Social Media Content Marketing

Social Media Content Marketing Explained

With social media content marketing, you use different types of content to promote your business or your cause on networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube. But the difference between it and content marketing is not just one of channel distribution. Here’s what you need to know about social media content marketing.

What Is Social Media Content Marketing?

The buying journey today is more digital than it has ever been. And the place where brands and customers often interact the most are social networks like Facebook or Instagram.

Social media marketing taps into that. It stands at the intersection between content marketing and social media—a place full of opportunities for both businesses and consumers.

Unlike content marketing, social media marketing tends to be more conversational and reactionary. Often, it’s also less structured. That’s because it’s defined to a large extent by social interactions.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is one of the most engaging, fun, and non-intrusive ways to do marketing today. Major social networks enable brands to connect with their audience and build a huge following through a combination of content publishing, content curation, social sharing, and direct interactions.

The key advantages of social media marketing:

• You don’t have to invest tons of money to get started. You can produce most of the content yourself.
• Encourages conversation and a two-way interaction that is not always possible with other forms of content marketing.
• Can boost your search engine ranking and improve how your brand is seen online.
• It’s scalable. You can join one social network or a dozen. You can post once or twice a week or three times every day. You can pay influencers or networks to promote your posts.
• It has become a form of brand validation in many industries. If your brand looks cool on Instagram and has a large following on Facebook, attracting leads gets easier.
• You can use it to drive massive traffic to your website or a specialized landing page.
• Last but not least, it reaches people that are immune to ads and other forms of marketing. Today, when adblocker usage is on the rise, content marketing on social media is a safe way to reach your audience when they are ready to receive you.

Social Media Marketing Challenges

While social media is full of opportunities, it’s also not without its challenges. Just about everyone does social media content marketing today, which means that there’s a lot of content noise out there. Unique content that stands out is not easy to come by.

But perhaps the biggest challenge with social media content marketing is finding the time to create content, manage multiple profiles, and interact with your audience in real-time. This is nothing less than a full job, which is why many businesses choose to hire a social media manager.

Social Media Content Marketing – The Bottom Line

Social media content marketing is an organic way to reach your audience. It has an element of interaction that content marketing through other channels lacks, and for this reason, it can be very effective.

But while it’s full of opportunities, it’s also not without its challenges so you shouldn’t take results for granted. Publishing content on social media is not enough to build an audience. It’s what you publish and how you interact with your audience that matters.

Additional Resources

• Grow Your Business with Facebook – No two businesses are alike. That’s why Facebook is built to help your business meet its specific goals.
• LinkedIn Marketing Solutions – Generate leads, drive website traffic, and build brand awareness with LinkedIn ads.