BEST SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT MARKETING PRACTICE IN 2018

Social media content marketing is a strategic marketing approach that focuses on creating and distributing relevant, actionable, valuable and consistent content over social media to attract and keep a clearly defined audience engaged and ultimately drive profitable customer’s action.

Furthermore, it is no longer news that content is king. According to TechMagnate content marketing is projected to generate over $313 billion in revenue by 2019.

It is the worst kept secret that social media content marketing is going to overtake every other channel of content marketing. According to HubSpot, social media content marketing post will gain the most popularity.

Even though content marketing has been around for ages, a lot of content marketers aren’t seeing results for their content marketing efforts.

Only 28% of content marketers are confident in their ability to measure the impact of their content efforts according to Heinz Marketing.

Incorporating social media content marketing is not optional for brands who desire to meet their strategic objectives; it is a must.

One of the top skills that enabled me to quit my job, start up a brand and help individuals and businesses grow their visibility is my content marketing skill and it’s a must-have for every brand to thrive.

Content marketing has gone beyond just creating content alone, content marketing encompasses the creation and distribution of valuable contents that meet your target market needs to ultimately motivate them to make buying decisions in your favour.

There has been a 57% increase in social media content consumption which shows that social media content marketing works when done rightly.

Customers love to interact with their brand of choice and social media opened the pathway for prospective customers and clients to have meaningful interactions with business brands.

A recent trend in customer behaviour shows that more people are using social media for business. As of 2015, 90% of young adults use social media compared with 12% in 2015…Hubspot.

With Facebook boasting of over 2Billion monthly users, Twitter boosting of over 350Million active users, Snapchat with 150million daily active users and Instagram with a 500million monthly user (Statista, 2016), now is the time to master your social media content marketing game!

HERE ARE 11 SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT MARKETING BEST PRACTICES THAT GUARANTEES RESULTS

1. OBJECTIVES SYNCHRONIZATION

Your social media content marketing objectives must be in sync with your overall content marketing objectives that are also in sync with your brand’s objectives.

[bctt tweet=”Your social media #contentmarketing objectives must be in sync with your overall content #marketing objectives that are also in sync with your brand’s objectives.” username=”Ola_osofowora”]

The biggest mistake you can make with content marketing is lacking definite objectives that you seek to achieve.

Social media content marketing becomes profitable when your content creation and distribution efforts are coordinated to meet specific objectives.

Social media content marketing is absolutely useless without specific objectives.

How do you rate your performance without objectives? What metrics are you monitoring to rate your efforts?

Either you are creating textual content, audio or even visuals, all content must work to meet specified objectives.

To set objectives for your social media content marketing, it is important you consider the key metrics of your brand. What is your strategic objective? How can you use social media content marketing to achieve your brand objectives?

Most social media content marketing objectives are geared towards leads generation, leads nurturing and engagement. The most important thing is for you to choose the right objectives.

[bctt tweet=” Most #socialmedia #contentmarketing objectives are geared towards leads generation, leads nurturing and engagement. The most important thing is for you to choose the right objectives.” username=”Ola_osofowora”]

2. UNDERSTAND WHAT VALUE MEANS TO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Social media content marketing is geared towards offering value to a specific audience. But more often, content marketers fail to identify what value means to their target market and that’s why their social media content marketing fails.

Most noteworthy, value is relative and what connotes value to a certain audience may not connote value to another set of audience. As content creators, you should unravel what value means to your audience and offer that value better than anyone else.

[bctt tweet=” As content creators, you should unravel what value means to your audience and offer that value better than anyone else.” username=”Ola_osofowora”]

Understanding value gives you a competitive advantage over competitors because you understand your target audience’s needs in details.

It is your knowledge of value that enables you creates the right social media content that meets your target market needs.

Understand that you are not dealing with facts when you bank on assumptions to assess the needs of your target market. So, do some research, ask questions and carry out surveys to unravel the mystery.

[bctt tweet=”Understand that you are not dealing with facts when you bank on assumptions to assess the needs of your target market. So, do some research, ask questions and carry out surveys to unravel the mystery. ” username=”Ola_osofowora”]

3. FOCUS ON THE RIGHT METRICS

One of the greatest myth of content marketing is share is equal to success. At this point in time, that people share your content on social media does not mean your social media content marketing is successful.

You have to focus on the right metrics for your social media content marketing to be successful.

Yes, people shared your content, how many people took action on that content? How many leads did the content generate?

Hence, your content marketing efforts must be geared towards the right metrics that help you achieve your brand objectives.

That people like or love your content does not add anything to the bottom line. So, focus on the right metrics and you will be glad you engaged in social media content marketing effectively.

4. ADDRESS NEEDS

Most noteworthy, one of the most lethal social media content marketing best practices is to address the needs of your target market.

Brands these days are cynical and focus too much on their brand and products instead of providing solutions to the issues that keep their target audience up at night.

You can’t grow your influence with content marketing if you don’t make your content marketing efforts about your target market.

If you make your social media content marketing efforts about your target market and address their needs, they will, in turn, make it about you.

[bctt tweet=”If you make your #socialmedia #contentmarketing efforts about your target market and address their needs, they will, in turn, make it about you.” username=”Ola_osofowora”]

You have good products and nice brand image, but, that’s not what addresses the needs of your target audience. You have to go beyond reasonable length to serve.

In conclusion, Influential brands are brands that serve.

5. BUILD YOUR HOME

The truth is social media is a rented apartment. You have little control of the algorithm and the key factors that run the show. So, don’t build your land on a rented apartment.

I have seen cases where Facebook pages are deleted even without prior notification or hearing. A business page that has been built overtime was taken down. What do you say to that?

