Are You Aligning Your Content and Social Media Strategies?

Coming up with blog topics, social media posts and campaigns are usually planned separately, but why? Content and social media are the bread and butter of marketing. If one quarter of the world’s population uses social media, you should be attempting to reach as many of them as possible. Aligning your content strategy and social media efforts can improve your content’s visibility, which will improve your overall reach. Below I have included some ways you can align both of your strategies.

 

Sharing Your Content

Getting your content out there is the first step. You are most likely writing on a weekly basis, which is great to drum up organic traffic, but how are you reaching those people that haven’t read your content before? Users may discover your blog when searching for certain keywords, but that is very unlikely.

That’s where coordinated social media campaigns help. Social media gives your content a chance to be heard. Not only will more people be able to find you and your content through social media channels, but also those who enjoy your content will become loyal readers and start sharing your content more regularly.

 

Tweet This: Make each article easy to share by adding click to tweet buttons, sharing options & using an easy scheduler.

 

Repurpose Your Content

Posting an article shouldn’t happen just once. In fact, at Red Branch we use Edgar to help us continue to share our stuff. While some posts may be only shared once, the rest remain valuable weeks or even months later.

There’s no reason your blog posts can’t be shared multiple times throughout this period. Share your message multiple times in multiple ways. We like to change the blog titles, find statistics, quotes, @ mention someone quoted in the article and we change up the hashtags to reach a different audience. One tweet or post may get very little engagement, but the next could hold more value.

Tweet This: Post around 1pm to gain the most shares and 3pm for more clicks.

Target the Correct Audience

Post and pray shouldn’t be your strategy in recruiting nor should it be for your marketing efforts. Facebook has long since screwed marketers by forcing everyone to pay for engagement, so you need to extend your reach or even back it with a sponsored post. Socialbakers found that video posts had organic reach of 8.71%, meaning an average of nearly nine fans out of 100 see such posts.

Promoted posts are worth it when done right. Make sure you are targeting your core audience so you aren’t throwing money away.

 

Tweet This: Study whether you are receiving ROI with social outlets by generating objectives and tracking conversations.

 

Create an Editorial Calendar

Content calendars are our mainstay at Red Branch Media. Marketo has some great examples on how you can create your own here. By creating a content calendar you will keep your topics and posts organized and coordinate all of your efforts so you can make a lot of noise.

When you start to plan out your calendar, be sure to add important holidays, company dates, birthdays, etc. This will help you plan ahead and not slam your graphic design team when you are prepping Thanksgiving Day posts.

 

Tweet This: Pay attention to the media outlets in your industry and add their calendars as overlays to your own. #contentninja

 

Use Social to Come Up With Ideas

Not only should you use social media to promote your content, you should use it to come up with new ideas too. “You aren’t the only one trying to go viral on the internet.” See what topics are trending and what your audience members are talking about. You can even ask your audience questions about your services or products. The feedback you get may provide you with additional insight to determine the next steps in your strategy.

 

Measure Your Efforts

You should ALWAYS track your efforts. Not only should your web dev team have you hooked into Google Analytics, but you should also check your social media analytics. If you don’t have a social media platform like Hootsuite or SproutSocial, then you can look at them individually.

After you discover what resonated with your audience start to plan your future posts to follow a similar pattern as the ones that were successful before. Don’t forget to take varying posting times, hashtags, and keywords into account in addition to subject matter when examining results.

 

Tweet This: You can’t improve what you don’t measure and this goes double for social. Report monthly at least, weekly at best!

Social media gives you the ability to share your message with your fans and also helps you measure your results. Use all of these tools to your advantage, and constantly adjust your strategy to be the most successful in your efforts.