Difference between social media marketing and content marketing

Many beginners to Internet marketing tend to confuse social media marketing with content marketing and my goal with this post is to help you understand the difference between the two and how you can use them for your benefit.

As you can see in the image below, both social media marketing and content marketing are under the umbrella of Internet Marketing which is one of the most important components of digital marketing.

So, the first difference between the two is that they are not the same thing. They are two distinct tools online marketers can use to promote their brand, products or services online.

social media vs content marketing

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What is Social media marketing?

In its simplest form social media marketing is the marketing process for promoting products or services in the different social networks either in the form of ads or in the form of content. The goals of a social media marketing campaign can be the same as any other marketing campaign i.e. to increase sales or can be more specific to social networks i.e. to increase Facebook followers or to get more tweets etc.

Who needs social media marketing?

Social media marketing is for everyone working either online or offline. By everyone I mean:

Bloggers or webmasters running blogs or websites

Small businesses owners who run online businesses

Business owners who run offline businesses

The impact social networks have on our lives is so huge that you just cannot ignore it. In the case that you do ignore it and stay out, your competitors will take advantage of it and the impact on your businesses will be greater.

What are the benefits of social media marketing?

In a nutshell the benefits of social media marketing are:

Increase brand awareness

Find more customers

Stay in front of the competition

Stay in synch with the latest marketing trends

Engage with your customers

Provide another way for potential customers to contact you

Inform your customers of changes to your products or services

Gradually build a tribe of loyal followers

How do you create a social media marketing campaign?

You can read my previous post, social media marketing tips for beginners for a more in-depth analysis but for the purpose of this post, let’s examine the basic components of a social media marketing campaign.

Decide on your goals – what are your goals from running a social media marketing campaign, what do you want to achieve? Hint: If you’re goals are increase in sales make sure that you track leads coming from social media so that you know if they convert or not.

Decide on the duration – A campaign cannot run forever so it’s important to decide the period you will run your campaign. Hint: Run your campaign for at least a week since not all days are the same in terms of traffic and social media usage.

Set your budget – How much money you want to spend on social media advertising? Hint: You don’t always have to pay for advertising but as we will see below you can run your social media campaigns using the content you have created.

Choose your social media networks – There are so many social networks available and if you try to run campaigns on all at the same time you will get lost in the process. It is better to concentrate on one social network at a time and at the end you can evaluate the results and see which networks converts better. Hint: If you don’t know which is the best network for your niche then why not take a look at what your competitors are doing. If they are spending time and money on a particular network maybe they are getting good results.

Evaluate the results – Everything on the web is measurable so at the end of your social media marketing campaign check the results and calculate the ROI. If the return is not what you expected may you should run the campaign on a different social network or assign the task to professionals to optimize your campaign and produce better results.

Make sure that you also avoid these 15 social media mistakes.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the process of creating the right type of content to fit for the particular purpose. Have a look at the examples below to understand how content marketing can be used in different situations:

Type of Business Type of content

Service company (lawyers, accounts etc) Text content: (description of the services offered, articles related to the niche)Images: map to the company offices, organizational structure

Retail business selling products online or offline Text content (product descriptions)Images (product images)Videos (product videos)

Web site owners Text content: articles, how-to posts etcImagesVideos

Infographics

What is quality content?

In order for content marketing to be successful you first need to have quality content. Many marketers talk about the importance of quality content but a few people understand what this means. In my view quality content has the following characteristics:

It is detail – provides all the info about the particular subject

It is un-biased – provides for both sides of a story and it’s not one-sided

It is shareable – people like it and want to share it in their social networks

People read it / watch it / hear it – statistics show that people spend time with the content

People engage with it – they write comments, add to their favorites etc.

What are the benefits from content marketing?

The benefits gained from content marketing are the same with social media marketing. Your ultimate goal with content marketing is to provide top quality content to your users or potential customers so that you increase sales, increase brand awareness, get to know your users better and stay in front of the competition.

Is content marketing the new SEO?

A popular phrase in the SEO industry the last couple of months is whether content marketing is the new SEO. The reason that made many people believe this statement is the fact that with the latest changes Google made to their ranking algorithms they gave more importance to high quality content websites and it was a clear signal that content is once more a very important ranking factor.

I would say that content is not the new SEO but high quality content with social media marketing is the new SEO. As I mentioned above content alone will do any good but high quality content can bring success especially if combined with a well-defined social media marketing campaign.

Content marketing and social media marketing – The winning partnership

Anyone should have clear in their minds the difference between social media marketing and content marketing. Social media marketing is about promotion and content marketing is about creation.

The two can work together in harmony and can generate fantastic results in today’s competitive market. Companies or websites who can create top quality content and have a proper social media presence are more likely to succeed and expand than companies who failed in this area.

Some real life examples from different industries:

Web / Content producers: Sparkpeople.com – They create content on a daily basis about healthy living and they promote their content on social media. Visit their Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/SparkPeople

Manufacturing / Retailers: Nike.com – They create content to promote their products and they engage with their customers on social media. https://www.facebook.com/nike

Manufacturing / Retailers: Coca-Cola – They use content marketing and social media to promote their ‘change the world’ campaigns. https://www.facebook.com/cocacola

Service / Software: Firefox.com – content marketing and social media for creating a community of users. https://www.facebook.com/Firefox

Blogging: Read our case study on how to build a successful blog with content marketing and social media.

