Monthly Archives: June 2016

Content Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing

Content is an integral part of social media marketing (SMM), but it turns out that most of the businesses are still unfamiliar with the term content marketing. Indeed, content marketing heavily involves social media and social media marketers use content to get their messages across. Barring these similarities the two are distinct entities which focus on different needs and goals. Let’s look at the major ways in which they differ:

Focus of Marketing

The main focus of social media marketing is concentrated within the social media platforms. When marketers operate social media campaigns, they operate inside Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.  The content is placed inside these networks.

In contrast, the focus of content marketing is to publish content to the business website and then publicize it through various social media platforms. Social media is used extensively to share the links of content published. The content can be blog posts, infographics, videos etc.

Types of Content

Social media content is created for the specific social platform intended to publish the same. Twitter uses short tweets with 140 characters, Facebook uses media like videos and images along with short texts, Instagram uses images and tiny videos etc. Brands model their behaviour based on the users of the social platforms.

In content marketing the context of website allows longer forms of content. Brands can publish blog posts, release a case study, videos, infographics and ebooks. Brands model their behaviour based on the media publishers.

Objectives

Although the two are different forms of marketing a brand/service both differ in their objectives. Social media is primarily used for brand building, awareness, consumer interaction, feedbacks, promotions and lead generation. Social media is an open house where consumers can start a discussion on the brand and services. Hence, SMM is very important to build customer loyalty.

Content marketing on the other hand focus on demand generation. Quality content brings a prospect to the website. Content marketing focuses to develop on that relationship to convert the leads to purchase. Good content marketing focuses on the entirety of the brand’s site. A company with poor content strategy will struggle to force a positive purchase decision. Brands go online and with such competition purchase decisions are vastly influenced by content.

Online Marketing Scenario

Social media marketing is a relatively old term and is practiced by most of the companies. Content marketing on the other hand is a new practice for many. The importance of content marketing rose after the smart device explosion. A brand with no website (but only with all social media accounts) will find it hard to gain consumer trust. A web domain generates trust in the consumer and strategically formed content strengthens the trust in their mind.

Social media marketing is the first step of the process which involves brand building as it accesses the users directly. As the brand becomes more familiar the natural progression will be to move toward content marketing. Brands can engage deep with their customers through content marketing efforts, and the results are more powerful as it drives consumers to its website as the brand has a greater opportunity to gain leads and move them down the conversion funnel.

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The Impact of Social Media on B2B Marketing

Social media is considered one of the major components of B2B marketing. For some reason most of the B2B companies have lagged behind B2Cs in the adoption and effective use of social media. It remains a surprise to see that a lot of the companies still underestimate this important marketing component. Social media marketing is more than adding Twitter and Facebook buttons to your website, but a planned comprehensive social media marketing strategy can boost your business better than any other marketing technique.

How Can B2Bs Benefit From Social Media?

Social media marketing may not exactly be for converting leads into sales or to demonstrate the ROI per post. Rather, it focuses on how B2Bs can utilise the social media platform to inform the content it creates, and deliver content that is relevant to its market needs, and the latest trends. Also to utilise its own employees to boost its media exposure, and the way it is perceived by the market at a more personal level.

Here are some ways social media presence benefit a B2B brand:

Brand Awareness and Loyalty

Social media is an effective way to get your brand name out in front of people who are your potential target. Companies that are not using social media to popularize their brands are missing out on a valuable opportunity to connect with the mass. Social media strategies for B2Bs are slightly different from that for a B2C. Hence content sharing and interactions should be catered based on the targeted business industry you are serving.

Search Engine Traffic

Search Engine Optimization is the best way you could drive more traffic to your website, but social media sure plays its role. SEO requirements always change and it needs more than regular update of blogs, optimizing title tags and meta-descriptions. Google and other search engines also take into account the social presence of a brand. The rankings are influenced by strong social media presence as most of the top brands use social media. A good brand identity in the social media will give your brand a legitimate and trustworthy face among the target, also bringing good traffic to your website.

Social media help in better conversion of leads. It is mainly because of the humanisation effect. Brands are more humanized by social media interactions, which make other users to interact with the company and share their thoughts, suggestions, complaints and business proposals. Social media also has higher lead-to-close ratio than outbound marketing. A high number of social media followers improve your brand value and trust.

Social media also has other benefits. Social media is a far cost effective marketing method. It also enriches customer experiences and insight. The Power of Social Media is evident from the recent news ‘How Elon Musk’s Tweet Made Panasonic $800 mn. Richer’. A simple tweet from the Tesla CEO has earned share values of Panasonic Corp to rise by 6.4% making it richer by $800 million and a subsequent loss of $580 million to rivals Samsung.

 

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7 Reasons Why You Must Have a Mobile Friendly Website

A mobile website is the basic need of every business. As people are moving the smart way mobiles phones have become the most preferred method for internet access. Following the crowd in this trend, a mobile website is the primary need for every business.

 

Here are the reasons why:

Everyone uses Smartphones

80% of all internet users use a smartphone. Almost 1.2 billion people access web through their smartphones. Smartphones are the major contributors of internet traffic, hence a website optimized for smartphones are necessary.

Single URL, Single HTML Responsive Websites

Responsive mobile website uses the same URL and coding as of the desktop site. Such websites are cost effective and optimizes to the changing devices and screen resolutions. It is more efficient and simpler for Google search spiders to crawl, regulate, index, and organise content.

Easier SEO strategy

As mentioned above, it is unnecessary that you should have a separate mobile website. Keeping the same website makes it easier for easier Search Engine Optimization strategy. Adding mobile specific keywords like ‘nearby’ to the SEO strategy can cover the SEO process for the mobile website along with the main website.

Mobile Users Behave Differently

People behave differently while browsing in mobile phones. Mobile phones users tend to consume more visual content like short videos and images than desktop users. Capturing this traffic needs optimized design techniques. Including minute social share buttons, WhatsApp share options and page optimized for various mobile screens will bring more traffic to the page.

Google Favours Mobile Website

If a particular website is not mobile friendly Google may not consider it as a legitimate search result. According to Google ideology, if your website is useless for mobile users there is no point in listing it in search results and it makes real sense. Google’s goal is to increase search traffic including mobile search traffic.

Users Switch between Devices

Most of the users switch between multiple screens like PC, tablet or mobile phone. This means at some point of the process they may tend to visit your website in a hand held device. A poor mobile page will definitely affect a purchase decision negatively.

Mobile Website is Indispensable for Social Media Marketing Campaigns

People tend to use Social Media portals on their mobile phones rather than a desktop. Lack of a responsive mobile website will terribly affect your social media campaigns as most of the conversions will be from a mobile device. In order to capitalize social media outputs a well designed mobile website is necessary.

If your business lacks a mobile website, it indirectly helps your competitor. A study conducted by Google reveals that around 50% of internet users confided that even if they favour a business enterprise, they’d use the enterprise less often if their website weren’t mobile-friendly. Over 60% of users will move to a competitor’s website if they don’t find what they’re looking for on your mobile website quickly enough. And 80% of users who aren’t impressed by the content on a mobile website will move to another website. These statistics are enough to stress the importance of a mobile optimized website for your business.

 

Hey, thanks for the info. Now what?

If you need any help with content creation, we have tons of free resources to get you over the hump. Please subscribe to this blog to ensure that you never miss an article.

 Follow and like us on Twitter,LinkedIn and Google+ to get regular updates from us.

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