Relationship Between Content and Social Media Marketing

It may seem like content and social media marketing are almost same but both of them require different sets of skill groups. When both are put together in an organized manner, something beautiful is created.

So, let us understand what content marketing is:

Google defines it as “a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.”

You see that? Creation and sharing. It is not only about developing. It is about the whole process which involves the way you distribute and promote that content. Social media marketing is content marketing. It’s made of the same things: pictures, video, copy, strategy, and storytelling. The differences are the formats of content and the platforms.

Connecting elements of content and social media marketing:

Fundamentally, there are 4 elements which connect the both. To succeed in your social media content strategy, you must address them in all the two. The four elements being:

· Objectives

· Buyers’ personas

· Product (this includes priority, messaging and value propositions)

· Editorial plan

Let’s discuss and understand each of them in detail.

• Aligning objectives

Content and social media have similar overall functions in the marketing strategy field. Your content and social should:

1. Help your audience understand the subject matter you have displayed.

2. Challenge the status quo on your subject.

3. Entertain your audience with content specific to them

4. Educate your audience on new best practices and trends

5. Convince your audience to buy your product

• Buyer personas

This should include the answers to “What is your target audience and where they are?”

So, first of all let’s understand what buyer persona is:

According to HubSpot, Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers. They are based on real data about customer demographics and online behavior, along with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations, and concerns.

One might wonder, why should buyer personas be considered? To answer this, let us consider the benefits of developing buyer personas:

· Identification of your audience

· Rally the internal and external teams

· Share a common understanding

· Drive messaging development

· Guide content creation

• Product

Focus on messaging and value propositions that help your target audience drive your business goals. You should develop a value proposition for the following areas:

· Product-specific

· Event-specific

· Discount-specific

· Editorial-topic specific

· Solution specific

• Editorial plan

Conceptualize content points that line up with the content you've recently created. I prescribe mapping the content you plan on creating through to phases of the buyer’s journey.

There are several other places your content topic ideas can come from:

· Branding guide

· Persona (challenges, pain points, goals)

· Products and services

· Customer journeys

· Customer questions from social media channels

It requires a nudge to completely adjust your content marketing with respect to your social media marketing. But once you get your objectives, buyers’ personas, product, and editorial plan perfectly done, it gets a lot easier to achieve.