The Real Marketers Shift from Social Media to Content Marketing

In our current business landscape, it’s common knowledge that social media does not work without great content. Good marketers have made the shift from thinking about “how I can create a solid Facebook strategy” to “how do I create a content marketing plan to drive some good engagement on channels like Facebook.”

The difference may seem subtle, but in actuality, the outcome is drastically different. The Online Marketing Institute Digital Talent Gap Study, 2014 recently found that “77% of hiring managers said content marketing experience is their number one skill they sought.”

Related Article: 10 Content Marketing Problems to Avoid

As small business owners, marketers and experts, the transition in focus from social media to content is a sign of the constant evolution in marketing. Let’s talk a look at the pillars of how the two tie together to be an inbound marketing force for your brand.

Your Personal (or Company) Brand

It’s marketing 101 to map out what your brand stands for, and the big items you want to be sure folks remember you by. But so many times we get so caught up trying to push out as many things as possible; we forget to really think about these things when posting on social media.

In order to keep your brand in focus, set up 3 to 5 attributes (powerful adjectives) and have those on the wall, desk, screensaver to refer to so you always make sure you live up to this. So many of us post randomly, retweet without reading and even write blog posts without much thought. Be sure to get your brand nailed down and so much more of the content you have to plan for will come naturally.

I know many of us struggle with this as we are not brand experts, so feel free to check out what my friends at Popexpert are doing around Personal and Digital Branding to help jump-start those efforts.

Your Blog

If no one has ever told you that your blog has the potential to be the single biggest impact on driving business to your company, allow me to say it: it’s what folks judge you by. It’s how you are validated as an expert in the industry. It’s literally your digital resume.

Moreover, Google loves blogs that are posted to frequently (1x week is all that you need), and even more so those that are shared on Twitter, Facebook, and of course, Google+. So, prioritize building a great content marketing calendar of blog posts and simply live up to that.

Related Article: 5 Critical Content Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Your Tweets

Like a good Tweet, this will be short and sweet.

STOP retweeting other folk’s stuff; stop tweeting 3rd party articles and start tweeting your stuff. Tweet a quick summary of a great article on your blog, your cool new product launch on your page, or press release.

Then strategically retweet those in your industry that really have street cred and align it with your brand and your content marketing calendar that focuses on important topics to your company.

Your Video

If you haven’t started creating video content, it’s time you do. More time is spent watching videos than on Facebook itself. And video is 10 times more likely to be watched on Facebook than other channels like Twitter. Start with creating good webinar content that you record and archive. Put it on YouTube and then take the highlights and add to a good page on your site.

Then, start looking at what your competitors are doing on video or other folks that you can see doing a good job and copy. Create video that is worth sharing, whether it is customer interviews, product demo, or you teaching a class or workshop. Trust me, if done right, and aligned with your content marketing priorities, you’ll win.

We think about content first. Things like our blog, our video and our overall plan, and then we think “how can we best share this content?” Spending the time thinking through content marketing plan will drive every decision you need to make for effective social media ROI.