Social media is increasingly becoming a critical tool in the digital marketing arsenal of any business. It’s no longer a secondary element. Instead, social networks are the foundational pillars of today’s marketing plans.
According to the CMO survey, brands now manage social media as a separate activity. The 2021 survey of US marketers indicated that 14.9% of the brands reserve their budget entirely for social media marketing. This figure has proportionally increased since 2015 and continued to spike as of 2020 following the pandemic outbreak.
The pandemic sent a shockwave through the very skeleton of traditional marketing and brick-and-mortar business. Covid-19 reshaped the way businesses operate, as evident from the changes in the business model.
The constant shifts in market dynamics require brands to do more than just post on Facebook or use hashtags on Twitter and Instagram. There’s an underlying need to integrate social media into content marketing.
And why? Here’s a detailed answer to that million-dollar question.
Let’s Address TheWhats First: Content Marketing
Before you divulge into social media and content marketing integration, understand content marketing to cover your bases. Content marketing, put simply, is part of a digital marketing tactic that attracts, retains, engages, and connects with the audience using “content.”
You may use podcasts, articles, videos, blogs, infographics, images, and other forms of media. The purpose is to promote your brand awareness, keep your business on top of search engines and customers’ minds and build credibility among your target audience.
Social Media Content
How does social media come into the picture?
Your content marketing involves whatever you publish and post on different platforms. This includes your social media profiles as well! Whether it is a Facebook discussion group, a Q&A session on Twitter, a live session on Instagram, or a poll on these websites, all of this is part of content marketing.
While your content may differ in forms based on each platform, the gist needs to be the same. This means it needs to be consistent and in line with what your brand promotes.
Why’s Social Media Integration Important?
Marketers spend hours slouched on their seats trying to search, design, write and publish their content. But do they get the desired result? Not always! It’s because most brands lack the basic understanding that social media and content marketing go hand-in-hand. Here’s why your brand’s social media strategy needs to integrate with content marketing:
1. A Unified Message
Integration is part of a marketing concept called “integrated marketing communications (IMC).” Marketing is essentially your brand communicating on your behalf with the target market segment.
An integrated marketing communications strategy reflects that your marketing plan is well-aligned across each channel, traditional print media or digital media. So when you integrate your social media with content marketing, you’re aligning both elements for a unified message.
Put yourself in a customer’s shoes and picture this: you follow a brand on different platforms. You realize their social media posts are saying something else while their website boasts about entirely a different idea. How’d you feel? That doesn’t inspire confidence.
Social media integration into your content marketing allows you to send a unified message regardless of the platform.
2. A Consistent Message
Of course, once you set a unified message, you’re eventually on a path to consistency. Consistency is important in branding because it assures the audience that they can trust this brand. Remember your core values and overarching objectives and align them with your social media and content marketing.
Brand consistency will ensure that your audience can recognize your brand across each touchpoint and marketing. Whether they follow you on Instagram, have your newsletter signed up, or frequently visit your website, the message needs to be cohesive and consistent with the brand identity you promote.
3. All Channels Are Merging
Social media channels are changing, which has paved the way for unified communications and integration. You don’t have to treat these channels separately because the social media landscape is constantly changing.
As more social networks emerge in the digital world, the possibilities for marketers are also rising. Users can connect their social media profiles, and so can brands. This coordination demands effective integration of content marketing and social media to reach more customers and find qualified leads.
Because channels are changing, marketers need to up their game too! Expect to merge your content marketing and social media channels to ensure a strong footing for your brand in the digital world.
4. Tools Are Also Merging
While the trends for communication channels are already on the rise, surprisingly, social media tools are also being integrated. Take, for example, your login activity. How often do you log in to a SaaS product using Facebook or Google rather than creating new credentials?
More tools are flooding the internet, which means better opportunities to connect your digital marketing strategies. You can create a seamless social media and content marketing strategy using these tools to reach the audience easily.
5. More Ease Online
Since social media integration extends your marketing plan, the more integrated your accounts are, the better your marketing tactics get. For instance, by connecting your social media marketing with content marketing, you can direct your social networking audience to your website and vice versa.
This allows your audience to access your content easily. Consider the social media buttons on web pages and blog posts. It’s a perfect example of integration because you can quickly share links to interesting content instead of going through the hassle of copy-pasting links.
6. Brand Reach
Finally, social media integration will help your brand achieve its key goals. Say you want to reach more audience in other markets, or your marketer suggests increasing brand awareness. You can realize these goals.
