Social media can be our best friend when planning a marketing campaign due to the wide reach and the large platform that it provides for us. Alternatively, working with some social media networks can prove to be a little tricky, and figuring out the best way to use social media for content marketing gets confusing as we lose sight of what we’re trying to do and the power we’re creating with the content we make.
How can we make sure that the social media networks we’re using are the best to accomplish our goals? Is there more than one way to effectively market the content we’re creating? How do we find the best audience to receive this content?
Luckily, Michael Greenberg has an answer for these burning questions. The founder of Call for Content—a company in which he does content and authority marketing, primarily for independent consultants and executive coaches—Michael has great tips and tricks on how to harness two of the biggest social media platforms, LinkedIn and Facebook, to grow your audience and to make sure your content is genuine and authentic.
By getting the targeted audience to interact consistently, Michael has found a way to collaborate with them, giving the power of social media for content marketing a brand new name.
Social Media for Content Marketing and The CLICK Technique: “C” For “Cultivate”
Before we get into the details of how you can harness social media for content marketing, we can’t forget to talk about The CLICK Technique! A five-day crash course of my own design, The CLICK Technique is a step-by-step process for business owners to follow when they feel like their website is sitting dead in the water.
In order to generate those traffic and leads that you’re looking for, simply follow the guide and see amazing results! Since each letter of the word “CLICK” stands for a different step you should be following, the process is easy to understand, and the results certainly speak for themselves.
This week, we’ll be focusing on the second “C” in “CLICK”, which refers to cultivate. After you’ve established your website and brought people to your business, you need to work with them to maintain that important relationship. Through constant communication and outreach, you can ensure that you’re utilizing the power of social media for content marketing correctly, efficiently, and to the best of your abilities. By speaking with these people regularly, you’re working to cultivate a future prospect and, hopefully, a business deal.
Using social media for content marketing works the same way! Since these specific tips and tricks rely heavily on the level of engagement you have with the audience you generate, being able to reach out and cultivate that audience makes the content you create even better.
Additionally, because the audience you’ve cultivated has a say in what you’re writing about, you know that they’re going to read and appreciate the content you’ve collected, making the power of your words and social media well worth the cost.
Social Media for Content Marketing: The 2 Ways To Find Success
Now that we know what to focus on, we can discuss the ways to use the power of social media for content marketing. Overall, we have to remember that when dealing with this kind of audience targeting, the way we present the content we create will be different than other marketing campaigns, and that’s okay! Focusing on content that lays at the middle and bottom of the funnel is what you’re aiming to do, and because of this, you’re not trying to build a massive audience.
Ultimately, you just need to make sure that you stand out among people in your field who do the same things that you do. That starts with making sure you don’t overbuild your audience. 1,000 – 2,000 people on an email list is more than enough if you’ve built this list of people from a well-targeted campaign. And if you have to start from scratch? No problem! You can build a list of people as little as 50 – 200. So long as it’s the right 200 people, quantity doesn’t matter more than quality.
And that’s important because the benefit of having an audience that small means that they relate to each other more intimately. Because of that, you can reach out and create content with your audience. By working with them and creating content that’s based on their own problems and conversations, they’ll see and share the content instantly due to how aligned their networks are. Already you’re saturating this highly targeted and high-value audience with your presence and your brand, and that’s what using social media for content marketing is all about.
Specifically, there are two huge social media platforms in which these sort of approaches really work: LinkedIn and Facebook. Below, I’ll get into specifics on what you can do to make sure you’re using the power of social media for content marketing in the most effective ways possible.
Number 1: Finding an Audience on LinkedIn
The best way to reach out and find an audience that will want to work and collaborate with you is by delving into the demographic on LinkedIn. In order to find the best of the best, it helps to talk to your client’s best customers, ensuring that you know what they’re looking for in future prospects, and what clients enjoy about working with them.
Then, by using the “blending stick” technique, you can take these qualities and smudge them a little to find ideal customers that fit the profile you’ve created based on these interviews and questions. Overall, you want something between the 2,000 – 3,000 mark.
Once you’ve got your group of ideal customers, you want to take a hard look at those people and find the best 100 – 200 that are hidden in there. Those people are the ideal audience for your client, and those people are going to receive emails that invite them to create content with the team.
This can be through podcasting, case studies, opinion pieces, topics in the industry—so long as the content matches what you’re based in, the people who contribute to the creation of it will flock to it immediately, and share it both within that intimate community you created and outside of it to their peers.
If you can, you want to try and turn the content created into a media source for your targeted industry which then reaches out to other platforms and makes your presence a little louder. Talk about using social media for content marketing!
Number 2: Using Facebook to Create an Audience
If you’re looking to sell to business owners, then Facebook is the social media platform for you. By contacting people through a matched audience or even a direct email, you’ll find that generating a valuable audience is a lot easier than people might make it out to be.
By giving these people the same chance that you give the targeted audience you’ve cultivated on LinkedIn—a chance to collaborate on content—you’re going to see a higher than most response rate (30 – 40%!). After all, people aren’t generally offended if you reach out to them and ask them their thoughts and opinions about their industry.
With this method, you can create something of a “lukewarm” audience: a warmer target for cold outreach that you can rely on in order to generate and share the content you create. Though the kind of content you can release on Facebook might be slightly limited, the amount of people you can reach is seemingly endless, and using the most powerful social media network in your quest to utilize social media for content marketing is never the wrong idea.
Social Media for Content Marketing: Collaborating for Success
Content curation is extremely important when trying to reach out to a new audience, and sometimes the actual creation of that content can seem like a task too daunting to tackle. However, so long as you remember these tips, I know you can find success with the audience you’re building, especially if you let them direct which way your content goes.
By ensuring that they’re already interested in these specific topics, you’re making content that’s catered directly towards their needs, and by letting them in on the process, you’re cultivating an amazing relationship between yourself and a future prospect.
Just remember: follow these two tips when using social media for content marketing: 1) make the content educational, and 2) base the content in real information. By drowning the content in facts and education, you’re teaching the people who read your content and giving them what the expert involved believes to be true. The content you’re providing them with is content they’ll find valuable, and honestly, bettering a few people is all you can truly hope for.
