SO(cial) Happy Together: Content Marketing
How funny are those "name a more iconic duo, I'll wait" memes? I don't know about you, but they make me LOL - and seriously laugh out loud, not like the lol you send your friends via text.
Can you name a more iconic duo than Social Media and Content Marketing? HA! Probably not .... sorry Kendall & Kylie.
Social media and content marketing come together to create one of the most important partnerships in marketing. Whether you work for a smaller company and produce both social and content strategies or you work for a larger company with both a social and content team, you know how important these marketing tactics are together.
The content team at Dun & Bradstreet and I are SO(cial) Happy Together! Here’s why they think content and social make a killer partnership.
“I love the yin and yang of long form content and short form social. They co-exist beautifully, providing each other the opportunity to shine and reaching audiences in the ways they prefer to engage with our outreach.” ~Melissa Kofroth.
Melissa brings up an excellent point – long form content and short form social. The balance between both teams comes from content marketers crafting longer assets, whether it is an article, whitebook, eBook, or report, and social chopping these assets up into multiple promotions that will attract more readers.
Melissa gets excited when she sees articles she has spent countless hours on come to life and reach so many people with social promotions. Me too, Melissa, me too!
“If a beautifully crafted piece of content is published online, but no one is around to read it, does it make an impact? That’s the benefit of a well-planned social strategy; ensuring a piece of content is distributed, seen and read by the right audience. A sound social strategy is the difference between someone engaging and sharing a piece of content versus hoping and praying it is discovered online. Social is the conduit of great content. On the other end of the spectrum, a successful social strategy is only as good as the content being delivered through it. They both need each other to be effective.” ~Michael Goldberg
That question is on point! Similar to “if a tree falls in the woods…” what is the sound (impact) if no one is around or interested? Social is the outlet to make sure that does not happen. Our partnership thrives on the success of both a solid social and content strategy. The promotions we create for social media cannot attract the interest of followers if the content is not good and the content that is written cannot reach the best audience if the social media, well...stinks!
“Think of content and social like peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese, or Beyoncé and Jay-Z… they are always more successful when they work together. Today, content goes beyond eBooks and blog posts. Content is videos, photos, memes, live streams, apps, and digital experiences. Everything from the style of your writing to the filter you put on a photo is a key component to a successful strategy.” ~Julie Saldarriaga
Yum – mac & cheese! Putting my extreme hunger and love for mac & cheese aside, Julie makes a great analogy here. Some partnerships are strong and well-known, but the social/content partnership is the ULTIMATE duo. Consistency within the partnership is key (insert key emoji) and helps boost impact. How can we better reach our targeted audience? Consistency! It is important to deliver consistent messaging and imagery from asset to social post. Strong and constant collaboration helps with this and makes it easy.
“Social media is content marketing in real time. It’s the inspiring conversation that happens when your audience has the opportunity to interact with content. Because of its real-time nature, social media has the ability to create increased relevancy for content by curating and customizing content story lines for specific audiences. Our social media team is integral to our content success.” ~Abby Lutte
Once a piece of content goes live, it can only be considered “real-time” for a small amount of time. Social media is what keeps content fresh and in the moment. Have an article that is a month old? Don’t worry – it can be BRAND NEW and reach a different audience with a social promotion. This works best with larger assets such as eBooks and whitepapers. Social teams look at these assets as evergreen content because there is so much we can do with them over a long period of time.
Abby also uses the word conversation. I am seeing less comment sections on websites and more social sharing widgets/options. Social media keeps the conversation going on all forms of content!
“In the best examples of marketers using content and social media in tandem, social media is the megaphone for great content, broadcasting it to relevant prospects and customers. Creating compelling content that engages your target audience is the first order of business, but knowing where on social to engage can increase campaign success exponentially. If your prospect and customer tribe live on LinkedIn, make sure you’re including social amplification in that venue. You need to frequent the best social watering holes for your particular business.” ~Carol Krol
ATTENTION (screams into megaphone) CHECK OUT THIS AMAZING PIECE OF CONTENT!! I love Carol’s quote because it shows a MAJOR truth – social media is content’s biggest fan. We take content and amplify it to the right audience – sometimes a particular article will only be successful on Twitter and Facebook and other times it will only get the attention it deserves on LinkedIn. It is social’s responsibility to know where an asset will thrive and be the most successful. This helps drive awareness for your business in many different areas - all thanks to social and content!
As you can see – I work with some VERY talented content marketers. They all described our partnership beautifully. It is pretty obvious how well we work together and why that is vital for success in marketing!
I am SO(cial) Happy with my content marketing team!