You don’t have any control over the algorithm and its ever-changing metrics. It is suicidal to concentrate every of your efforts on social media.

It is vital for your social media content marketing that you incorporate your activities with your digital base.So, one of the best practices is drawing the attention off social media to channels you have absolute control over.

MySpace, Friendster, YahooBuzz and a host of other sites used to be the in thing back then. Now, they are no more. What happens to businesses and brands that focused its efforts on those platforms? Your guess is as good as mine!

For your social media content marketing to be successful, it has to help you build the main platform that you control.

6. BE STRATEGIC IN YOUR APPROACH

In addition, focusing on creating viral content instead of creating and distributing actionable and compelling content is a waste of social media content marketing resources.

By being strategic, your contents are geared towards achieving specific objectives in the future. You are building a reputable brand name that helps you achieve your objectives.

Often times, people gratify the present to the detriment of the future.

Your content should educate, entertain and inspire your audience to build and nurture thriving relationship with them that ultimately lead to sales.

[bctt tweet=” Your content should educate, entertain and inspire your audience to build and nurture thriving relationship with them that ultimately lead to sales.” username=”Ola_osofowora”]

Therefore, it’s great to create viral content and get the attention but ensure that everything you do is in alignment with your social media content marketing objectives.

7. UTILIZE DIFFERENT CONTENT FORMS

Content these days means just text to marketers. Content marketing is not just the texts you create, audio content in form of podcast, videos and infographics are content too.

Hence, the greatest mistake you can make as a content marketer is to believe that all audience learn and consume content the same way. We are not created to consume content equally.

Some people learn the most with videos, some people do audio and the most important thing is for you to repurpose your content to perform optimally across your channels.

For your social media content marketing to be successful, you’ve got to realize that every idea is not just a blog post or a youtube video idea but a story.

[bctt tweet=”For your #socialmedia content marketing to be successful, you’ve got to realize that every idea is not just a blog post or a youtube video idea but a story.” username=”Ola_osofowora”]

You are a storyteller and therefore, you have to tell stories differently and from different perspectives for optimal performance.

According to Buffer, visual content is 40X likely to get shared on social media than any other content form. Most noteworthy, all the statistics are in favour of more visual content from content marketers.

8. DEVELOP AND MAINTAIN YOUR BRAND VOICE AND PERSONALITY

How do you stand out in a noisy world? How do you get known and recognized if you sound like everybody else? It is important that you find a suitable voice and maintain your brand personality across your channels.

Most noteworthy, brand personality is not just about the colours and logo now, your brand is everything you do in your business. So, it is important that you maintain a good brand voice.

[bctt tweet=”Most noteworthy, brand personality is not just about the colours and logo now, your brand is everything you do in your business. So, it is important that you maintain a good brand voice.” username=”Ola_osofowora”]

Hence, dare to stand out and have a stand in your social media content marketing.

9. CONTENT VISIBILITY AND DISTRIBUTION

It’s a myth that good content promotes itself. What is the essence of creating wonderful content that starves of eyes and attention on it?

Of what use is an actionable content when no one sees it? How do you intend to generate engagement for an invisible content?

There are lots of content out there fighting for attention. If you don’t promote your content, it has no chance of survival.

Hence, the focus needs to shift from just content creation to content distribution. The more eyes you get on your content, the more your chances of meeting your objectives.

[bctt tweet=”focus needs to shift from just content creation to content distribution. The more eyes you get on your content, the more your chances of meeting your objectives.” username=”Ola_osofowora”]

Content visibility and distribution are so important if you are to benefit from social media content marketing. More and more content does not equal more reach these days.

READ MORE: BEST BRAND STRATEGIES TO BUILD STRONG BRAND

Good content with a good promotion is the way forward.

In addition, with organic reach dying on Facebook and some other platforms, it is important that you map out effective strategies for your content promotion.

Therefore, paid advert, influencer marketing and effective use of Call to Action will go a long way to promote your content.

10. LEVERAGE USERS GENERATED CONTENT

There’s immense trust that comes from user-generated content. Prospective clients these days have more confidence in your brand promise when they consume user-generated content.

Also, the fact that someone like them has enjoyed your brand promise gives them the confidence of enjoying similar or even greater benefits.

By leveraging user-generated content, you build more loyalty, trust and thriving relationship with your target audience.

Invite your target audience to send in their content and offer to give them the credit for it. You will be surprised at the turnout.

It is important to note here that leveraging users generated content does not mean you lose guard and not make necessary adjustments where needed.

[bctt tweet=”It is important to note here that leveraging users generated content does not mean you lose guard and not make necessary adjustments where needed. ” username=”Ola_osofowora”]

That you are leveraging users generated content does not mean you should publish zilch content.

Therefore, having an editorial team comes in handy here.

11. USE CALL TO ACTION

How do you expect readers to take your desired action when you refuse to tell them? People aren’t mind readers, and so, they need you to give the direction.

Without a call to action, readers are at the luxury of doing whatever they feel like with your content.

[bctt tweet=”Without a call to action, readers are at the luxury of doing whatever they feel like with your content.” username=”Ola_osofowora”]

Do you want them to share your content, do you want them to share their thoughts and experience? Tell them!

Therefore ensure that your call to action also aligns with your objectives.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the explosive growth of social media content marketing is one of the best things to happen to content marketing.

With best practices, strategies and action, everything is in your favour to build a reputable and influential brand.

Content marketing is king and content marketing will always work for any industry.

If you will put in the work and do things right, you will see the results.

What challenges do you have with social media content marketing? Share with me and please share this post too.