It’s no longer enough to just have a website and/or email. You also need a solid content marketing strategy that includes social media.
According to Forbes, “Social media and email marketing will need to become more sophisticated to reach an increasingly wary audience.” So here are some things to consider when devising a sophisticated social media content marketing strategy.
Quality content is king—and continues to rule the digital universe
Whether marketing to professionals via LinkedIn or engaging with fans on Facebook, social media is essential for content marketing. But, having a Facebook page or a Twitter feed is only useful to a business if the fans and followers are engaged. Luckily, social media has built-in analytics that measure how effectively each post reaches its target audience.
However, many companies fill their social media newsfeeds and streams with content that is only about their brand or worse yet, only about what’s going on inside their business. They rarely visit the analytics and don’t react to them. Then they complain that social media is a waste of time.
It’s not about you—it’s about your social media target audience
Social media is essential for a successful content marketing strategy. Driven by high-quality, shareable content that is posted on a regular and frequent basis, social media is only valuable when it is educational, interesting and fun for its target audience.
Stay relevant. Use Facebook’s analytics to discover what posts are most shareable, who likes them, and the best time to post content. Take action on this information. When target customers get content that they like, they are more likely to become actual customers.
A good content manager is hard to find but a great content creator is even harder to find
Everyone talks about content marketing strategy, but few have adequate resources to produce the quality and quantity of content needed for effective content marketing. Social media managers engage with the public. They act as company spokespersons, community managers, and content curators. So, ideally, a social media team includes resources with media relations (PR) skills and content creation and management skills.
Companies are hiring again, but they are having difficulty finding writers and editors who can create quality content and understand the needs of SEO, digital marketing, PR and brand integrity. Writers and editors who understand the challenges of social media are among today’s most in-demand and hard-to-find resources.
