Knowing how to market your brand can be a tricky business in 2024. Tossing up between social media marketing vs content marketing? Or wondering if you should be using a mix of both? Use this guide to determine the best strategy for your brand.
I’d wager that you’ve landed on this page because you’re either about to launch your business and are learning about the best strategies to put in place before it goes live, or you’re someone who already has the social media side of things sussed and is wondering what content marketing can do for your burgeoning brand.
Social media is often the marketing strategy business owners turn to first. And why not? It can offer some pretty quick and easy wins, and we’ve all seen the success stories of small businesses that have catapulted their growth by going viral.
After all, approximately 60% of the world’s population is on social media, and if you use it well, that’s a hell of a lot of eyes on your business.
Content marketing can sometimes be a bit of an afterthought for brands. They don’t start thinking about how to use blogs, emails, and lead magnets in their business until their social media success flatlines – as it so often does – or until they realise they need something more structured, effective, and long-term.
Yet, there are so many benefits to content marketing that it would be foolish to overlook it.
In a second, I’m going to dive straight into the pros and cons of both social media marketing and content marketing so you can decide whether you need both in your business, but first, let’s get a handle on what each one is…
What is social media marketing?
This one’s pretty straightforward. We’re all familiar with social media, too much so perhaps.
Social media marketing simply refers to the practice of using any of the social platforms – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest etc – to promote your business. It can take the form of text, image, and video content.
Metrics like likes, comments, follows, and views are often used to measure success.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing usually takes the form of blogs, newsletters, emails, and lead magnets, like ebooks, digital guides, and downloadables.
These materials are designed to inform, engage and entertain. They can also influence buying decisions by creating brand loyalty and building your reputation, improve your organic website traffic, and boost brand awareness.
Now that you know the difference, let’s look at the benefits and drawbacks of each one…
Social media marketing vs content marketing: Does your business need both?
The pros of social media marketing
- Can reach an unlimited amount of potential customers
- Increased visibility
- Improves customer loyalty
You probably won’t need much of an introduction to the benefits of marketing your brand on social media. You’ve likely already seen some of them in action.
It can get an unlimited amount of eyes on your products and services, boost brand awareness, and increase customer loyalty. It also allows you to interact and have a two-way conversation with your target market.
Social media marketing is an attractive option for many businesses because there’s a chance you could go viral. Is that all it’s cracked up to be? Hmm. The jury’s out. (Read this piece I recently wrote about whether going viral is the marketing strategy it’s cracked up to be.)
The pros of content marketing
- It builds brand awareness, trust, and loyalty
- It can dramatically improve your visibility
- Gives you clear data on conversions
- You own the content
People don’t know who you are and what you’re about unless you tell them. That’s where content marketing comes in. It’s a real opportunity for you to educate and inform your audience.
In turn, that builds their trust in you and establishes your reputation as an authority (i.e. someone they should buy from).
When done well, content marketing can be the catalyst for behaviour change. In other words, it can influence people’s buying decisions.
It’s also pretty neat for any business that wants to improve their visibility. (That’d be every business, right?) Blog content in particular is very important for any business hoping to improve their rank on search engines like Google.
Regularly publishing blog content makes you more discoverable on search engines. Why is that super important? Well, it makes it so much easier for your ideal customer to find you and buy from you.
And another thing? With content marketing, it’s very easy to measure your success. Unlike social media, which often relies on vanity metrics, longer-form content like emails, for example, can give you valuable insights on things like opens and click-through rates.
Put simply, it can give you clear data on whether your marketing efforts are leading to an increase in sales.
Perhaps the biggest perk of all? You own the content. It might not seem likely but the social media platforms you’ve spent hundreds of hours building could be gone tomorrow, and with them your content and loyal following too.
Blog content published on your website, however, will always be yours. The same goes for email subscribers. You can not lose these. You simply transfer them to another platform if the need arises.
The drawbacks of social media marketing
- You’re a slave to the algorithm
- Dips in engagement are common
- It’s oversaturated
- Pressure to create a high volume of content
- Time-consuming
- Difficult to stay on top of trends and algorithm updates
Let’s cut straight to the chase, if you’re posting on social media, you’re a slave to the algorithm. I’d bet that at some point or another, a piece of content you poured your heart and soul into completely bombed.
And I’m sure you’ve experienced times when your engagement is guttingily low and nothing seems to improve it. (Spoiler alert: it’s because the platform wants you to spend money on advertising.)
