As a business owner, your primary concern is getting your company noticed and earning sales. Social media and content marketing are great ways to enhance your current process. Looking to be a thought leader in your industry? Follow the following steps to get started.
Create a Content Strategy
Generate Leads From Social Media
Integrate Content on Social Frequently
If you’re looking to enhance your current marketing strategies, consider content sharing on social. Developing a plan and executing a strategy is crucial to success.
Discover the specifics on content marketing and social media planning.
Read the edocr blog for more information!
About edocr
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As a business owner, generating leads is crucial for development.
Generating more interest for your business all starts with giving
your potential customer answers. Social media is a great place
to start.
You may be wondering why social media is so important.
Well, there is an unlimited number of potential customers
right under your fingertips. But how do you market to
them?
The answer? Content. Give your target audience a solution for
their problem. What better way to tell them about it than on
their favorite social network?
Let’s take a quick deep-dive into some specifics on content
marketing and social media.
1) Create a Content Strategy
So you want to get more leads? Who doesn’t! The first step is
creating a content strategy that guides traffic to your site. What
exactly is traffic? Great question.
Traffic is defined as the audience that comes to your website that
has potential to be a new customer. In layman's terms, the people
that are interested in your business. Now that you know what it
is, how do you earn more traffic?
The Buyer Persona
The first step to driving traffic to your website is figuring out who
your customers really are and what they really want. This starts
with creating a buyer persona. These personas require a bit of
research on your part. You’ll need to know the basic details about
your target audience like education, hobbies, where they live,
what their interests are, etc. A great way to collect this
information is through surveys or contacting previous customers.
Providing incentives, like freebies and giveaways, can help your
recruiting efforts.
SEO Keywords
Once you get to know your target audience, the next step is
figuring out what they care about most. What is your audience
searching for online? Once you know the answer to this
question, you can create content to match their needs and
voila—you have traffic!
If you’re asking yourself, “But what is a keyword, and how does it
work?” HubSpot offers a great explanation, and even has some
free classes on inbound marketing that may help you master
your marketing prowess.
In short, they suggest, “Based on your knowledge of the niche,
choose five topics, or longtail keywords, that your target
audience searches for most.” Make your topics narrow. For
example, a broad keyword like “food” would not work. Instead,
define your niche and use a keyword like “cajun food.”
Develop this further with longer keywords like “cajun food on the
bayou” or “cajun and creole in Tampa.” Place these keywords into
your content. For example, use them in the title of your blog
post, in the first sentence of the introductory paragraph, in the
meta description that describes the page, etc. Be careful to
integrate them into the content naturally to avoid the search
engines tagging you for what they like to call keyword stuffing.
Targeted Content
So now that you know your buyer persona and what they
search for, it’s time to address how they prefer to get their
information. Are they on social media, email, or flipping through
printed material? Do they read white papers, case studies, or
blog posts? This is very important when deciding what type of
content to publish and where to publish it.
2) Generate Leads From Social Media
The world of social is growing every day. New applications like
Medium and Snapchat are coming out with new ways to market
to younger audiences, while the primary social sites like
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube are still driving social
strategies with mature personas.
As we discussed earlier, coming up with a content strategy that
works for your company is essential in discovering new leads.
However, social media is a great tool that can span a variety of
targets on different channels. Depending on where your target
resides online, one of these channels is bound to get traction with
your audience.
The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) puts it best, “We, as
marketers, push out content that we hope people are going to
consume; and usually we hope they somehow get to our website
and become a lead.” However, you need to strategize the content
around what the consumer is truly looking to find. The number
one new rule of marketing remains: It’s not about your company,
it’s all about your consumer.
Selecting Social Media Platforms & Strategizing Your Posts
According to Content Marketing Institute in their recent guide,
“How to Navigate the Wilds of Social Media,” the following social
media sites are effective for different audiences. Take a look at
each description and see which one fits your target best.
Facebook is the premier platform for connecting with your target
audience around things that interest them most. Usually best
suited for an adult audience, targeted content marketing on this
platform can influence a larger group of people when you boost
your reach. Facebook is primarily successful in the B2C space,
according to CMI. In their research, CMI claims that 94% of
companies use Facebook for B2C and 66% of those people feel
it’s effective. Whereas, the 84% of companies who use Facebook
for B2B are not so certain. Only 30% of those companies felt
Facebook was effective.
Twitter is primarily used as a business tool for marketers but
also remains a social site for younger audiences. Whether your
target is B2B or B2C, this platform is generally the most popular
tool amongst businesses today. According to CMI, 87% of
companies use Twitter for B2B and of those people 55%
consider it effective. Similarly, 82% use it for B2C, while 50% of
those deem it as effective.
LinkedIn offers a publishing tool called Pulse that allows your
company to publish content and develop thought leadership
articles in your industry. The key here is to encourage employees
to share your content on personal LinkedIn pages in order for the
article to show up on multiple newsfeeds.
CMI reports that 94% of companies use this process for B2B
and 66% feel that it’s effective. Whereas 76% use it for B2C
and only 39% think it’s effective.
YouTube
Videos are consumed more and more each day than they ever
were before. With faster download speeds and quick access to
information, users often select a video over reading an article.
Using YouTube can help you push your initiatives to influencers,
subscribers, fans, and followers, even enabling you to share your
video on other social websites. According to CMI, 74% of B2B
companies utilize YouTube and 51% feel that it’s effective.
Whereas, 77% of B2C companies use the service and 53% think
it’s useful.
edocr
No longer new to the market, but less known, edocr is a social
media tool that allows you to publish and share your content,
embed a document viewer on your website, improve your
website’s SEO, and generate leads with gated content. Create a
free account and start sharing your documents with a whole
new audience. You can read edocr’s content sharing instructions
here.
3) Integrate Content on Social Media Frequently
Now that we’ve discussed developing a content strategy and
your best options for social media interaction, let’s figure out
how to use content marketing on social media.
By acknowledging and getting to know your target, you are
already on the right track to not only gaining new leads but
converting them into customers. Creating excellent content is the
first step to building a relationship with your prospects.
So you’ve developed a content strategy, created content that
provides helpful information that your target is looking for, and
now you want to share it.
Once you know which social channels are best for your audience,
it’s time to start creating a steady social schedule that ensures
you are posting frequently to your network. A great tool for social
scheduling is Hootsuite. If you’re a small business that doesn’t
subscribe to a CRM, this is the perfect, free alternative for
creating a social media calendar. Take advantage of free social
sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and edocr.
Ready to get started? You have all the information you need.
It’s time to start that persona research and generate organic
traffic.