The 2011 Social Media Marketing Report stated that 93% of marketers are now using social media for marketing purposes. Although almost everyone is using social media, many marketers are still uncertain of how to get the greatest ROI from their efforts. The 2011 Social Media Marketing Report also revealed that marketers’ #2 concern is how to integrate and manage all of their social media activities.
Content marketing and social media go hand-in-hand. They both focus on sharing ideas, building relationships and growing communities. Here are three ways you can integrate social media with your content marketing to increase your ROI:
Be present all of the time.
Some companies will launch a content marketing campaign, promote it like crazy across social media and then go silent when the campaign ends. You may think this is strictly a B2C problem, but plenty of B2B companies are also guilty – especially ones that
promote conferences or new products. If you disappear after your campaign, you’ll wonder where your audience went the next time you have a campaign.
Gain insights into your target audience.
Social media provides you with endless ways to get to know your customers. For example, you can conduct formal or informal surveys to learn about their greatest concerns and what they think about your company. You can also just chat with them and answer their questions. The information you gain through social media will allow you to create more relevant content.
Your social community will also let you know if you’re staying true to your brand. A few months ago, someone had suggested I write about a particular topic on my blog. However, I felt the topic was off-brand and wanted to get the opinion of my Twitter followers first.So, I took an article about the same topic from someone else’s blog and tweeted it. Within minutes, one of my followers responded by saying how “out of date” the advice was. I appreciated this comment, because it let me know the topic would have been bad for my blog. It saved me the time of writing and promoting a post my readers wouldn’t have liked.
Make all of your content social.
All marketing today is social marketing – whether you use social media or not. That’s because your customers are probably using social media to spread interesting content across the web.
If you want your message – whether it’s a white paper, blog post, video or other marketing piece – to reach a larger audience, you’ll need to make it social. Here are five ways to make all of your marketing more social:
- Add social sharing to your website. Make sure these buttons are included
on all of your landing pages and resources pages. - Create hashtags for your events and trending topics so people can discuss them on Twitter.
- Publish a blog and encourage visitors to leave comments.
- Include your latest Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube content on your website. This makes it easier for your website visitors to find you on social networks.
- Put “follow me” and “share this” buttons in your e-newsletters.
What about you? What are you doing to make your marketing more social? Feel free to share your comments below.