The Nature of Social Media Content
Social Media has given an immense opportunity to individuals and businesses to publish content online. Content forms a strategic part of social media, it is in fact the fuel with the help of connections are built and sustained on these social platforms. Customers and users in general seek quite detailed information before they buy any product, which makes it essential to ensure that all the major doubts that audiences’ might have about a product or service are answered in the content presented to them. This is where social media forms a crucial link in terms of allowing customers to become more acquainted with a brand and its offerings, through the help of conversations and interactions. What everyone wants is relevant and personalised content that helps in developing long lasting relationship with your customers and thus retain them. There are number of buyers on social media platform and their journeys ad outlooks have drastically changed with the changes in their personas. Buyers are multi-channelled and based on the channels they are used to being a part of, they expect brands to know who they are and to understand what they like or dislike by initiating personalised conversations with them.
Content should not be just a write up or a means of distraction for audience. It is important to note that the content should speak to your buyers continuously taking into consideration their behaviour. All the content that you create for the purpose of publishing on social media should be directed towards an outcome. For instance, a call-to-action that directs users towards attending a demo of a product or a webinar on a new set of services just introduced by the brand can be a great way for engaging audiences on social media. Social media content should also be placed at places where buyers are expected to search for the same. Blogs and other types of content published on social platforms should also be designed to ensure increased ease of access for consumers. Maintenance of an interactive social media presence at all times takes a lot of time and effort. Brands have to monitor each social network, be it Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter and respond to questions and feedback received from the users on each of them, thus requiring a lot of time to be invested in the same.
With a leeway to post whatever they intend to, customers can leave glowing reviews on your product or can even provide angry rants on the same. These comments are visible to all the potential users who might be on the verge of approaching your brand for the purpose of initiating contact and inquiring about some product or service. For individuals as well as for businesses, these comments do not go unnoticed. Hence, instead of merely ensuring that your content on social media is well aligned with the conversational theme of the platform, you also need to make sure that you allow customers to deal with your content in the most amicable manner possible. Have you ever uploaded a video or a blog on social platforms to derive monetization benefits? If the answer is yes, you might have gone through the painful realization that major social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have their own profit-centered objectives in mind, making your content a mere channel for the same. You surely would not have received any reward as social media sites do not render monetization benefits to the creator until now. This leaves the option to upload the video or content on YouTube where a greater chunk of audience will have access to your content and you will be rewarded only after amassing sufficient subscriptions.
In lieu of self-promotion and extensive competition amongst brands, coupled with the immense impetus that social media platforms put on earning increased revenue, the original quality of content is being degraded to a large extent. On one hand, in order to catch up with competitors, brands are striving to beat each other in their own game, thereby adopting marketing and content creation techniques that are similar to each other. On the other hand, due to the need to retain the platform’s own objective authority, platforms like Facebook and Twitter do not merely remove the chance for monetization of content they also degrade the concept of ownership of content to a large extent. In fact, Facebook and similar social networks are in the business of presenting an illusion of ownership to brands and individuals alike, where the content they create is theirs only until the platform decides to do something with it. In this case, the platform chooses who will be able to view the posts that you promote and boost, who will be drawn towards your page on Facebook, and where your content spreads to during a marketing campaign on the platform. This illusion of ownership often drives brands to create new and unexplored types of content and try unconventional techniques to market themselves, most of which are not able to produce the desired impact owing to the inherent competitiveness of the social media market and the conventional marketing and content creation techniques which define the playing field.
The Role of Content Marketing in Social Media
Audiences are constantly craving for information and hence, relevant content that meets their needs is extremely important. They need visuals in the form of videos and images along with words. As far as social media is concerned, you get a green signal for your content whenever the audience starts happily sharing your content ahead. We have to post links and videos several times to make it reach the eyes and minds of the targeted audience. In some ways, content marketing is more of a mindset rather than an intricate, well-defined process which is how it is usually defined in corporate circles where competition and maximum reach are the only objectives. The mindset of content marketing requires a brand to be always forward thinking and constantly aligned with the bigger picture of how well they integrate into the market as well as how the evolution of their reputation in the market has been. In this case, being associated with social media platforms that have a major role in defining the success of your content is a big hurdle to surpass on the path towards better market position and value.
