Content Marketing and Social Media

Content Marketing and Social Media

Social media is one of the primary vehicles for a content marketing campaign—especially the more entry-level, entertaining pieces. There are three tiers of social media promotion for your content:

• Owned: Sharing your content on the brand’s own social media channels is a quick, customizable, and free opportunity to connect with your target audience.
• Paid: Most social networks allow for some kind of paid advertising. Matching a network’s demographics with your brand’s personas will help you determine where to invest.
• Earned: The most valuable, but hardest to create, social media promotion happens when your audience shares your content with their networks.

Each social network tends to gather a different type of user. Match your personas to network demographics to find out where you target audience is social online, and start sharing your content. Let's cover the differences between social networks:

Facebook

Facebook is still the biggest social network, and while it is the fastest-growing, that growth is slowing and shifting. At the beginning of last year, Facebook usage was growing fastest among older adults. As of January 2015, Facebook users are most likely to be college-educated, lower-income women.

Twitter

Emerging markets account for 78% of the traffic on Twitter, with India as one of the fastest-growing. Statistically speaking, Twitter users tend to be recent college graduates living in urban areas.

LinkedIn 

LinkedIn is commonly known as the professional social network, and it’s obvious that its users are serious. Sixty-four percent of social referrals to corporate websites come from LinkedIn, compared to 17% from Facebook and 14% from Twitter. A glance at the demographics demonstrates that LinkedIn has the greatest percentage of college-educated, higher-income users of all the major social channels.

Pinterest 

Consumers love Pinterest. Forty-seven percent of online shoppers have made a purchase because of a Pinterest recommendation, and Pinterest generates 4x more revenue (per click) than Twitter. Pinterest users tend to be more affluent women living in rural areas.

Gated vs. Ungated Content

 As you build a content library for your brand, it’s important to structure your campaign to drive specific business objectives. Content marketing is about giving away information to build relationships and earn trust, but gating some of your best content is an acceptable and valuable practice.

74% of buyers expect to access simple items—like infographics—for free, but 77% are willing to provide basic information for a white paper. Gating bigger resources is a great way to generate leads, learn which of your visitors is serious, and then nurture leads.

                         Content Marketing and SEO

 In the same way that you take a couple extra steps to help your content succeed on social, take a couple more to help your content succeed with search engines. Weaving some SEO best practices into your content will help make a good impression with Google and move your website up the rankings list.

• Use keywords (naturally): Identify your main keyword for the content, a few synonyms, and a few related keywords. Then make sure you’re actually using them in your content, headers, and page content. Don’t over-do it, though. Search engines have been cracking down on content that is “stuffed” with one or two keywords. Write for the reader, but do make sure those important words are present.
• Earn natural links: Links from spammy sources can actually hurt your site with search engines. Build relationships with industry professionals who will share your content, and link to their primary resources in return. Links from high-quality websites will give yours a boost.
• Media: Include images and video (with descriptive titles and alt text) on blog posts and landing pages. They improve the user experience, which decreases bounce rates and improves your standing with Google.
• The strength of a good content marketing strategy is in providing the information and answers that your target audience is looking for, but your hard work is all for nought if they can’t find it! Make sure you’re creating content for the user, but that search engines will also favor.