Content Marketing and Social Media: The Perfect Pair

Many years ago, when the Internet was still young and had yet to ensnare the world in its ever expanding web and a cellphone was a big, old, clunky device that only function was to make a phone call. A time when people actually ventured out in to the world to experience nature. Back then it may have been enough to have a billboard ad and maybe a few posters up at some bus stops and that may have got the job done. But in today’s world, a billboard or bus poster will get you about as much attention as parent gets from their teenager. That is to say that they acknowledge your presence, but unless they’re hungry or need money, your just something that’s there but seldom engaged with.

In today’s world, Social Media is the new billboard. But it’s so much more that that. It allows you to engage actual conversations with your customer. Create custom content that speaks to each individual, something you could never accomplish with any traditional advertisement. But how do you make it work for you. There is so much clutter out there that its easy to get lost in the crowed. So how do me make sure that the Content we make get the attention of our consumers?

First off, what is Content in context to marketing and why does it play a key roll in your Social Media strategy? And how does Content Marketing differ from traditional marketing? Well, as Robert Rose puts it “Traditional marketing and advertising is telling the world you’re a rock star.  Content Marketing is showing the world that you are one.” Content marketing is creating something (whether it be video, picture, words ect…) that is going to resonate so much with your consumers that they want to help you share it with the world. A great example is the Real Beauty Sketches campaign launched by Dove that had such an impact people spread it like wildfire through their social media. Below is the video. 

Here are some more definitions of Content Marketing collect by Joe Pulizzi: Six Useful Content Marketing Definitions: 

So now that we know what it is and how Social Media can help you spread it, how do we make sure that we have successful Content Marketing campaigns like the Dove one? Arnie Kuenn, president of Vertical Measures, says that there are 4 steps to creating successful, and most importantly, shareable Content for Social Media.

Step One: Have Attainable Goals

Step Two: Learn What Is Important To Your Audience

Step Three: Create Useful Content

Step Four: Make It Easy To Share

Here is a little of my insight on each step.

Step One: Have attainable goals: Everything we do has a goal attached to it. We make food because we are hungry. We get a job and work so we have money. Every successful marketing or advertising campaign has some sort of goal (typically along the lines of making a boatload of money). But when it comes to Content Marketing, our goals have to be more direct in nature. It’s a little unrealistic for the goal of one tweet to be increase sales by 10%. That’s a nice campaign goal but not for a single tweet. A better-suited goal would be have 20 people re-tweet you. Just keep in mind that if you set your goals to high, you’re doomed to fail. Here are some template goals as listed by Kuenn in his article 4 Ways To Create Successful Social Media Content:

• Have x number of social media mentions in a week
• Increase Facebook likes by x
• Have x number of people fill out our contact form in a month
• Have x number of people download our content piece each week
• A x increase in traffic from social media networks over 3 months

     

Step Two: Learn What Is Important To Your Audience: If you make your content all about you, then the only person that’s going to care about it is you. You have to make it about the customer. What is it that resonates with them? Once you have that figured out you can now create content that is going to connect with them on a personal level. No one does this better then Apple. You never see Apple talking about Apple in their videos. They show how their product can better improve the customer’s life by showing them just that. Here is an example.

Follow the trends out their to find out what people are talking about to get ideas of what your content needs to address in order to be successful.

Step Three: Create Useful Content: Once you know what you audience wants, you need to create your content and make it useful for the consumer. More often then not, when one finds it useful others will to, which makes them share it. For example, if you see that on of the trends people are talking about are how it’s annoying to have to use multiple apps to maintain all their social media profiles, you could create and app that acts as a hub that brings all of those social platforms to one easy to use app.

Another great way to make your content share worthy is to make it funny. Humor is something that resonates with everyone and is arguably some of the most shared content is funny stuff. But it still has to be helpful or else you may get a quick laugh but then nothing else.

Step Four: Make It Easy To Share: Keep it simple. The easier you make it for people to share your content the more likely they are to share it. Sure, we could copy the URL to Facebook or Twitter and so on, but that’s too much work. And it would be a shame that you put in all that work to get us to your content, made about me and made it useful, just to have me not share it because it required to much work. So make sure you have a social media toolbar that has like buttons for Facebook and a tweet button for Twitter and so on. People like simple, and as marketers our job is to make it so.

Check out what other have to say about creating Content for Social Media:

Courtney Seiter, Community Manager for Raven Internet Marketing Tools: 9 Real-Life Rules For Creating Shareable Content

Stephanie Hobbs, Local Search Association Vice President of Communications: Five Steps To Integrate Visual Content Into Your Social Media Strategy.

So there you have it. Now you have the guidelines for creating Content for Social Media. Thanks for reading and be sure to check back Wednesday, Oct 9^th for the latest Social Buzz.