Moreover, in the murky waters that are social networking platforms, no brand can essentially sustain itself with the help of content for a long amount of time, owing to the immense inflow of information that these mediums are characterized by. Hence, when it comes to making the most of content marketing on social media platforms, it is considerably dependent on how often a brand chooses to go beyond its previous limitations and how it chooses to do so without compromising on core organizational principles and reputational expectations. This is where consolidation and synchronization of efforts on a consistent basis as far as social media content is concerned seems like the missing “eureka” element of the answer to a question that numerous brands have been struggling to answer since a long time. Content marketing must focus on the targeted audience, there is a possibility that content may resonate with one audience and at the same time, different audience may be lost or confused when they encounter your content! This applies to the written content as well as visuals that we use. All of these factors make it necessary to ensure that whatever you publish on social media platforms is created with a single foundation underneath it, which is based on consistency and innovation.
Case Study – By making sure that you are providing an extensive experience to your audiences with the help of content, you can tailor and define to a large extent the way in they will encounter your content. Let’s take an example, that of India’s Fashion Hub, FBB. After adopting Social Media 2.0, users can appreciate the way in which they manage content across different platforms, without being restricted to merely admiring single posts on your wall or your feed. In this case, Social Media 2.0 allowed the brand to curate entirely different experiences for users on different social media platforms, namely Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, all of which were consolidated on their website. For instance, the brand started to put up images of leggings and tips to wear them well, while at the same time, they started a contest on Facebook where users were asked to submit pictures of their best Kurtis, an apparel item that goes very well with leggings. In this case, one of the most interesting aspects that one can observe from the techniques used for different social media platforms was the pairing together of disparate techniques in such a way that their cohesive or collective impact is one that is immensely useful as far as the overall objectives of the brand are concerned. As far as Twitter was concerned, the brand mainly used the platform for the purpose of answering to queries and responding to the doubts that were submitted by users.
With the help of Social Media 2.0, you not only have the option to develop strategies that are best suited to increase reach, you can also synchronize disparate strategies used on different social platforms towards a singular objective. Well, that is not the only thing that you can do with the help of 2000 Instagram pictures, 1000 Tweets, 2500 Posts of varying types into one single platform, which is your website. Thus, one can now channelize all digital content right from the helm of one’s website, making content marketing a convenient and highly consolidated effort. With the help of this application, all the digital content published on your website has its own individual optimized page, which helps in improving search engine ranking and visibility to a considerable extent. Social media content is your property, it belongs only to you. Now, you no longer need to worry about having only the hours, the sweat and the tears as signs of your ownership and efforts. You can actually have your digital content published across the Internet, hosted as an individual page to a server with your domain name. Sounds much better, right!
When it comes to content marketing, consolidating and keeping a reservoir of your content is an aspect whose importance cannot be stressed enough. Social media platforms are very vulnerable and are also highly targeted by individuals with ulterior motives. Just imagine if a social media platform, one where you have consistently uploaded content since a long time, is suddenly infected with a virus such as the WannaCry Ransomware! Minute vulnerabilities as well as fundamental issues that plague social media platforms can suddenly bloom into full-scale massive attacks or problems from which recovery becomes quite difficult. In lieu of this possibility, for the sake of the brand’s reputation as well as the content created for the development of the same, it is essential to have a proper backup of al the content that you publish on social networking sites.
Content should not be just a write up or a means of distraction for audience. It is important to note that the content should speak to your buyers continuously taking into consideration their behaviour. All the content that you create for the purpose of publishing on social media should be directed towards an outcome. For instance, a call-to-action that directs users towards attending a demo of a product or a webinar on a new set of services just introduced by the brand can be a great way for engaging audiences on social media. Social media content should also be placed at places where buyers are expected to search for the same. Blogs and other types of content published on social platforms should also be designed to ensure increased ease of access for consumers. Maintenance of an interactive social media presence at all times takes a lot of time and effort. Brands have to monitor each social network, be it Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter and respond to questions and feedback received from the users on each of them, thus requiring a lot of time to be invested in the same.
With a leeway to post whatever they intend to, customers can leave glowing reviews on your product or can even provide angry rants on the same. These comments are visible to all the potential users who might be on the verge of approaching your brand for the purpose of initiating contact and inquiring about some product or service. For individuals as well as for businesses, these comments do not go unnoticed. Hence, instead of merely ensuring that your content on social media is well aligned with the conversational theme of the platform, you also need to make sure that you allow customers to deal with your content in the most amicable manner possible. Have you ever uploaded a video or a blog on social platforms to derive monetization benefits? If the answer is yes, you might have gone through the painful realization that major social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have their own profit-centered objectives in mind, making your content a mere channel for the same. You surely would not have received any reward as social media sites do not render monetization benefits to the creator until now. This leaves the option to upload the video or content on YouTube where a greater chunk of audience will have access to your content and you will be rewarded only after amassing sufficient subscriptions.
