Content Marketing Vs Social Media Marketing: What’s the Difference?

Marketing campaigns take many forms, using different strategies for the purpose of generating traffic, leads and sales. Some of these forms work so closely together that there’s inevitable overlap between them.

Such is the case with content marketing and social media marketing. While combined efforts can provide stunning results for any business, it’s important to know the distinction between them to truly maximise the outcomes.

Where do they differ? What are their objectives, processes and techniques? Answers to these questions would help clear up any confusion. On that note, let’s discuss the differences between content marketing and social media marketing in terms of goals, processes and focus.

Content Marketing

The primary goal of content marketing is to increase brand awareness and attract new customers by building authority in your field. You do this by creating compelling, relevant content that will keep users coming back to your site and eventually turning them into paying customers. Depending on your target audience, you can produce content using different formats, such as:

• Blog posts

• Videos

• eBooks

• Infographics

The idea is to provide value in all the content you create. This way, you’re building trust among your visitors, so when they need information that’s related with what you offer, you stay top of mind. That’s because you’ve already established a solid reputation and they now view your site (and your brand) as a valuable resource.

Instructional videos and how-to guides are perhaps the most practical examples. These pieces of content often involve step-by-step instructions. So if you’re a local cyclery, for instance, you can create informative content about learning how to ride a bike and how to change a flat tyre or give tips on how to choose the right components.

These topics are relevant to your target audience. Keeping visitors to your site is a giant step towards converting them into customers.

Social Media Marketing

You’ve probably noticed that with content marketing, all marketing efforts are focused on your website. With social media marketing, the focus of campaigns is on, well, social media networks like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Remember the content you created for your website? They can be distributed through these channels.

Once there, your content can further inspire engagement and interaction. If you notice, many businesses these days heavily rely on social media because it’s where customers discuss their experiences, express approval or dismay over a brand and give thoughts on its products and services. For businesses, it’s the perfect opportunity to address issues and inquiries while building deeper relationships with customers.

Different channels appeal to different demographics, which means social media platforms can more accurately target specific audiences. With this in mind, we can say that social media marketing is more focused on customer retention and loyalty.

Conclusion

Whereas content marketing establishes authority over time, social media marketing is more invested in direct interactions. What’s better for your business? We’re not going to join any debate (if there’s any) on this one, because we firmly believe both content marketing and social media marketing are essential pieces of the digital marketing puzzle.

What you should be more concerned about is which content marketing and social media marketing agencies to hire. G Squared, an award-winning digital marketing company, can do both. If you need further clarifications on how to make content marketing and social media marketing work for you, please reach out to our experts today.