Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing Through Blogging

In the worlds of business and marketing, blogs can be an extremely valuable tool for both direct and indirect promotion.  However, it’s not as simple as saying blogs are a form of online marketing, because they can be part of a traditional online marketing plan (including banner ads, video ads, and so on) or part of a social media marketing strategy or content marketing strategy.

But what is the difference between social media marketing and content marketing?  The truth is they overlap a lot, so the concepts can become even more confusing and overwhelming.  In order to understand how these two forms of online marketing compare and contrast, check out the explanations below.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is defined as any form of direct or indirect marketing that promotes a business through the conversations and sharing which occur on the social web.  For example, Twitter updates, Facebook posts, forum posts, and comments published on blogs, videos, images, and so on are all social media marketing tactics.  Even the one-click sharing of links that happens across the social web is a form of social media marketing.

The primary objective of social media marketing is not only to start conversations and encourage sharing right now but also to keep those conversations and sharing related to your business going in order to indirectly promote your business well into the future.

Social media marketing also helps you directly market your business.  For example, you can post a discount code for purchases on your Twitter profile or announce a new product on your Facebook page.  Direct marketing tactics are used to motivate consumers to perform an action in the short-term as opposed to the long-term marketing objectives tied to ongoing conversations and sharing.

Social media marketing helps small business owners build brand awareness, create more entry points to their content and branded destinations across the web thanks to the power of the compounding effect of blogging and social media participation, and develop relationships with potential customers and online influencers around the world.

Content Marketing

Content marketing works both online and offline and includes any form of content created and shared for the purpose of directly or indirectly promoting a business.  The popularity of content marketing has grown significantly thanks to the widespread accessibility of online social media tools that enable anyone to publish amazing, shareworthy content.

For example, blog posts, online videos, press releases, articles, ebooks, and so on are all forms of content marketing that help to establish your expertise and add value to your target audience’s lives.  In fact, content published for the purpose of indirect marketing might not even be related to a business but does help people, which means it can indirectly build a brand simply because that content aids in building consumer trust.  Furthermore, it might get shared and discussed!  That’s where the power of content marketing comes from — adding value through the publishing and sharing of meaningful, useful content.

The best content marketing plans incorporate a variety of online and offline tactics that lead directly to social media marketing through sharing and conversations.  Bottom-line, content marketing allows small businesses to establish credibility, trust and loyalty because it helps people or interests them.

Therefore, content marketing and social media marketing should not operate in separate silos.  To be truly successful in promoting your blog, business, or brand via the social web, you need to integrate your content marketing and social media marketing activities.   Simply publishing a great blog post and forgetting about it won’t help you.  Instead, you need to publish that amazing content and let the world know about it, consume it, and hopefully, talk about it and share it with their own audiences using the tools of social media so you to reach your goals.

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12 thoughts on “Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing Through Blogging

  1. Then i would think that social media marketing is a place to attract customer and content marketing is a place to build trust. But which able to bring higher conversion rate?
    Do have some SEO expert take that social media marketing as one of SEO as well. So i think SEO now do take part in content and social media.

  2. At the event we had a packed house of tremendously smart professionals. And, as I promised attendees, I’m sharing the presentation through my blog. This will also be posted on Rutgers’ blog soon… as well as a video of the presentation, so stay tuned!

  3. “You need to integrate your content marketing and social media marketing activities”

    I couldn’t agree more, this is really a great way to expound what you really want to say or even promoting your business. There are many books that you can find online on giving you tips for Social Media Marketing but the true success to it is giving an amazing content that everyone can relate to.

    Great post!

    Cheers!
    Shane

  4. I prefer content marketing than social media marketing. In traditional social media marketing via Digg, Mixx, Twitter etc can bring traffic to your business site only for a time. It cannot offer a long term traffic. If we check content marketing, it can bring long term term traffic via search engine if your content is Good.

  5. Hi,
    I prefer Social Media Markting I love the interaction with people. Twitter is a powerful tool for your business. It has 620 million users and should not be overlooked as a way of generating marketing leads for your company. The problem is how to get noticed in all the noise these days and there is a lot being said in that noise. To find out how to cut through the noise in your social media marketing visit the link for the best way to get more traffic.

  6. ‘”The popularity of content marketing has grown significantly thanks to the widespread accessibility of online social media tools that enable anyone to publish amazing, shareworthy content.”

    Couldn’t agree with you more. Everyone is a published now, and some companies still aren’t realizing that.

  7. Social Media Marketing has let the little guys compete with the big guns. The so called GURU’s are running scared as if they bring out another big launch that just annoys everybody it will spread like wild fire.

    The same goes for a new marketer that is out to give value and some good advice can make it into the big time very very quickly.

    Craig

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