In lieu of self-promotion and extensive competition amongst brands, coupled with the immense impetus that social media platforms put on earning increased revenue, the original quality of content is being degraded to a large extent. On one hand, in order to catch up with competitors, brands are striving to beat each other in their own game, thereby adopting marketing and content creation techniques that are similar to each other. On the other hand, due to the need to retain the platform’s own objective authority, platforms like Facebook and Twitter do not merely remove the chance for monetization of content they also degrade the concept of ownership of content to a large extent. In fact, Facebook and similar social networks are in the business of presenting an illusion of ownership to brands and individuals alike, where the content they create is theirs only until the platform decides to do something with it. In this case, the platform chooses who will be able to view the posts that you promote and boost, who will be drawn towards your page on Facebook, and where your content spreads to during a marketing campaign on the platform. This illusion of ownership often drives brands to create new and unexplored types of content and try unconventional techniques to market themselves, most of which are not able to produce the desired impact owing to the inherent competitiveness of the social media market and the conventional marketing and content creation techniques which define the playing field.
What is New with Social Media 2.0?
Having your domain name is awesome! As a business, obtaining one’s own domain is one of the highlights of the digital journey of the brand and everything that comes with it. In this case, one of the most distinctive advantages of having your own domain, one that adds to the overall sanctity of purchasing and successfully setting it up, is that it is the defining factor of any digital entity. It is the foundation of very single campaign that you run, be it on the backs of specifically designed landing pages or on the basis of link-spreading on social media platforms. Without a domain, businesses are as good as dust in the winds of the digital realm, utterly lost and without a home. With the help of a domain, the entire world can now find you online, and you have a distinct identity and expert status. Now, even as a business owner you can host your online store, and share critical information with a global customer base.
Not being able to harbor and nurture social media content on your domain is nothing less than a curse. With the help of Social Media 2.0, your domain can become the center of entire months of planning and social media content development. By allowing your website to be the dashboard for controlling the direction, rate and the extent of evolution of your brand on social media, you have the chance to gain immense insights as to how your content marketing strategies need to be shaped as your brand matures. On one hand, you can define certain parameters on the basis of how individuals react to your brand on social media platforms, while on the other hand you can also gain insights into the way in which forums, discussion threads, other websites, directories, B2B platforms, and other types of interactive realms on the Internet are suited to receive your content. Moreover, you can also understand the way in which social media content allows you to please search engines, thereby gaining a deeper insight into the validity and overall authenticity of the content you create from the perspective of rule-based paradigms, namely SEO.
Here are some of the other ways in which you can make the most out of Social Media 2.0 –
Lead Magnet Driven Campaigns
With the ability to take social media content out of the context of networking platforms, brands can gain access to numerous opportunities which remain hidden due to the very contextual parameters that used to define this type of content. Without the need to adhere to the social means of conversation that define content marketing techniques on social media, brands can unlock potential uses of this content that go beyond mere reputation building. This includes using videos, in-depth interviews, advertisements, performance art pieces, social experiments and other such type of content as lead magnets by creating specifically designed landing pages for them. This becomes extremely easy when you have all the social media content that you created from the start of your branding journey on your website. You can now come up with all types of lead magnet campaigns, using a variety of content for the sake of capturing leads, thereby increasing the value of the content to a large extent.
Backlinking Campaigns
Building backlinks to your website is one of the toughest tasks there is, especially when it comes to gathering links which are of high quality and domain authority. Usually, brands prefer to use basic backlinking strategies such as spreading links on social networking platforms and fostering relationships with the help of conversations with people whom they connect with on these platforms. However, this process is extremely restricted and involves a lot of time consuming steps which are better avoided, such as the extreme uncertainty that comes with dealing with someone you do not know yet, that too as a brand rather than a human being! Even though LinkedIn and similar platforms allow enough opportunities to build backlinks to your website by taking a social approach, the content that you share on social media has much greater potential in terms of link-building if used beyond the walls of social platforms. For instance, by creating intricate email campaigns centered around a particular piece of content you designed for a social media platform, you can garner immense support by directing it to other organizations and brands that you think will understand and appreciate this content offering of yours. Moreover, by using content as a way to get across to brands adds a human as well as a creative element to your campaigns, something that potential leads and partners will definitely love to reciprocate to.
