Content and social are such intertwined disciplines that anyone keen to market themselves with one should always be thinking about how their efforts can be supported with the other. Social profiles benefit from having content to share. Content gets in front of more eyeballs if it is socially shared. It’s a match made in digital heaven.
What is surprising is how many brands will craft an entire content strategy without pondering how this will go down in the social world, while other companies decide they want to make a splash on Twitter/Google+/Facebook/etc. but do not have any brilliant content to post.
If your content is engaging then chances are people will make a comment on social media, which becomes an opportunity for you to develop a solid relationship and potentially a sale further down the line.
Snowball fights
The relentless cold around Portsmouth Harbour (where our office is, not just where I hang around) these past few months has made me think of snowball fights and a parallel with content-social strategies (stay with me…) as social networks are like one big free-for-all, with everyone lobbing content around at each other.
Whether that content is a personal opinion, a link to a picture of an animal, or some fascinating fact about the farming industry in southern Pakistan, all of it is thrown about between friends and people that don’t even know each other. Everyone is smiling and having a lovely time, with scarfs wrapped around their faces, etc.
The point of a joint content-social strategy is that you are coming to the snowball fight with snow in hand, ready to be pelted around and enjoyed by all those millions of people. If you do not bring your own snow to the fight, then you will simply get buried underneath everyone else’s.
Control
Anyone who thinks they can control their brand’s reputation online is crazy; we no longer have control of our brands, the ‘people’ control it. However, by producing the right kind of content, you are able to influence the direction of sentiment towards it.
By considering what sort of content you can publish over a series of months you can effectively plan for how you may need to respond socially. If you are running a competition then perhaps you will need to keep promoting it while at the same time answering questions about the contest. If you are doing a series of opinion pieces, then you should be ready to respond straight away when social messages come in questioning your point of view.
Shifting seamlessly back to the snowball analogy – the more snow you bring to snowball fight, the more involved you’ll be in the action. You will still have to deal with unexpected attacks, but at least some of the snow will be shaping the fight for you.
A content-social strategy will give you a fighting chance in the free-for-all, and it certainly beats lying on the floor making snow angels while your brand is pelted relentlessly…