Any social media marketing company has received a request from a business client to, “put this on Facebook.” Before simply executing the request, let’s take the opportunity to see if there is an opportunity to provide greater benefit to the client. According to behavioral data compiled and analyzed by bitly.com, the functional life of a Facebook post is 70 minutes. The functional life of a tweet is five minutes.
A blog post, conversely, lasts forever. It’s also loaded with SEO opportunities and consumable content for humans and webcrawlers alike. Therefore, when the content is relevant and valuable, the correct sequence is:
- Write the blog post.
- Post a link to the blog post to social media.
When writing the blog post, astute Internet marketers will include keyword research around which the post will be written and optimized before publishing. They will also have previously advised the client that in order to provide benefit to search rank, the blog should reside on your website (example: webolutionsmarketingagency.com/blog). Social media marketers will have done additional research to maximize the impact of the post; for example, what Twitter hashtags, if any, can be used and on what time of day the largest part of the target audience is most likely to see and engage with the content. Engagement drives clicks to the website, where multiple options avail to move the visitor closer to conversion.
The content used for the blog post can now be repurposed in other channels, such as an enewsletter or online press release, for which the conversion process is similar.
This is an example of elements and a process used to create a social media content generation plan.
Strategic and successful content strategies make the described impetus an exception, where the rule is development of and flexible adherence to an editorial calendar that details goals and ROI metrics (How will success / Return On Investment be measured?), key personas, value propositions, keywords, channels and integrations thereof, community management and other factors.
How to Use this Information
Content is the fuel for any social media marketing engine. Due to time and a lack of acumen, it is also a barrier to success for many online marketing efforts. A strategic approach to creating, publishing and using content creates a process that increases the probability the effort will be sustained and produce measureable results.