Better Website User Experience
With all of your social media posts available on your website, you can now tailor the structure and the content on your domain in such a way that users are taken through an immersive and extremely diverse experience. For instance, instead of just having layers and layers of web pages with textual content, you can now fuel your users’ imagination with the help of videos and other types of engaging content, making their online experience one that they will find hard to forget. Moreover, by having human-centered content on your website, your website will not merely be a drab digital domain of commercial activity, it will be a place where people can see the lighter side of the business, one which they can connect with on a more personal level. This can allow brands to truly tap into the potential of both sides of their organization, the cold and precise side of service/product information and awareness as well as the warm and welcoming side that is constituted of the social element of the brand and its identity. At the same time, one can learn how to break the borders of both brand identity and product/service awareness by utilizing social media content in both realms interchangeably. Why don’t you try and envision how you would like to use creative vines or memes as interactive and engaging content on your website which is used to inform people about the intricacies of your product or service.
Gain Complete Control Over the Buying Cycle
It is always important to test the waters before you jump into them directly. This is where social media platforms become invaluable assets. With the ability to understand how people react to different types of content, you have the chance to understand both the negatives as well as the positives of the “what”, “why”, “how” and “when” behind your content. However, with the nature of the social media platforms of today being as they are, there is definitely a lot at stake when it comes to learning something through mistakes. Firstly, before you can understand how your content behaves on social media, you need to muster up enough of an audience base that you can use as virtual guinea pigs for content marketing experiments. This can take an unprecedented amount of time, money and uncertainty to build and nurture. Even after this is done, every mistake you make on social media can cost you dearly owing to the prevalence of immense competition on these platforms. On the other hand, you can now use social media content in more ways than one, without even having to restrict yourself to the limitations of social networking sites. With this increased freedom, you can specifically tailor lead magnets and backlinking campaigns out of those pieces of content that got the most response and attention on social media. This makes content marketing a fool-proof practice, owing to the fact that you have the ability to gain specific insights into audiences at different phases of the buying cycle through social media, insights which can then be used for the purpose of developing powerful campaigns.
Content should not be just a write up or a means of distraction for audience. It is important to note that the content should speak to your buyers continuously taking into consideration their behaviour. All the content that you create for the purpose of publishing on social media should be directed towards an outcome. For instance, a call-to-action that directs users towards attending a demo of a product or a webinar on a new set of services just introduced by the brand can be a great way for engaging audiences on social media. Social media content should also be placed at places where buyers are expected to search for the same. Blogs and other types of content published on social platforms should also be designed to ensure increased ease of access for consumers. Maintenance of an interactive social media presence at all times takes a lot of time and effort. Brands have to monitor each social network, be it Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or Twitter and respond to questions and feedback received from the users on each of them, thus requiring a lot of time to be invested in the same.
With a leeway to post whatever they intend to, customers can leave glowing reviews on your product or can even provide angry rants on the same. These comments are visible to all the potential users who might be on the verge of approaching your brand for the purpose of initiating contact and inquiring about some product or service. For individuals as well as for businesses, these comments do not go unnoticed. Hence, instead of merely ensuring that your content on social media is well aligned with the conversational theme of the platform, you also need to make sure that you allow customers to deal with your content in the most amicable manner possible. Have you ever uploaded a video or a blog on social platforms to derive monetization benefits? If the answer is yes, you might have gone through the painful realization that major social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have their own profit-centered objectives in mind, making your content a mere channel for the same. You surely would not have received any reward as social media sites do not render monetization benefits to the creator until now. This leaves the option to upload the video or content on YouTube where a greater chunk of audience will have access to your content and you will be rewarded only after amassing sufficient subscriptions.
In lieu of self-promotion and extensive competition amongst brands, coupled with the immense impetus that social media platforms put on earning increased revenue, the original quality of content is being degraded to a large extent. On one hand, in order to catch up with competitors, brands are striving to beat each other in their own game, thereby adopting marketing and content creation techniques that are similar to each other. On the other hand, due to the need to retain the platform’s own objective authority, platforms like Facebook and Twitter do not merely remove the chance for monetization of content they also degrade the concept of ownership of content to a large extent. In fact, Facebook and similar social networks are in the business of presenting an illusion of ownership to brands and individuals alike, where the content they create is theirs only until the platform decides to do something with it. In this case, the platform chooses who will be able to view the posts that you promote and boost, who will be drawn towards your page on Facebook, and where your content spreads to during a marketing campaign on the platform. This illusion of ownership often drives brands to create new and unexplored types of content and try unconventional techniques to market themselves, most of which are not able to produce the desired impact owing to the inherent competitiveness of the social media market and the conventional marketing and content creation techniques which define the playing field.