Add to that, social media is completely over-saturated. There are so many other brands competing for your audience’s attention that it can be difficult to cut through the noise.
There’s a pressure to endlessly create new content too (the creative burnout is real!) and being overshadowed by the big brands can be incredibly disheartening.
Social media is also getting more and more complex. Gone are the days of sharing a simple grid post and racking up hundreds of likes. These days it’s all about video content, which can be mighty time-consuming.
Social media moves fast and it can be draining trying to stay on top of the trends and endless algorithm updates too.
The drawbacks of content marketing
- Can be time-consuming to produce without proper support
- It’s often a long-term strategy, not a quick fix
Content marketing often includes longer-from content like blogs, newsletters, lead magnets, and email series, and if writing isn’t your strong suit, creating these materials can be time-consuming.
Add to that, content marketing won’t always have the instant gratification that you’re probably used to seeing with social media (unless you’re working on an email series which is one of the most effective ways to boost conversations, or a lead magnet, which can skyrocket your number of subscribers when done well.)
If you’re working on your SEO strategy for example it can take six months or more before you start to see improvements as it takes a while for Google to index your content.
The upshot of this is that once you get on Google’s good side (so to speak) you can see organic traffic to your website improve in the long-term.
A few well-performing pieces of content can reap the rewards long into the future, unlike social media content which typically has a much shorter life span and disappears from people’s feeds within a couple of days.
In short, content marketing materials can take more time to produce, but they often allow you to build your brand awareness, visibility, and reputation long into the future.
So, does your business need social media marketing and content marketing?
The short answer is yes. Most brands will benefit from taking a combined approach. Which one you favour will depend on your business model.
If you’re a local café, for example, you probably don’t need to start producing blogs like ‘15 reasons you should treat yourself to lunch today’ or ‘Everything you ever wanted to know about how we brew our coffee’ because, frankly, who is going to read that?
You’ll likely see better results by prioritising social media content. But if you wanted to dip your toe into content marketing, a really smart way to do that would be to create an email list so you can update your followers on news/discounts/the yummy traybakes in-store this week.
It’s a great way to cut through the social media noise and connect with your audience directly because you’re right there in their inbox.
(If you need tips on how to start building an email list, you should probably read this post I wrote on Email Marketing.)
What kinds of businesses should use content marketing?
If you’re a service-based business, for example, if you’re a brand that provides any kind of coaching, consulting, training, mentoring or one-to-one support, you will definitely benefit from content marketing because it’s an opportunity to showcase your knowledge and expertise.
Think how impressed your audience will be if you’re able to create authoritative content that helps them make improvements and showcases just how skilled you are.
This is also true if you are a brand that produces products or services related to a complex subject matter, for example, nutrition, finances, skincare, or mental health.
Producing informative content both establishes you as an authority in your niche and gives your audience the information they need to fully understand who you are, what you do, and why it’s important.
This information builds customer trust, informs customer purchasing decisions, and often translates to more sales.
Top tips for combining social media marketing and content marketing
A word I often use when creating an in-tandem social media and content marketing campaign for my clients is ‘cohesive’. You want all of your content to neatly tie in.
What does this look like in practice? It means if you are publishing a blog on a given topic, it’s a good idea to theme a portion of your social media activity around that topic.
Just wrote a lengthy 1,500-word explainer on imposter syndrome on your blog? Consider making a reel on how to spot if you have it and a carousel post offering original and effective tips for overcoming it.
Go one further, and share a personal story about your experience of imposter syndrome that you send to your email subscribers. (Make sure to signpost them to your blog so they can read more!)
If the topic of imposter syndrome really resonates, you could create a free lead magnet, like an eGuide or downloadable impost syndrome journal, for example, and give it to your social media followers in exchange for their email addresses.
Key takeaways
Content marketing is a key component of increasing brand awareness and ultimately influencing your target market’s spending habits – and almost every business could benefit from having at least some longer-form materials that sit alongside their social media efforts.
If nothing else, it serves as anchor content. Long-form content can influence (and be the common link between) everything you post on social media in a given week or month.
In that sense, it’s key to beating the content creation burnout that is so common among business owners these days.
What’s more, content marketing can pay dividends in the long term, meaning you might not have to work quite so hard on your social media marketing strategy in the future.
Want to take the stress of copy and content creation off your already over-flowing plate and win back some of your free time and peace of mind?
