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There’s good reason that 77% of small businesses use social media to connect with consumers — and that larger brands have entire departments devoted to doing the same. It’s because, in the digital era, social media has become one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways to reach new audiences, establish brand authority, nurture authentic consumer connections and, ultimately, drive added revenues.
But, as with most tactics targeting business growth, success rarely happens by accident. To maximize the impacts of your brand’s social efforts, it’s crucial to have a thorough and carefully considered social media content marketing plan in place.
So, in this article, we’ll offer expert guidance on creating, implementing and executing a social media content marketing strategy that brings wins for your brand — whether you’re in need of a DTC social content marketing strategy, an ecommerce social content marketing strategy, or simply a more effective way of leveraging your brand’s social channels for business growth.
What is Social Media Content Marketing — and Why is it Important?
Social media content marketing is the strategic creation and distribution of valuable, relevant and consistent content across a brand’s various social media platforms, all with the goal of engaging, educating and entertaining the target audience. It involves crafting content tailored to each platform’s unique audience and formats, such as videos, images, infographics and written posts.
Social media content marketing can be a powerful tool for brands of all types due to its ability to build brand awareness, foster relationships with customers, drive website traffic and, ultimately, increase sales and revenues. In today’s digital age, where consumers spend a significant amount of time on social media platforms, social media content marketing gives brands the opportunity to reach and connect with their audiences directly, all while humanizing their brand and establishing themselves as industry leaders.
The Broad Benefits of Social Media Content Marketing
For brands that leverage it effectively, social media content marketing offers a wide range of benefits. Just a few of the leading business advantages it can deliver include:
- Brand awareness: Social media content marketing can significantly enhance brand awareness by putting brands in front of their target audience in a place where they spend a considerable amount of their time. This can help brands increase visibility and recognition, reach a broader audience, and establish a stronger brand identity.
- Engagement: Social media content marketing fosters added engagement with the target audience, creating opportunities for meaningful interactions and dialogue between brands and their followers. This engagement can help brands build relationships, trust and loyalty over time, in addition to encouraging the creation of user-generated content (UGC) and driving community growth.
- Traffic: Social media content marketing drives valuable website traffic by strategically guiding users from social media platforms to a brand’s website, where they can learn more about the brand’s products and/or services.
6 Steps to Social Media Content Marketing Success
Looking to amplify the effectiveness of your brand’s social media content marketing efforts? Make sure that your social media content marketing strategy covers the following six essential areas.
1) Setting your goals for social
Ultimately, by delivering compelling content tailored to the needs and preferences of the audience, brands can effectively leverage social media content marketing to move users through the conversion funnel. But to maximize the impacts of your social media content marketing efforts, it’s important for your brand to choose the specific goals you’re trying to achieve with your social media content marketing campaigns, then implement tactics focused on achieving them.
“When you decide on your primary goal, you then will need to step into a strategy for social that will ultimately achieve that goal,” says Taylor Thompson, a Lead Strategist at Joybyte. “Each goal always yields a different strategy on social, but ultimately there are a few key tactics that will be the same.”
Thompson continues: “If your goal is brand awareness, for example, you should begin by focusing on community building through reach and follower growth. Brodo is a great testament to this. Brodo is well-known in the New York City community, but wanted to reach larger audiences, as they offer a Bone Broth Subscription for anyone and everyone. Their marketing strategy consists of content that is focused around the founder, giveaways, social proof through UGC, and most importantly, ambassadors. This strategy works to achieve our client on average 2 million impressions per month on Instagram alone.
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“Giveaways with specific entry rules surrounding our goal allows them to reach more people and gain more followers. Content around their founder, Chef Marco Canora, gives our audiences the ‘why’ behind Brodo, and they trust us even further to make a buying decision. UGC acts as our social proof, as the content itself is showcasing a positive review. Ambassadors reach eyes we never have and lead new faces of our target audience to our profile to follow and join the Brodo community via a product purchase.”
Examples of brands with different content marketing goals on social media:
– Chopra: “Chopra’s goal is conversions. However, their previous strategy was to show off the product in old-fashioned, more sales-y ways,” Thompson says. “Our updated strategy is taking on a new approach, leaning into showcasing a wellness community that the target audience is always welcome to, but driving them to continue diving further into their wellness journey through shopping products. We achieve this through influencers, long-form carousels that tie a product to a feeling or experience, and exclusive promotions only offered in stories. Influencers in this strategy will be the main source of website traffic and conversions, but the organic social strategy of community building allows the audience to trust us and further allows repeat purchases.”
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– SSENCE: “A fashion reseller, this brand uses product pages renders on memes to not only showcase the fashion and tag the brand, but also to increase engagement,” says Joybyte Account Manager Tyler Moore.
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– P.S.: “This is a condom brand that is doing different things on TikTok,” Moore says. “Their primary audience is males, and they made a TikTok all about ‘anti-macho,’ fighting toxic masculinity and showcasing great men-focused content. This has brought the brand massive social awareness, and they rarely promote the product through here. It works because this still increases brand awareness and drives traffic to the site.”
