Ask any internet user about social media marketing and content marketing and they will not be able to differentiate between the two. This is because social media cannot survive without content and content marketing cannot sustain without social media today. Having said this, seasoned marketers and brands online know that there does exist a difference between the two marketing tools.
Top Three Difference Between Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing
- Content: social media marketing works with content that is designed to feature on channels like Facebooks and Twitters of the world; while content marketing is mostly a mechanism that is initiated and contained in the brand website of the company.
- Format: the content for social media marketing is mostly short, to the point – very precise and focused. While the content in the websites tend to more descriptive and elaborate.
- Purpose: One could argue that the final objective of both the tools is to enhance brand visibility, get more sales and improve revenues. That is true but each of this medium typically has a different role to play. Social media marketing is focused on engagement – be it your old customers or new; while content marketing is mostly meant to garner interest amongst prospective customers and increase market base.
What Will You Choose as Your Top Priority?
As a brand that is trying hard to push itself to the top of the ladder in your niche, you will certainly need to choose and strategize on your online marketing approach. When it comes to choosing between social media marketing and content marketing, there are two aspects that you need to consider:
- Should you choose to be more active on social media or let your website do most of the talking; and
- If on social media, do you choose to limit your activity only with content viz. posts, videos, tweets, images and audios or do you wish to go with social media advertising?
In order to answer the first question, you need to understand that ignoring any one aspect of the two may not be a very smart move. Your brand website is your brand spokesperson – so, can you really afford to push it back? And, without being active on social media, how far can you push your brand presence through other organic and inorganic means?
For the answer to the second question, you need to understand that content and ads on social media are actually intertwined. This means to say that your content on social media can very well be made to behave as an ad and the commercial video or image itself needs to have content that people find interesting to read or watch.
If you have to make a choice between social media marketing and content marketing, it can be a challenging choice because the fact is that today, the distinction between the two is slowly getting blurred.
You need to stop thinking that they are two separate sides of a coin – in fact they are the same coin and intelligent marketers need to combine both for best results.
