Social media marketing is a cost-effective way for businesses to build brand awareness and loyalty, increase website traffic, improve search engine rankings and foster conversions.
Yet, with endless competition and a mind-numbing amount of content being shared every day on social media platforms, businesses should think twice before posting just to post. Your business needs a strategy, and at the heart of every solid marketing strategy is good content.
What is content? In relation to marketing, content refers to information, thoughts, and ideas expressed through some medium. It can be a photo, a video, a blog or even a quote.
However, I like to take the idea of content a step further, which brings me to content’s heteronym—the verb form of the word that means: “satisfy (someone).” Good content is information that satisfies someone. And that “someone” is your target audience.
If you want to satisfy your target audience, you need to produce valuable content that truly conveys your brand and overall mission. Therefore, whoever is brainstorming and creating the content for your business should ideally be someone that works in-house or someone that can frequently visit your business to strategize and gather relevant, unique content.
Paying a remote marketing agency $500–1,500 per month to post links to industry articles on your social channels is a waste of money. While an agency may be able to set up and optimize your social media platforms, they will not be able to generate organic, valuable content for your business, because they are not part of your business or your brand. They are not living it every day.
Instead, you may need to hire a new employee—college interns adept at social media are a great, affordable option. If you are tasking someone internally with the responsibility, it is important to provide them with the necessary resources for creating and executing a social media strategy. It may even be worth hiring a marketing consultant to get your team started with a solid strategy.
Remember, if you want to satisfy your target audience, you must share quality content on your social media platforms. Here are some general rules of thumb for doing so:
- In order to build brand awareness and loyalty, post content that truly reflects your brand’s personality and values—your brand’s identity.
- To increase traffic to your website via social media, post engaging content with a call-to-action that links to your site.
- Your website’s search engine rankings will benefit from consistent activity on your social media profiles—if you optimize your channels (think SEO best practices).
- To foster conversions utilizing social media, you need to connect with your customers and your prospects. You can use social platforms to network, communicate, respond to customers, etc.
If you’re ready to step up your social media marketing game with valuable content, then schedule a call and we’ll audit your current social activity (or lack thereof) and come up with a plan for producing and publishing great content to your platforms.