Social media is a powerful tool that is utilised by many business owners for sharing content and boosting their visibility.
With so many different social media platforms available these days, it has never been easier to sign up for a free account and make the most of the unlimited audience that you have access to- something that is known today as social media content marketing.
There are lots of ways that social media has transformed content marketing, and many ways that it benefits businesses- but what exactly are these?
And what are some predictions for how social media will continue to impact content marketing in the future?
We are going to discuss these in this article, so read on to find out more.
What Is Social Media?
When people talk about social media, they are talking about any online platform or website where people can share content and interact with each other. This content can be in text, image, or video format and allows for connections between people and businesses too.
Nowadays, there are tons of social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), TikTok and Pinterest that all allow people to create free profiles, share content and connect with each other.
From what started out as a place to literally be ‘social’, it is now also a place for businesses to thrive, and that is not likely to change anytime soon.
Content Marketing Before Social Media
Before the days of social media, content was shared in a much different, far less demanding way than it is now.
Think print media, newsletters, brochures, magazine articles, that type of thing.
These items did exactly what content on social media does today- showcases a brand and what product or service they have to offer, and this intention remains the same, today it just operates through different mediums.
With the emergence of websites and blog pages and Google in the early 2000’s, content began to digitalise, with these platforms being a virtual home for sharing engaging content and business information. This was the first taste of getting content out to bigger, wider and even global audiences, a revolution if you like, and it wasn’t to stop there.
Enter: Social Media Content Marketing
With the emergence of early social media platforms like Facebook, companies had the chance to build a following, share content and encourage engagement and loyalty from the audiences that they were reaching.
Search engine optimisation and the need for having careful content strategy to ‘play the game’ successfully was pushed into the limelight more, and followed by the introduction of other social media platforms that we know and use today, content was slowly transforming to be created specifically for social media platforms, to meet the demands of these wider audience and higher engagement opportunities.
How Social Media Content Marketing Changed Businesses
From a businesses perspective, social media can be used tactfully as a marketing strategy, mostly because it puts users in front of a large audience that are looking to engage with content, share it, and do what it tells them- i.e buy their product or use their service.
And the best part- this can all be done for free! This is different to the days where print content was circulated in smaller circles and with a much smaller audience and chance for engagement.
There are lots of benefits that social media content marketing brings for businesses, and we are going to have a look at some of these further now.
Engagement
One thing that social media offers is a platform for some serious engagement. In real-time you are able to engage with your audience, answer questions, generate leads, ask for feedback, and build a strong relationship, all things that reflect positively on your business.
Also, social media is a passive way for users to consume content, meaning that the need to create engaging content is higher, as it is finding its way to people rather than the other way around.
When you create content you create engagement, and social media is a powerful platform to share it on.
Insights
You can use social media content marketing to see insights into your target audience, what kind of content they are engaging the best with and everything like that in a really simple way.
This is an extremely beneficial thing for any business owner, as it provides the opportunity to shape content and business offers in a way that is appealing to their audience, something that will benefit the business in the long term as more people engage and like their content.
Lots of people use their methods of communication with their audience on social media to ask questions, run polls and find out important information that they can put to good use.
Influencer Marketing
Social media has another perk when it comes to content marketing, and that is that it gives the opportunity for influencer marketing. Everyone has heard of influencers these days- they are people who have a large following on social media and, if you partner with them, they can promote your products or services to those followers.
This is another way to access the huge visibility that social media has, and if your content is engaging, you may see a lot more engagement with that too.
Wide Audience
A huge perk of using social media for content marketing is, as we have touched on already, that you have access to an unbelievably huge audience of people.
Read also: Consumer Culture Theory
Because social media is online too, there is no geographical barrier to who is viewing your content, adding to the variety of traffic and audience you will receive.
Cost-Effective
Content sharing using social media is highly cost-effective, especially compared to other types of advertising.
Given the wide audiences that you can reach with your content on social media, the fact that it is so cheap to do makes it an incredible tool for content marketing, and one that has helped transform marketing over the years as businesses big and small have access to the same platform and growth opportunity.
What Does the Future Look Like for Social Media Content Marketing?
New Social Media Platforms
Over the course of the last twenty years or so, we have already seen a huge increase in the number of social media platforms available to us, and this will continue to be the same in years to come too.
From what started out as sites like My Space and Facebook slowly developed to birth Instagram, Tik Tok and LinkedIn, and as consumer behaviour changes, businesses must be willing to adapt to new platforms in order to keep reaching their target audience and keep them engaged with their content.
This is crucial to the continued content growth of a business, and to keep them relevant too.
Influencer Marketing Will Continue to Rise
Influencer marketing is very popular at the moment, but this popularity is predicted to keep rising as time goes on.
Businesses can utilise influencers- people who have big followings on social media, to share their brand and advertise their products or services, and the demand for this will rise as these collaborations create targeted and audience-focused content.
Video Content Will Continue to Rise
Social media content marketing offers video content as a way to engage audiences and showcase content in a different way.
There are lots of benefits and proven reasons why video content is important to post alongside written content, and these benefits will only drive the popularity of video marketing in the future.
This also ties in with keeping up to date with newer platforms and using video content in the best ways for these, to engage audiences and keep interaction levels high.
Chatbots and AI
We already know about the rise in AI and Chatbots, not just within content marketing and social media but in all aspects of life.
This technology will continue to improve as time goes on, and become more intertwined in social media- such as by being used to answer questions, and to enhance content.
This will bring more changes as to how social media content marketing works, and what businesses will have to do with their content on social media in the future to compete with the rise in technology.
Conclusion
The introduction and growth of social media over the last couple of decades has played a massive role in changing the landscape of content marketing, and how businesses use it to produce content that promotes their offers, services and/or products, communicates directly with their target audiences, engages them and encourages interaction.
Social media provides businesses with a pretty much unlimited audience to speak to, free of charge, offering them a huge amount of visibility for their content, and this will only continue to grow in years to come.
Social media content marketing, and content marketing itself, have come such long ways over the years, and will continue to do so in the future too, posing new challenges for businesses to overcome to keep in touch with how social media develops and offers a home for their content.
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