@psgoodtimes We should notice and appreciate good men more. #accountability #psgoodtimes ♬ original sound – P.S.
2) Identifying your target audience
By identifying and understanding your target audience, your brand can better tailor its messaging and content to resonate with the specific needs, preferences and behaviors of this group. And by speaking directly to these consumers, your brand can establish more genuine connections, foster added engagement and ultimately drive more meaningful interactions.
The leading way to achieve this added understanding is by diving into your brand’s social media and website analytics, which can provide valuable insights into the demographics, interests and behaviors of the audience already engaging with your content. Additionally, data-driven research can help you form buyer personas — detailed profiles that represent your ideal customers and shed light on characteristics such as their demographic information, interests, pain points and media consumption habits. Understanding these factors can empower your brand to craft highly targeted content that speaks directly to your audience’s needs and interests, increasing the likelihood of driving engagement and other desired actions.
Further, regularly revisiting and refining your audience personas based on ongoing data analysis helps ensure that your brand stays attuned to evolving consumer preferences and market trends, allowing for continuous optimization of your social media content marketing strategies.
“When selecting your target audience, make sure you listen to what your audience is telling you,” says Thompson. “If you have a more masculine brand by choice, but women are your primary source of conversions when shopping for themselves, you need to embrace the shift. Stanley’s recent success with women — achieved after the brand realized its drinkware, originally marketed toward men, was attractive to a broader demographic — offers a great example of this!”
3) Auditing your current social content
Auditing your brand’s current social media content can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your existing content, helping you identify areas for improvement and helping ensure alignment with your overall marketing objectives.
By conducting a thorough audit, your brand can gain a comprehensive understanding of what content resonates most with its audience, which social platforms are performing best, and where there may be gaps or opportunities for optimization. This process involves reviewing content performance metrics such as engagement rates, reach and conversion metrics, as well as analyzing audience demographics and feedback. Further, auditing your content can enable your brand to assess the consistency of its messaging, brand voice and visual identity across all social media channels.
By identifying the strengths and weaknesses of its current social content, your brand can refine its strategy, better allocate resources and ultimately enhance its social media presence to better connect with your audience and achieve your marketing goals.
4) Analyzing your competitors
Analyzing your competitors’ social media content is another powerful way for your brand to enhance its own social media content marketing strategy. By studying the competition’s content, your brand can gain valuable insights into industry trends, audience preferences and successful engagement strategies. This can also inspire creativity and innovation, sparking new ideas for unique and compelling content that sets your brand apart in the competitive landscape. And further, this analysis can provide a benchmark for evaluating the effectiveness of your own content, spotlighting potential areas for improvement and often revealing untapped opportunities.
One powerful example of the market advantages competitor analysis can bring is seen in the case of Baja Gold Salt Co.
“When we first onboarded Baja Gold as a client, they had almost zero social presence because we were starting from scratch,” says Joybyte Lead Strategist Chelsea Clough. “However, we were in a unique position because a competitor, Celtic Sea Salt, had recently gone viral and sold out of all of their product as a result of a viral TikTok video. Baja Gold wanted to capitalize on the momentum that was happening now that more people were finding interest in mineral sea salt. This heavily influenced their strategy build as well as their personas for the ambassador program.”
5) Tracking and measuring your results
By monitoring key social media metrics such as engagement rates, reach, click-through rates, conversions and audience growth, your brand can gain valuable insights into how its content is resonating with the target audience and whether it’s achieving desired outcomes. Tracking results also enables your brand to recognize developing trends over time, pinpoint successful tactics and identify areas for improvement.
Further, with access to real-time analytics provided by social media platforms and other tracking tools, your brand can make data-driven decisions to refine its content strategy, allocate resources more effectively, and maximize the impact and return on investment (ROI) of its social media efforts. Tracking results also provides a way for your brand to demonstrate the value of its social media marketing initiatives to stakeholders and justify continued investment in this channel.
6) Adjusting and optimizing your strategy
Utilizing the above-mentioned data regarding the effectiveness of your social media content marketing efforts, your brand can identify successful tactics, trends and patterns — allowing you to double down on strategies that work and adjust or eliminate those that underperform. Such data-driven optimization helps ensure that your brand stays agile and adaptable in response to changing audience preferences, platform algorithms and market dynamics. And by leveraging the insights gained from data analysis, your brand can enhance the relevance, effectiveness and impact of its social media content marketing efforts, ultimately driving greater engagement, brand awareness and ROI.
Here at Joybyte, we know the business-boosting benefits that a winning social content marketing strategy can deliver for any brand — and especially for DTC brands. That’s why our expert social strategists take the comprehensive approach outlined above for all of our clients.
Could your brand use the assistance of a team of dedicated social marketing pros to step up its social content marketing efforts? Joybyte is here to help your brand define the goals and objectives of its social content marketing strategy, analyze the competition, plan its content, create mood boards, and deliver an authentic community experience — then optimize your results with our fresh strategy ideas and monthly reporting based on historical data. Talk to us today to learn more about our social content marketing services.