Six Ways to Use Social Media in Content Marketing
If you want to use social media in content marketing effectively, then follow these 6 tips to prevent your audience from rejecting it.
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Content marketing is essential to any successful digital marketing strategy. It helps to draw in potential customers and build trust in your brand. However, social media users are also quite savvy in marketing techniques and reject many on sight. What is a marketing team to do?
The answer is to tailor your marketing to the social media experience. Social media is an integral part of content marketing, and there are many ways you can use it to boost your content marketing efforts. Here are six ways to leverage social media in your content marketing strategy.
1. Share Content on Multiple Channels
While over 4.6 billion social media users are on the internet, they are not all in the same place. Sure, there are a few significant players, but a diverse approach to social media allows you to reach a larger audience than ever before. To maximize your reach, you should share your content across multiple social media platforms.
Sharing content on multiple channels is an effective way to reach a huge audience and maximize the potential of your content. It can also establish yourself as an authority in your field and build relationships with potential customers in their customer journey. Flexibility is also important, so looking at overall usage trends and new channels as they emerge makes sense. While some platforms may be in flux and users come and go, the average person spends nearly 2.5 hours on social media. Shifting your focus to what is in the zeitgeist is an important marketing skill.
With this in mind, here are some tips for how to share content on multiple channels:
Choose the Right Channels
When sharing content across multiple channels, choosing the proper channels for your content is the key to success. Consider the type of content you’re producing, your target audience, and which channels they’re most likely to be on. For example, video content is best suited for some platforms as opposed to others. Instagram may have video capabilities, but TikTok is a far more video-centric app.
Optimize Your Content
Once you’ve identified the proper channels for your content, optimizing the content for each platform is essential. This means tailoring the content to fit the specific requirements of each channel. For example, if you’re sharing a blog post on Twitter, you’ll need to keep it short and use the right hashtags to get the most engagement. Further, it is a good practice to look at what competing businesses do and see what works best for your brand.
Use Automation Tools
Automation tools can take the load off you when sharing content across multiple channels. Various tools allow you to schedule content for posting on various channels at once and even provide analytics to help you track the performance of your content. If you can figure out what your evergreen content is to automate, then you’re in good shape.
Interact With Your Audience
Once you’ve posted your content, engage with your audience and encourage them to share it. Ask questions, respond to comments, and thank people for engaging with your content. This will help build relationships with your followers and make them more likely to share your content. Social media users are wise to being marketed to – the more interactive marketing is, and the more genuine it appears, the more it is accepted by users.
2. Leverage influencers
Ad spending on social media has climbed to over $170 million in 2022, and an increasing share of that ad buy goes to influencers. But what makes influencers such an attractive marketing option?
Influencers are essential in content marketing, as they can help amplify your message, create a buzz around your brand and build customer loyalty. Leveraging influencers can be a great way to increase your reach and boost your content marketing efforts. First, you need to identify the right influencers for your content marketing campaign. Look for influencers who are active in your industry and have an engaged following.
Vet Your Influencers
You should also consider whether or not their values align with yours, as this will help ensure that their message resonates with your target audience. It is imperative to vet your influencers, as the last thing any brand needs is a volatile influencer whose actions distract from the positive association of the brand.
Do the Outreach
Once you’ve identified the best influencers for your content marketing campaign, you can start building relationships with them. Reach out to them directly, or use social media to connect with them. Show them your content and explain why you believe it would benefit them to share it. You can also offer them incentives such as discounts or special offers in exchange for their support.
Build Around Them
Once you have established relationships with your influencers, you should create content tailored to their audience. This could include blog posts, videos, and social media posts that feature the influencer’s name and handle. This will help build credibility and trust with their followers and show that you value their opinion.
Check Your Success
Finally, you should measure the success of your influencer marketing efforts. Track how many views, shares, and comments your content receives and look for changes in your brand’s engagement and reach. This will help you identify which influencers drive the most traffic to your content and allow you to refine your approach accordingly. Any influencer should be able to provide you with relevant stats on their platform – be wary of so-called influencers who are hesitant to do so.
3. Focus on Visuals
The internet is a very vision-oriented environment. Visuals, such as photos, videos, and infographics, can be powerful tools to attract readers and keep them engaged. Focus on creating visually appealing content, and use social media to promote it.
When it comes to marketing content, visuals are often the most effective way to capture your audience’s attention. Visuals can make a story come alive, create an emotional response, and promote increased engagement with your content. Don’t neglect your potential market who have visual disabilities either – 8.1 million Americans alone have a visual impairment, so providing accessibility features to supplement visuals is essential for their benefit.
With that said, leveraging visuals in content marketing is essential, whether you’re creating blog posts, social media content, or eBooks. Here are some tips for how to leverage visuals in content marketing.
Choose the Right Visuals
The visuals you choose for your content should be relevant to the topic and evoke the desired emotion. For example, if you’re writing about a new product, visuals of the product in use could be compelling. Also, ensure that the visuals you choose are high-quality and fit the brand image you want to project. If you are aiming for something more general and not tied to a project, having access to high-quality stock photos is essential.
Add Images to Your Content
Adding visuals to your content is an easy way to make it more engaging. You can use visuals to illustrate a point, break up long text sections, and give readers something to digest visually. You can also use visuals to create infographics, charts, and other interactive elements to keep readers engaged. Improving the balance between text and imagery should be a serious consideration when marketing on social media.
