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Content marketing and social media go hand in hand. You need social media for content marketing because it is a great platform to share content, and reach out directly to your audience and find out what they like and do not like.

Content strategy is the first step

Before embarking on marketing on social media, you need to develop a good content strategy. Your content strategy should focus on your industry in general and your offerings in particular. Also remember not to interact with your followers in the same way on each platform. Accordingly, your content strategy must also be platform-dependent. Figure out when to post, and follow the 80-20 rule: 20% of your posts need to be focused directly on your brand and the remaining 80% should provide content sought by your audience and related to your niche.

A few important tips and considerations

Below are a few good tips to help you make better use of social media platforms for content marketing :

  • Understand each platform: Be aware of the limitations of each platform and also what users of different platforms best respond to. For example, on Twitter, including images, videos, links, and hashtags in tweets increases the likelihood of retweets.
  • Maintain exclusivity: While it is important to have presence on more than one social media platforms, it is also important to not share the same content on all of them. Doing otherwise will defeat the very purpose of using multiple platforms – why would people follow you on more than one platform if you’re sharing the same content across all of them? Show your followers that they have more to gain by following you on different platforms. However, when sharing important news, you have to reach to your audience everywhere – so, you can share certain information on all social channels.
  • Strike a content balance: You should remain active on all your social media accounts. But, this requires you to share a lot of posts. Original content alone won’t cut it as it requires a lot of time and effort. Mix and match with curated content. DrumUp can help you identify good social media content for the purpose and stay active on your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages.
  • Share content more than once, but with discretion: Sometimes, it is alright, and may even be useful, to re-share your posts, particularly if they have received a lot of attention. It is however not advisable to do this too often.
  • A/B test: When posting the same content multiple times on a platform, you may want to try posting them with different headlines. This will give you an idea of what your audience responds best to.
  • Encourage employees to participate: All your employees are probably on social, and certainly have more connections combined than your brand pages have. Leverage their shares for an amplified reach and a humanized voice on social. DrumUp’s easy to manage and fun employee advocacy platform can help you do this effortlessly.

Content marketing on social media is more than just about gathering likes or follows. It is about forging lasting relationships with your target audience and instilling loyalty in them towards your brand.


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Note: This post was first published on Mar 30, 2015 and has since been updated with additional information.

Image Credit: Yoel Ben-Avraham via flickr


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