Content Marketing on Social Media in Business Growth

Are you finding it difficult to make your business stand out on crowded social media platforms? Businesses struggle with creating posts with new ideas, figure out what works, and see real results like more engagement or sales from your social media efforts.

This article is designed to help you understand and effectively use Content Marketing on Social Media. We will break down exactly what this approach means and why it’s so important. You can expect to learn about different strategies – from free methods to paid advertising and working with influencers. We’ll explore the crucial role this type of marketing plays in building your brand, connecting with your audience, increasing sales, and even improving customer support.

Content Marketing on Social Media describes a carefully planned way of making, sharing, and promoting content that is interesting, regular, and useful for people on social media websites.

Content Marketing on Social Media providing information, entertainment, or solutions that your audience genuinely cares about. By giving them information, entertainment, or answers to their problems – things they genuinely care about – you can build their trust and make your brand look like a reliable expert in its field.

The primary goal isn’t just to sell products directly, but rather to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. For example, short videos on TikTok, professional insights on LinkedIn, or inspiring images on Instagram, and creating your content to fit those specific platforms.

Facebook : broad audience, text/images/videos
Instagram : younger, visuals/short videos
Twitter : diverse, short text/news
LinkedIn : professionals, articles/business
TikTok : youngest, short engaging videos
YouTube : all ages, longer videos

Many businesses wonder, is social media effective for marketing? It’s super important for businesses to do content marketing on social media today. Why? Because tons of people are on social media every single day (over 4.9 billion global social media users in 2023). That means it’s a huge place to reach people.

Social Media is where people find new brands, learn about things they might want to buy, and talk to businesses. If you have good content, it helps you stand out from all the other stuff online and build real connections with people. It also helps create a group of fans around your brand.

Social media also provides opportunities to build significant brand awareness, directly engage with customers, and substantially increase visibility for products and services. Furthermore, it allows for direct engagement, valuable feedback collection, and driving traffic to your website or online store.

Organic Content Marketing

Organic Content Marketing on Social Media is the approach where you create and share content naturally, without paid promotions, specifically to attract and engage your target audience.

This involves deeply understanding who your audience is and what they find valuable. The content is tailored to their needs and interests, shared directly on your brand’s social media profiles (like Facebook Pages, Instagram Profiles, LinkedIn Company Pages). Designed to provide genuine value – information, entertainment, or solutions. The aim is to encourage organic interactions like likes, comments, shares, and follows, building a loyal community over time.

Posting educational blogs: Sharing articles or blog post summaries on social media attracts users naturally when they are searching for information or insights related to your industry. This positions your brand as a knowledgeable resource, building trust without a hard sell.
Tutorials (e.g., video guides, how-to carousels): These directly address audience pain points by showing them how to do something. Users seeking solutions find this content organically, appreciate the value provided, and are more likely to engage
Customer testimonials (e.g., quote graphics, short video clips): Featuring positive feedback from satisfied customers acts as powerful social proof. Seeing genuine testimonials shared organically on your feed builds credibility and attracts new followers/customers who trust peer recommendations.

While organic reach can sometimes be limited by platform algorithms, it remains crucial for building authentic, long-term relationships and a strong brand presence.

Paid social media marketing involves strategically using advertising budgets on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, and others to promote your content or offers to specific audience segments.

Unlike organic content that relies on existing followers or algorithmic discovery, paid ads allow you to precisely target and reach potential customers, even if they don’t follow you.

These ads can promote a new product, announce an event, drive website traffic, generate leads, or boost brand awareness. The power lies in the highly customizable targeting options available. How paid ads reach users based on targeting:

Demographics: Age, gender, location, language, education level, job title, and more.
Interests: Target people interested in specific hobbies (e.g., hiking), topics (e.g., sustainable living), or even competitor brands.
Behaviors: Online activities like past purchases, device usage (e.g., targeting only iPhone users), or travel intent.

Example: Running Facebook Ads with specific demographic and interest targeting to promote a new line of athletic wear. Similarly, using Instagram Story Ads with a compelling visual and a clear call-to-action (“Swipe Up to Shop”) for a limited-time discount offer. Targeting users who have previously engaged with your brand or similar fashion accounts.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing involves collaborating with individuals who have built a dedicated following and credibility within a specific niche on social media. Instead of advertising directly, you partner with these influencers to promote your brand, product, or service to their audience.