Optimize Visuals for SEO
Optimizing visuals for SEO can help your content rank higher on search engine result pages. Include relevant keywords in the image file name, title, and alt text, and use descriptive captions to explain the image. Also, ensure the image is the correct file type and size for the most optimized performance. Working with SEO experts familiar with standard image marketing conventions can save you a lot of time in the long run.
Utilize Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms are great for sharing visuals that can help to promote your content. Think outside the box to create ways to share visuals that will grab people’s attention. For example, you can use GIFs, photos, and videos to promote your content on social media. Never be afraid to experiment – you may come up with a surprising new approach.
Monitor Campaign Performance
Along with experimenting comes with observing the results. Monitoring the performance of visuals is essential to understand what works and what doesn’t. Take a look at the analytics of your content to see which visuals are performing the best and make adjustments accordingly.
4. Run Contests
Many businesses are turning to contests to leverage their content marketing efforts. Contests are a great way to engage your audience and add excitement to your content marketing strategy. The participatory nature of contests can result in more organic engagement that may help your marketing be carried along further than you’d expect.
Here’s how to leverage contests in content marketing to get the most out of your efforts.
Choose the Right Type of Contest
You can use many different types of contests to engage your audience. The type of contest you choose depends on your goals and objectives. Popular types of contests include sweepstakes, photo contests, video contests, and essay contests.
Promote Your Contest
Once you’ve chosen the type of contest you want to run, you need to promote it. To spread the word about your contest, utilize your existing content marketing channels, such as your website, email list, and social media accounts. Additionally, you can partner with influencers and other brands to promote your contest and reach a wider audience. Providing a way for the contest to be shared among users easily is also a vital element.
Offer an Attractive Prize
Your prize should be attractive enough to incentivize people to participate in your contest. A prize doesn’t need to break the bank, but make sure the prize is related to your brand and is something your target audience would be interested in.
Encourage User-Generated Content
User-generated content is a great way to increase engagement and visibility. Encourage your audience to create content related to your contest. This could be photos, videos, or even stories about their experience with your brand. This type of content is more likely to go viral as it is more personal and relatable. The organic nature of the user-content results in a brand being spread more easily among normally wary social media users.
Ask for Feedback
When running a contest, remember to ask your participants for feedback. This feedback is invaluable in helping you to improve your content marketing strategy. Contests are a great way to engage your audience and generate user-generated content. When done correctly, they can be an effective way to leverage your content marketing efforts.
5. Encourage User-Generated Content
User-generated content is a vital marketing strategy worth further consideration as it is a great way to increase engagement and show off your brand’s personality. It can help you create content that resonates with your target audience, build trust with potential customers, and drive more engagement and conversions. The key to leveraging UGC for content marketing is understanding how to use it correctly.
First, it’s essential to understand what UGC is. UGC is content created and shared by a user, such as a blog post, a tweet, or a video. You can use it to promote products and services, and you can use it to provide valuable information to potential customers. Once you have identified the types of UGC that can be used for content marketing, you need to create strategies for using it.
Sharing Is Key
One way to leverage UGC for content marketing is to encourage customers to share their experiences with your brand. Ask customers to share reviews, photos, and videos about their experiences with your company’s products or services. This will help other potential customers better understand what it’s like to do business with your brand.
Working in specific features such as hashtags or automated sharing messages associated with participation is another tool as it inevitably leads back to the brand. Ask customers to share your content with their followers or to comment on your blog posts and social media posts. This will help you increase your content’s reach and make it more visible to potential customers.
Build What They Want
Another way to leverage UGC for content marketing is to create content based on customer feedback. Ask customers for their input on topics related to your industry, and use their responses as the basis for content. This will show potential customers that you value their opinions and help you create content that resonates with them.
6. Leverage Live Video
Live video is becoming increasingly popular on social media. Use it to host Q&A sessions, tutorials, or live product demonstrations. Live video allows businesses to reach a larger audience and increase engagement. It also allows you to create a personal relationship with your viewers and build trust with them.
Video For News and Networking
Further, live video has several advantages over other forms of content marketing. You can share real-time news, product updates, promotions, or other information. You can also use it to showcase new products or services or to host Q&A sessions with customers.
Live video allows businesses to interact with their audience, making it a great way to build relationships and trust. If you want to leverage live video for content marketing, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Using Live Video
First, ensure your live video has a clear purpose and provides valuable content to your viewers. It should also be engaging and interactive. Additionally, you should promote your live video ahead of time to maximize your reach.
Once you’ve launched your live video, interact with your viewers in real time. This will help create a more personal connection with them and increase engagement. After the video ends, you should promote it on social media and other channels to reach a larger audience.
Final Thoughts
Content marketing is essential to any successful digital marketing strategy, and social media can be a powerful tool for boosting your efforts. If there were a central theme to these strategies, it would revolve around understanding the social media audience and what they engage with. Your primary goal with every tip should be creating something that fits how your audience uses the internet.
Create the content they like, deliver it where they are and don’t force a connection. The more organic your approach appears, the more successful your social media marketing can be. Use these six tips to leverage social media to its fullest potential in your content marketing strategy.
