It has been said that no content marketing strategy is complete without social media but for entrepreneurs new to marketing, social media can be overwhelming. It’s easy to spend hours networking on social media sites with results that are less than exciting.
However, social media has real power to bring awareness to your content and to your business. A report published by Statista found that the majority of bloggers today promote their blog content via social media sites. And once they arrive at the blog they’re more likely to take action, including downloading more content or signing up for an opt-in offer. Sixty percent of buyers say blog posts are valuable in their buying process (Demand Gen Report)
Social media not only provides you with the ability to capture prospects’ attention and drive traffic to your content, but it also reaches substantial numbers of people and can increase awareness quickly. Viral content is spread through social media and can change the face of a business practically overnight.
So How Do You Embrace Social Media without Losing Hours of Your Busy Life?
Strategy, strategy, strategy. The key to successfully integrating social media into your content marketing is to have a clear-cut strategy.
- What are your goals?
- How will you achieve them?
- What social media sites do your audience participate in and how do they interact on social media?
- How will you track and measure success?
Many social media sites offer analytic information to business users. On Facebook you’ll find these under Business Manager (currently – we all know how quickly things change at Facebook!) Additionally, if you use a scheduling tool such as MeetEdgar or Buffer they have tools available to help you track social media results.
Focused Efforts
Instead of hitting six social media sites and trying to build your content marketing through all of them, consider focusing on one primary site. For example, perhaps after some research, you learn that your audience is heavily involved with Facebook. If so, that’s where your attention should be focused. Create an effective Facebook strategy to promote your content marketing. Once the strategy is successfully achieving results, then you can add another social media site.
Remember to integrate your efforts. Integrated content marketing means that you’re not only communicating a consistent brand and message with every piece of content that you create, you’re also taking your content goals into consideration and connecting those goals between your different content channels – from blog posts to downloads and everything in between. “47% of buyers view three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep.” (Hubspot) So it’s not enough to use social media to drive targeted visitors to your blog. Create a loop and ask your existing visitors and audience to connect with you via social media. This simple tactic will keep your audience engaged and coming back for more.
What You Can Do Now
- Begin researching your audience and their social media habits and preferences. Consult your ideal client profile to aide in your research. Remember it’s important that you connect with the right audience who will eventually make a purchase!
- Identify one social site to focus on and begin crafting a strategy to use social media to promote your content marketing efforts. This site should be the platform your target client prefers!