Because influencers have already established trust and a relationship with their followers, their recommendations often feel more authentic and carry significant weight. This approach helps businesses reach new, relevant customer segments and generate genuine engagement by leveraging the influencer’s established credibility and content style. How influencers promote content naturally:

Through personal posts/stories: An influencer might naturally integrate your product into their everyday content
Dedicated videos (reviews, tutorials, unboxings): This leverages their expertise and provides valuable information to their audience while showcasing your brand.
Using images: It aligns your brand with their style and exposes it naturally to their followers.

Example: Partnering with a popular food blogger (influencer) to create an original recipe video promoting your brand’s kitchen appliance in an authentic, storytelling way on their Instagram Reels and YouTube social media channels. They wouldn’t just show the product; they’d add it into their usual engaging cooking content, making the promotion feel natural and trustworthy to their foodie audience.

Building Brand Awareness

Content marketing on social media increases your brand’s visibility by showcasing your products, services, and values through engaging posts. Consistent sharing of valuable and interesting content helps your brand become familiar and memorable to potential customers, making it a top-of-mind choice when they need what you offer.

Example: A fitness brand posts workout videos showing their apparel on Instagram and TikTok, offering fitness tips and showcasing their products.

Engaging with Customers

Social media allows for direct interaction with customers through content. Asking questions, running polls, hosting live Q&As, and responding to comments foster a sense of connection and value. This interaction explains why content marketing is so crucial, it builds brand loyalty, encourages word-of-mouth marketing, and can turn satisfied customers into enthusiastic brand advocates.

Example: A skincare company on Facebook asks weekly questions and responds with personalized advice. They also use Instagram polls for product feedback.

Driving Sales and Conversions

Content marketing on social media directly influences purchasing decisions by educating and informing customers. Content that addresses pain points and showcases solutions guides customers through the buying journey. Strategic calls-to-action within valuable content prompt users to take the next step, such as visiting a product page or making a purchase.

Example: A software company creates tutorial videos on YouTube with calls-to-action for a free trial. They also share customer success stories on LinkedIn.

Improving Customer Service and Retention

Content marketing on social media extends to customer care. Businesses can proactively share helpful content like FAQs and how-to guides, and reactively respond to customer inquiries and feedback. Providing timely support publicly demonstrates transparency and commitment, fostering long-term loyalty and improving customer retention. According to Sprout Social, nearly 50% of consumers believe responding to customer service questions/complaints is what makes a brand best-in-class on social media.

Example: A tech company’s support Twitter shares FAQs and troubleshooting guides and quickly responds to inquiries. They also post video tutorials for common issues.

Storytelling

Storytelling is a powerful content marketing tool that uses narratives to build emotional connections with your audience, fostering greater engagement and loyalty. Instead of just stating facts, sharing your brand’s journey, mission, and values through stories makes your brand more relatable and memorable.

Types of Storytelling:
- Brand Story: Sharing the origin, evolution, and ethos of your brand.
- Customer Success Stories: Highlighting positive experiences and achievements of your customers using your products or services.
- Behind-the-Scenes: Offering glimpses into your company culture, team, and processes.
- Values-Based Stories: Sharing narratives that reflect your brand’s core values and stance on relevant issues.

User-Generated Content (UGC)

Encouraging customers to create and share content related to your brand builds trust and authenticity. Recommendations from peers are often more influential than brand-created content. UGC acts as social proof, encouraging potential customers to engage and make purchasing decisions.

Examples of UGC and How it Works:
- Photos and Videos Featuring Your Product: Customers share visual content of themselves using your products. This demonstrates real-world application and can inspire others.
- Branded Hashtag Campaigns: You create a unique hashtag and encourage customers to share their content using it. This helps aggregate UGC and increases brand visibility. For example, a clothing brand might ask customers to share their outfits using #MyBrandStyle.
- Contests and Challenges: Running contests that require users to create content related to your brand incentivizes participation and generates a large volume of UGC.

Visual Content

Social media thrives on visual content. Images, videos, infographics, GIFs, and memes capture attention more effectively than text alone. High-quality visuals communicate messages quickly, increase engagement, and are more likely to be shared.

