If you were to entice people with a grand party, there are two ways to accomplish this effort.
You could buy fancy decorations, make the venue look good enough for a glossy magazine cover, or spend time focusing on the life and soul of the party – the delicious food, games, and great playlists. While the strategy of the first is the impressive facade and the second is about substance, both methods have proven to attract and retain an audience in different ways, similar to the comparison of content marketing vs. social media marketing.
Social media marketing entices you to attend, while content marketing creates the experience.It might initially sound as if we’re pitting one against the other, but the truth is that combining both strategies creates the most comprehensive marketing strategy.
Breaking Down Social Media Marketing vs. Content Marketing
All brands have utilized both types of marketing. It’s likely for teams to have dabbled in paid ads on Facebook or Instagram (Meta) or the wild west territory of gambling on the TikTok algorithm. Brand marketing teams may have even conducted a blog campaign targeting relevant keywords to bring traffic to their website (SEO).
Social media marketing is all your brand directly interacting with your target market, captured audience, and competitors. It’s your opportunity to showcase personality in a multitude of ways – a funny Snapchat, a meaningful Facebook update, a quirky tweet – each avenue with its unique value.
But behind every interaction or post, there’s planning and a strategy. Which platform is most suitable? When is it most appropriate to post? What types of audience responses and reactions are you expecting to capture?
Content marketing is the quiet, confident type. Words on a page aren’t typically as exciting or flashy, but content considers the audience’s wants and needs and responds with a resource. This type of marketing could take the form of an ebook, educational articles, or expert podcast. Valuable content works to nurture existing relationships and establish your brand as the authority, and industry benchmark for both consumers and competitors.
However, there’s a catch—this marketing method typically requires increased time compared to other models for results to materialize. When the analytics are processed after the time, effort, and paid initiatives are expended, the findings tend to be more sustainable and cultivate a group of loyal customers.
Uniting Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing for a Winning Strategy
Teamwork makes the dream work. Together, content marketing and social media marketing pair to become the dynamic duo your brand needs. Social media acts as a bright neon sign for your brand as a platform to speak, while content marketing deepens that dialogue. But let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. What results can we expect to achieve?
Increased visibility and engagement
Content must be discoverable and seen by your audience. Social media channels provide a platform and diverse audience base that increases those chances. When your brand is seen, heard, and hopefully, appreciated inside the social sphere, the shares, comments, and likes join together to achieve brand visibility
The zest of engagement is the thoughtful insights, interesting conversations, and onslaught of interactions that generate. The problem is, you don’t want that interaction to be one-off – you want sustainability and customers that will stay true to your company.
That’s where the content marketing puzzle piece fits in. With well-crafted content, you add an impact that hooks audiences beyond surface-level social media posts. It’s the secret sauce that guarantees return visits, valuable discussions, and the cultivation of an online community.
Better Audience Metrics
Social media provides a 360-degree scope of your target audience’s likes, dislikes, and general brand opinions from a consumer perspective. Another perk is honest consumer dialogue on social media, which is golden for brands who value their audience’s thoughts, suggestions, and opinions..
Content marketing fuels the search for understanding by analytically exposing said interests. If particular blog posts receive increased traffic and specific infographics garner more shares, that is a clear roadmap to understanding the place, type, and context of content capable of satisfying your audience’s curiosity. By using this data-driven outline, created through the future efforts of your end users, you can craft uniquely personalized strategies that align with market trends and meet the needs of your audience.
Stronger Brand Authority
Authority has an uncanny power in all spheres to get people to listen. You’ll certainly need it in a marketplace where brands are competing for five minutes of fame. Sync content marketing and social media marketing to amplify voice tenfold.
Once you’ve developed good content that showcases and solidifies your brand as an authority in the marketplace and industry, social media channels let you promote that material and interact candidly with your audience.
Sprout Social research claims 65% of consumers feel a deeper connection to brands with a strong social media presence. Consumer audiences crave humanization and want a reason to trust brands. When you provide that, you take your brand from a faceless entity to a relatable or reachable fixture in their life.
How to Integrate Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing
Marketing professionals know social media marketing and content marketing have phenomenal potential separately, but when joined, you dovetail efficacy with reach thus creating a new level of impact.
- Promote your content: Every time you produce and publish a worthwhile piece of content, capitalize on that hard work by sharing it across social media. Rather than letting content go to waste, employ smart social storytelling tactics and tap into influencers and tagging to expand that reach.
- Seek user-generated content: User-generated content (UGC) is more powerful than ever. Similarly brand authenticity and trust, consumers align themselves more with real user experiences and opinions. We’ve moved past celebrity endorsements and into an era of peer recommendations, with 72% of consumers trusting these testimonials more than messaging directly from a business. Seek out customers who love reviewing, talking about, and promoting your product, and incentivize them for doing so.
- Interact with your audience: Engage with your audience through social media, but remember that generic doesn’t cut it. Duolingo and British airline Ryanair are fantastic examples of how personality goes the distance. People enjoy humor, genuine responses to concerns, and brands that keep interactions authentic. Hitting these points will ensure people will want to hear and engage with your story.
- Make content shareable: Promoting content your audience finds interesting is one thing, but when they feel compelled to share it within their networks—you’ve hit the jackpot. A catchy headline or compelling visual may appeal, but true value captures the right audience and encourages them to share. Just be sure to make it easy for them to do so.
- Repurpose content to fit different social media platforms: If a piece of content did exceptionally well, strike while the iron is hot and repurpose the media. You could expand a one-off blog post into bite-sized posts for social media or condense it into a graphic for Pinterest – anything to leverage its proven success and stretch its value for your brand.
Conclusion
Content marketing and social media marketing aren’t revolutionary concepts. You probably see them as tried and true methods. Beyond each method’s capabilities, there’s a relationship between the two that can help you turn casual interactions into sturdy connections. We would love to get to know each other, diving deep into understanding your unique brand and unleashing the full potential of content marketing and social media marketing to elevate your presence and impact.