The more integrated your social media strategy is, the higher user engagement is on your website. You give your audience more options to interact with you, and social media is the preferred mode of communication for the audience anyway.
How To Integrate Social Media For Successful Results?
Now that you know social media integration is important, what your brand needs next are some integration strategies to get you going. Follow these tips if you want your web content and social media to work seamlessly and promote brand awareness for more traffic.
1. Drive Your Social Media Against Your Goals
The first thing to do is align your social media tactics with your marketing goals. If your actions aren’t integrated with a clear audience objective in mind, integration is less likely. This means you need to identify your target market objective when deploying social media actions.
2. Add Social Network Links to Content Pieces
If you want higher visibility, you need to be more proactive. Use social share buttons for your content, including blog posts, articles, audio-visuals, and website. Add them at the top or bottom of your posts.
These sharing buttons increase the audience’s awareness regarding your content while giving them a chance to share your content seamlessly. It’s also part of enhancing user experience, so they promote positive word of mouth of your brand. The more they share your content to their socials, the better chances you have at gaining more traction.
Bonus Tip: Don’t add every social platform your brand is on. Focus on a few relevant ones to your brand. Don’t spam your web content with social share buttons, either. Instead, focus on a few sharable pieces like videos or blog posts.
3. Add Your Posts To the Website
Another great way to integrate social media into your content marketing while sprucing up your website is by adding your social media posts. Brands like Ferrari use their Instagram plug-in on their website while effectively calling for action. Alternatively, you can also use branded hashtags to display posts from your fans and followers.
4. Offer Social Login Option
Part of an effective marketing tactic is to make user’s life easier and enhance their experience. Consider multiple login options and how they can save time. Add a social login option to your website to log in using their social accounts.
This is a great tactic to integrate your social media with content marketing. It’s also the preferable way for many, over 73% of users, according to a survey. It makes sense because users don’t have to go through the hassle of creating a new profile, choosing a password that they eventually will forget and confirming it via email. Social login is a few clicks away and TADA! You’re in.
5. Add Your Profile Link To Email Footer
You can integrate your social media with content marketing strategy by adding your social network profiles to the footer. Emails are a perfect tool to add sharable links, and they can go at the bottom or top of your email.
6. Send Social Community Reminder
One way to integrate social media with your email marketing is to display your social media accounts. For example, the best way to send email for a clothing retailer is to showcase your Instagram photos or Facebook posts to invite more subscribers to your social networks. You can incentivize this tactic with some benefits.
The Major Benefits of Integrated Social Media Marketing
Once you integrate your social media tactics with your content marketing strategy, you’ll see these visible fruitful benefits in your marketing:
1. Qualified Lead Conversion
The purpose of any content marketing and social media tactic is to generate qualified leads for successful conversion. A seamless social media strategy will do more than when you treat it separately.
Every ad, blog post, social media post, or email ad is an opportunity for you to convert prospects into customers. You can reap benefits like gaining more leads, moving people successfully through the sales funnel, and achieving your marketing goals regardless of the nature of your business.
2. Business Humanization
Nobody likes faceless corporations or talking to the screen. Social media has done more to humanize businesses. Customers care about who they’re buying their products from. You can build meaningful connections. Instead of simply promoting your brand on different platforms, integration allows you to build a rapport with your audience.
3. Social Listening
Part of social media integration is to gain customer insight. Social media allows you to social-listen to your audience. It gives you real-time and valuable insight into their interests. Read comments, start/join discussions and check out reviews to see what they think. This is a great way to engage with customers on social media and take measures to improve your overall branding and content marketing tactics.
4. Inbound Traffic
Without social media integration, your only leads are people familiar with your business. By integrating social media content frequency, you expand your online presence and potential customer base. You’ll eventually receive more traffic resulting in more successful conversions.
5. Customer Loyalty
You can’t omit social media from your content marketing tactics anymore. Since everyone is on social media platforms, it’s only plausible to align your social networks. This way, you also increase customer loyalty.
Brands that have higher social media engagement have a more loyal customer base. 50% of the brands that have integrated social media networks have a more loyal customer base than other brands.
Use Autowriter’sAutomated Social Media Post Generator Tool
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With these tools, you can schedule your posts, optimize content and reach more customers. Autowriterpro assures successful lead conversion and offers over 50+ loyalty free and paid copywriting and content marketing tools.
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