Examples of Visual Content:
- Product Photography and Videos: High-quality images and videos showcasing your products from different angles and in various contexts.
- Infographics: Visually appealing representations of data and information that are easy to understand and share.
- Behind-the-Scenes Photos and Videos: Offering a visual peek into your company culture and processes.
- Tutorials and How-To Videos: Demonstrating how to use your products or providing valuable information in a visual format.
- Short-Form Videos (e.g., TikToks, Reels): Engaging and easily digestible video content for platforms focused on short, dynamic visuals.

Contests and Giveaways

Hosting contests or giveaways on social media is a popular tactic to rapidly increase engagement, attract new followers, and expand your reach. By offering a relevant prize, you can incentivize participation and create buzz around your brand.

Example: A “Tag a friend and win a free product” contest on Instagram or Facebook encourages users to tag their friends in the comments to enter. This action increases the post’s visibility to a wider network of potential customers. To further enhance this, you could also ask participants to follow your page and/or share the post to their stories for extra entries, maximizing reach and follower growth. Clearly stating the contest rules and duration is crucial for a successful campaign.

Consistent Posting and Content Calendar

Maintaining a consistent posting schedule is vital for keeping your audience engaged and your brand visible. A content calendar helps you plan, organize, and schedule your social media posts in advance. For returning customers who are regularly engaging with your page, consistent content is crucial for nurturing loyalty. This includes content announcing new product launches, interactive posts to foster community, and helpful content addressing customer queries or providing support.

Driving Conversions

Strategic content marketing on social media is a powerful driver of conversions. By creating valuable and relevant content aligned with each stage of the customer journey, businesses can effectively nurture the powerful synergy between content marketing and social media. How Content Marketing Drives Conversions:

Awareness Stage: Informative blog posts, attention-grabbing infographics, and entertaining videos shared on social media can introduce your brand and solutions to a wider audience, generating initial interest.
Consideration Stage: Nurturing content such as webinars promoted on social media, detailed case studies to build trust and positioning your brand as an authority.
Decision Stage : Conversion-focused content like customer testimonials shared as social media posts or short videos, demonstrations of your product or service, and special offers with direct links to purchase can directly encourage conversions.
Targeted Advertising: Social media platforms offer precise targeting options for running ads featuring your content.
Direct Sales Features: Platforms like Instagram and Facebook offer features like product tagging in posts and stories, and even in-app checkout options, which directly facilitate sales within the social media environment.

Supporting Customer Care

Social media has become an essential channel for modern customer care, offering opportunities for both reactive and proactive support. Content marketing plays a significant role in enhancing the customer service experience.

Instead of just offering real-time responses to individual customer queries via direct messages, create a series of short video tutorials addressing frequently asked questions about your product’s features. Share these videos on your social media channels and create a dedicated playlist or highlight section for easy access.

You could also host a live Q&A session on Instagram or Facebook where customers can ask questions in real-time, and your team can provide immediate answers. Furthermore, create a dedicated customer support post outlining how customers can reach your support team through different channels (DM, email, phone) and what information they should provide for faster assistance.

Executing effective content marketing on social media presents challenges like keeping up with platform changes and consistently creating high-quality content. Golden Owl Digital understands these complexities and offers expertise to help.

Golden Owl Digital possesses in-depth knowledge of the ever-evolving social media landscape. Their Social Media services and Digital MKT Strategy offerings ensure your content marketing approach stays current, relevant, and optimized for maximum impact across different platforms. They understand platform algorithms and emerging trends, helping you reach your target audience effectively.

GODI specializes in crafting Creative content tailored to your unique brand voice and business objectives. They can develop a diverse range of engaging content formats designed to resonate with your ideal customers on specific social media channels, ensuring your message stands out.

Golden Owl Digital including Social Media Optimize, Digital Ads, SEO, and Digital MKT Strategy, cover everything from initial planning to content creation, distribution, and performance analysis. This allows businesses to implement a professional and effective social media content strategy to achieve their growth goals without needing extensive internal resources or expertise.

Conclusion

Content marketing on social media is an essential tool for businesses to enhance brand visibility, engage with customers, and drive conversions. With the right approach, businesses can leverage social media platforms to build lasting relationships, provide exceptional customer care, and achieve business growth. Let Golden Owl Digital optimize your social media content strategy for better engagement, conversions, and customer satisfaction.