This is a guest post by Tess Pajaron.
It leaves no room for doubt that social media can play a vital role in every content marketing strategy. Social networks attract different audiences and allow marketers to share their content, promoting it to achieve specific goals. It takes experience to fully realize the potential of social media for content marketing. Here are 5 tips to help you make the most of your content through social networks.
1. Share your content more than once
If you think you risk your audience getting bored with what you've got to offer, think twice. Sharing the same content more than once isn't dangerous at all – it will maximize its visibility and drive more traffic. Remember, to your new followers, a piece posted 3 months ago will seem new.Another thing to consider is the fact that your audience might be spread across different time zones – posting several times, you'll make sure that your content reaches people in all geographical locations and with different social media habits.
Here's how a social media editorial calendar worked on Twitter alone to get 3,150% more traffic.
Graphic courtesy of coschedule.2. Measure reactions to your content
Add a special hashtag to every post – it will later allow you to listen and see how people talk about your brand and content. Thanks to this hashtag, you'll be able to track these conversations and learn what to change in order for your content to be more thought provoking and shareable.3. Target specific audience
In the world of content marketing, this holds true – the more specific you get, the more consistent your brand will appear. Targeting a defined audience will save you a lot of trouble – you'll be addressing people who are really interested in what you have to say.One way to do this is to share your content to niche social networks. They might not boast audiences like the social media giants, but they're already engaged in your topic – you won't need to segment them and find a way to promote your content so it reaches the right people.
Take a look at this infographic from Sprinklr and learn how you can reach your target audience on social media.
Click image to enlarge.
4. Optimize your messages for different types of social networks
It's important to be aware that every social network has unique qualities and attracts slightly different kinds of audiences. By ignoring the specific character of social networks, you'll only make sure that your content won't get liked and shared by users.Optimizing your messages, you'll drastically improve your chances at actually making your content resonate with your audience. Bear in mind that Twitter favors short and powerful messages complemented with images, and on Google+ you'll better aim for engagement than simply posting your content – at least according to Hootsuite.
When it comes to Facebook, you should test what works for your audience. Some claim that photos are essential for a post's success and others point out that asking for shares or likes is actually counterproductive. Find out what works for each social network and cater to the preferences of your audience.
5. Social networks A/B testing
Posting your content multiple times is not only great for exposure – it also allows you to test which headlines are most attractive and work best for your audience. Create two headlines for tweeting your content, tweet them at roughly the same time (one hour apart works fine) and later compare the data collected on each tweet.Some basic social analytics will help you to find out which headlines work better – doing this simple comparison, you'll instantly see which posts got more attention (clicks, favorites, likes) and hold more potential.
When it comes to content marketing, social media is indispensable – it not only helps marketers to better understand their target audience, but also provides a whole wealth of analytics tools to measure the response to content, suggesting possible improvements in making it resonate more with the audience.
About author:
Tess Pajaron is a Community Manager at Open Colleges, an online learning provider based in Sydney, Australia. She has a background in Business Administration and Management.
