fun, engaging, informative or humorous. Whatever voice you choose for your company, it is important that you stick with it.
Social media alone isn’t going to make a successful content marketing strategy, but it will certainly help it along the way. Social media can appeal to huge audiences, drive that audience to your site and help you meet demanding business goals. The possibilities are endless when combined with traditional content marketing channels.
Jonathan Leger has been a successful Internet Marketer for over 11 years. He owns an SEO Tools suite and is the creator of a number of well-known and respected software and service applications such as The Best Spinner, Article Builder and more.