The benefits of Social Media Marketing (SMM) are many for businesses today. For one, over 4 billion people in the global population now use social media. Therefore, marketing without a social media presence is akin to leaving money on the table. You should optimize your content for social media. Moreover, social media provides unmatched exposure and can be the easiest way to break into a new market.
Unfortunately, many business leaders are not yet sold on the need for social media optimization yet. Although they’re keen to publish posts on Facebook and share blogs on Instagram, they rarely optimize the content.
That can be a big mistake. You could be getting a lot more traction and generating more leads by optimizing your content for social media. The following are just a few benefits of optimizing your marketing content for social sharing.
The first reason why you should optimize your marketing content for social media networks is the SEO benefits. According to the Social Media Examiner, 58% of marketers who optimize content for social media sharing for a year are guaranteed a boost in search engine ranking. The reason is that Google algorithms highly value social signals. They check social shares, upvotes, and engagement when ranking sites.
Marketing is about choosing your battles. Rather than attempting to please everyone, find your niche and create targeted content to appeal to the selected demographic. Optimization is the only way to achieve targeted marketing in social media marketing. SEO allows you to pick keywords and phrases popular among the selected demographic. Then, you can send targeted marketing messages that resonate with the audience.
Social media marketing primarily pursues engagement. Many organizations now attempt to close sales directly on their social profiles. However, the goal of social media marketing is to drive engagement (likes, shares, comments, etc.) to generate more leads and ultimately more sales. Optimization helps you reach the right people with the right messages, thus directly impacting clicks, likes, comments, shares, etc.
Brand visibility is one of the biggest factors in marketing. Indeed, some of the biggest brands use visibility to drive sales and profitability. Social media optimization is an excellent shortcut to increased brand visibility. Through optimization, you can break into new markets to showcase your brand name and products. As we’ve seen, optimization also increases engagement. Increasing your engagement often means better brand and product visibility.
You’re probably wondering how. Well, it’s straightforward. To enhance brand loyalty, you need to go above and beyond to show your customers that you truly care. That’s why brands often offer redeemable points and product discounts. These “goodies” send a message of care. Optimization can also help you show that your brand cares. How? By providing actual solutions. Don’t just publish content for the sake of it. Instead, create content that solves your audience’s real problems. They will love you.
Finally, you should consider search engine optimization because it reduces the cost of marketing. Imagine for a second how much effort it takes to reach a million people on Instagram. For a small business with only a handful of fans, you consider hiring an influencer. You pay them to like and repost your content to their audience. Yet, you may be struggling, even when paying, to reach people who don’t have an interest in your products. Optimization allows you to focus on a smaller target audience with an established interest in your brand and products.
Search engine marketing is important for your overall marketing campaign. However, it takes informed optimization to truly benefit from a social media marketing campaign.
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How many hours have you spent adding buttons, gadgets and widgets to your new blog or website versus focusing on getting more shares of your content?
You research the right tools, share buttons, share bars, analytic tracking tools and more. You install them with a hope and a prayer that someone somewhere is going to use them. However, unfortunately many business leaders find they don’t get used. The share buttons sit on their site with the lonely zero or default +1. Chances are your pocket book or wallet might be feeling a little lonely too.
What if you took the same time you spend on the share bars, share buttons and tools and instead first focus on something worthy of a share? I know it sounds like a crazy concept because after all it’s far easier to focus on the bright shiny objects, geeky tools and data analytics.
Trust me, I am a data junkie and could literally spend all day helping my clients dig into the heads of their target audiences with a goal of embedding their brand in their brains!
If you really want success with online marketing and social media you must at some point provide relevancy. Yes, you can avoid this for a short period of time. You may be able to sell your boss and executive stakeholders on the number of retweets, likes and pins. Your board may get excited by the super star retweet you get from the latest singer rockstar from American Idol.
However, at the end of the day the same question still remains… what is your content doing for me? What is it doing for your audience? What is it doing for your business, stakeholders, shareholders and customers?
Let’s take a look at the definition of content marketing.
Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation and sharing of content in order to engage current and potential consumer bases. Content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. Content marketing has benefits in terms of retaining reader attention and improving brand loyalty.
*Source: Wikipedia
Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
*Source: Content Marketing Institute
For more clarity on defining the term, check out what is content marketing.
The words that matter. Make note of these words highlighted above. Notice any themes?
I know you are all smart enough to understand where I am going with this. You know what the words above mean.
So I am going to ask you the same questions… is your content relevant, engaging, high quality, valuable, actionable? Is it content that is going to inspire me to give you my attention? Will it inspire me to take action? To engage with you and your brand? Is it going to inspire me to take an action that will benefit you and your business?
Well, I can tell you that if you are not thinking about the above words on a daily basis as they relate to your business, your Facebook pages, your tweets and your email blasts, then the chances you are going to attract me, inspire me to buy anything from you are few and far between.
1. Learn, download and embed the definitions and words above into the dna of your brain.
2. Take the same words and embed them into the DNA of your marketing and business plans.
3. Don’t let your relationships turn all digital. Talk to your customers, partners, stakeholders and prospects in real life. Get that eye to eye, hand to hand connection. Get in their head and in their heart. The people in your online and offline communities are truly the heartbeat of social media.
4. Don’t assume you know what you don’t know. If you haven’t asked your audience what they want the past two years I’d suggest you ask. You might be surprised in the result.
5. Set goals and objectives for measurement. You can’t optimize, monetize and measure what you do not track, so set goals and objectives early.
6. Be honest with your internal skill set. If you don’t have the right skill set internally don’t be afraid to outsource. There are many awesome writers who are affordable and can often deliver much higher quality work than what you can do yourself at a lower cost.
7. Get out of your box. If you have had the same team for the past few years, then you need to get an outside opinion. Even our agency occasionally hires an outside writer to help us with new perspectives and ways to connect with our audiences. A third or fourth eye can never hurt.
8. Be patient and invest time. It is going to take time and resource to create relevant, engaging and valuable content. Do not expect overnight results. Build your plan and work yer plan as granny would say! You’ll eventually get there.
9. You will never know what you can do if you don’t try. What’s the worst thing that will happen if you put a little more effort into your content marketing game? Can’t be much worse than those lonely share buttons can it?
10. Don’t be afraid to do the happy dance. Keep your head up. We all started somewhere. I can still remember the first days of launching my blog with a hope and prayer I would get one or two retweets. I can remember doing the happy dance when I started hitting 10 retweets a day. Set realistic goals and celebrate your milestones, not someone elses!
Check out this free whitepaper for 15 Tips to Stomp Status Quo & Zoom Your Brand! Content is more than words. To get more shares of your content, your content must embrace, support and invigorate your brand. It must inspire your audience to listen and engage in what you have to say!
Another well written post with lots of insights for you is the content marketing guide by Bashar Sunny. I recommend it.
