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Content Marketing vs Social Media Marketing

If you talk about content marketing vs. social media marketing as if it were a confrontation and you should stick to one of them, we recommend that you continue reading this article. 

Apart from telling you a bit more about both, we’ll show you what you really need to do to be successful with them.

Content marketing vs social media marketing
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Table of Contents

What is content marketing?

The definition of content marketing is a way to engage your target audience and grow your network of leads and customers by creating relevant and valuable content. 

By attracting, engaging, and generating value for these people, this can create a positive perception of your brand, leading to increased business.

Another concept of content marketing that can help you understand better is the one that tells us that it is a way to provoke the engagement of who would be your target audience to then make both your leads and your customer network grow. 

Of course, to fully accept what this new move is all about, we are forced to fully accept that the times where the consumer was forced to passively watch TV commercials are over. 

The advance of time, and the arrival of new technologies to the marketing sector, have generated that the public has today more power than ever, being able to choose the content they want to consume, and also the way they expect to interact with it. 

However, this should not be seen as something negative. Since what should be done from the advertiser’s side is to start producing the content that the audience wants.

And, although it is said that you can’t satisfy everyone, it is possible to succeed in trying.

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Advantages and disadvantages of content marketing

Advantages

  • It can help your SEO positioning, since every content you generate, every post you publish, every keyword you enter in it, gives you a new opportunity to reach new users who will find you among their search results in Google, or any other search engine.
  • Regardless of whether it is a business or personal brand, one of the greatest advantages of content marketing is that you can engage your community by creating a group of people around you who will follow you through different channels to keep up to date with your content.
  • You will be able to build trust, because when you see business or personal brands being proactive on social media, being open and constantly offering things of value, users will get to know you more openly and feel confident.

Disadvantages

  • You need time and human resources, since generating quality content sometimes takes much more time than you can imagine. This is based on the fact that unsubstantiated publications will get you nowhere. You need to structure the content, choose the subject matter, among other things.
  • They cost money, so you should be aware that nothing is free. From the tools, such as platforms for you to create your blog, an infographic, or any other resource to do the job will require you to make some kind of economic or time investment.
  • To close with the disadvantages of content marketing, you may be interested to know that you will not see the results immediately. This means that even the best campaigns may take a few months before you see how you've done. But once you get on the right track, there's no turning back.

What is social media marketing?

The definition of social media marketing refers to all those activities and measures that are used in social networks, redundantly, with the purpose of creating business opportunities, increasing the reach and loyalty of our customers, or target audience. 

For many, social media marketing has come to be seen as a form of public relations and customer service.

However, the first objective to have when considering one of these strategies will always be to increase traffic, CTR and reach. 

On the other hand, there are those who rely on the concept of social media marketing in order to build long-term loyalty with their customers.

It is from here then where you can also move on to thinking about influencers, and marketing that is created to go viral. 

It is worth noting that this was not always seen as an opportunity to generate more business, as when the most popular social networks were created (as is the case with Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn) there was really no idea that they would serve as public relations and marketing tools. 

What has made many marketing companies now take their strategies to these platforms is the fact of the large amount of users that are registered on them. This has made it undeniable that a direct contact channel is created with the customer, and the reach is increasing more and more. 

Undoubtedly, nowadays, creating social media marketing strategies is a wise choice even for those products, services or brands that are offered on a smaller scale. So it is an option that should always be kept in mind.

Marketing experts developing strategy

Advantages and disadvantages of Social Media Marketing

Advantages

  • Among the advantages of social media marketing you can also count the improvement of SEO. And this can be seen in a very simple way, every time someone happens to share (or show any kind of interest or interaction) content that has been generated by you, Google, and other search engines, will give you points that will improve your positioning.
  • It has the advantage that it helps to establish personal relationships by maintaining an active presence on social networks so that prolonged, friendly conversations can be created between you and your target audience.
  • The content you create on social networks can always be reused and redistributed. This allows you to adapt it to each group, to its target audience, and also to the people who will consume it. Remember that a Facebook post is not the same as a tweet.

Disadvantages

  • It won't work if you don't create content. We are talking about articles, videos, comments, memes, infographics, among other resources that are extremely important to generate frequently to keep the strategy alive.
  • One of the disadvantages of social media marketing is that you will achieve success, yes or yes, in the long term. Of course there are a couple of exceptions, however, in the beginning you should be realistic and not expect the traffic generated by your profiles to be very large.
  • You should also be aware that content of this type tends to expire quickly. For example, no matter how good the tweet you created, it won't take anything to lose on the timeline. Or that successful post to stay down on the Facebook wall.

How to plan the joint work between content marketing and social networks?

Although we have talked about content marketing vs social media marketing, the reality is that nothing is better than knowing how to take advantage of both types of advertising and put them to work together to get the best possible results with our campaigns, regardless of the media. 

As you may have noticed, we have first talked about the importance of content marketing to take the time to create quality content so that it can reach users and make them click on it, and not just pass by. 

On the other hand, we have also talked about the importance that exists today in adapting to what is social media marketing with the intention that you can reach many more users over time, and be able to have a direct communication with them. 

Now you may be wondering exactly where the tip is, and what you should do is to take the time to develop quality content following the standards of the first, and using the media features of the second to make them reach more and more people. 

Although it might seem a bit obvious at this point of the article, these types of strategies should not really be seen as a vs, but rather as a team, since content marketing and social media marketing work hand in hand to ensure your success.

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