Conclusion

Content marketing is the starting point of all your internet marketing campaigns. Whether you are a small business looking for more customers or a webmaster looking for more visitors to your website you need to start with content marketing.

Your next step is social media marketing. In many areas social media marketing has replaced traditional link building and is the number one way to promote your website or brand online.

If you can do both well, then you just found the secret for marketing online in the 21 century.

Difference between digital marketing and social media

The difference between digital marketing and social media is simply that social media is part of digital marketing. Many people believe that by engaging on social media they are doing digital marketing but this is not 100% true as their are many more components that make up a digital marketing campaign.

What is digital marketing?

My definition of Digital marketing is: Building awareness and promoting a brand or product using all available digital channels.

The major components of digital marketing are:

Internet Marketing – Web, SEM (search engine marketing – includes SEO and Pay per click advertising), smartphones, mobile markets (i.e. Google Play, Apple Store), email marketing, online banner advertising and Social Media.

Non-Internet digital channels – Television, Radio, SMS, digital billboards (indoor and outdoor)

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The diagram above shows exactly the relationship of the different components that make up digital marketing.

What is social media?

Social media is the latest buzz word in Internet Marketing the last couple of years. The success of the new generation of social media platforms, mainly Facebook and Twitter, changed the way we socialize, interact, shop and has also brought new channels to digital marketing as well.

Social media is the term we use to describe platforms that bring people together for the exchange of information. The most popular social media platforms are: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and YouTube.

Some interesting statistics about social media:

To get a better idea of the impact social media has on marketing, have a look at these 10 interesting statistics:

Statistics about social media usage

What are the advantages of using social media in your marketing campaigns?

There are many advantages of utilizing social media for promoting both your online or offline products and services.

It’s a fast way to spread the word – If you have a big fan base, you can tweet or post on Facebook and your message can instantly go to thousands of users around the World. In fact social media is the fastest way (even from TV and Radio) to make an announcement or spread a message.

It’s good for SEO – There are more and more signs that social signals are used for ranking purposes by both Google and Bing. Properly defined social profiles can also boost SEO.

It’s a trend – Social media is a trend you cannot ignore if you want to stay close to your customers and in synch with the latest developments in marketing.

It’s one of the ways to interact with your customers and find out what they want – With social media your customers can show that they like a product or piece of content by voting (Like, Tweet, +1) , commenting and sharing. As a marketer you can analyze these statistics, talk with your customers and find out how to make your products, content or services better.

Digital marketing VS Social media

It should be clear after reading the above definitions that social media is a major component of Internet Marketing which is part of Digital marketing. If we compare the two side by side we will find that:

Digital marketing goes beyond the Internet and tries to reach people in the off-line world using digital means while social media is limited to the boundaries of the Internet.

A Digital marketing campaign may include one or more components (Internet Advertising, Mobile ads, TV, SMS etc.) while a social media strategy may include one or more social media platforms (Facebook, twitter etc.)

Social media is strongly associated with a content strategy i.e. you create content and use social media to promote it while a digital marketing can concentrate entirely on banners (either on the Internet, TV or billboards) for promotion.

Which is more important digital marketing or social media?

It depends on the type of brand, products or services you want to promote. There are cases where other forms of digital marketing will be more appropriate to build awareness than social media. Social media is a must of every product, brand or service that has a wide audience.

For example if you are selling a software product, social media can help you find new customers, educate your existing customers (by sending them tips and tricks) and keep them informed about new updates, upcoming releases etc. If on the other hand, you are selling custom tools for farmers you can use social media as a resource to find out more about the products but your main selling point will be billboard ads on rural areas and Radio ads.

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is the process of promoting a product or service through the various social media channels. In general there are two ways to perform a social media marketing campaign. The first way is free and has to do with building followers, fans or connections by sharing useful content, running contests and generally engaging with your users.

The second way is through paid advertising. You can use Facebook ads, Google Adwords or Twitter promoted accounts to advertise your product or services on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter respectively.

Are social media marketing campaigns successful?

There is the misconception that social media traffic does not convert but latest statistics show otherwise.

Statistics about social media conversions

The success or failure of any campaign depends on many factors including the experience of the digital marketing consultant so choose wisely.

What does a typical digital marketing campaign includes?

While the digital marketing components are a lot, a typical campaign includes mostly items from the Internet Marketing family. It is very common to see a promotional campaign with:

Search Engine Marketing – Either through content strategy and SEO or through Paid Search Advertising (Adwords)

Social media promotions – paid advertising on Facebook, promotion on Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.

Mobile market promotions – Development of native apps and submission to the Google Play and Apple Store

Email marketing – Promotion of products or services through email marketing campaigns

Conclusion

It is important to know the differences between the different marketing theories so that you can select the most appropriate tools to use in your campaigns. Digital marketing is the future of marketing and will gradually gain more ground in the online and offline World. Social media on the other hand, is the new way to connect with other people, it is part of digital marketing and it’s here to chance the way we find new customers and promote our products.

What is the difference between SEO and PPC?

The main difference between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) is that traffic coming from SEO (organic) is free while traffic generated from PPC is not free (as the name implies you have to pay a cost per click).  This is also the reason why you may sometimes see the terms organic search engine listings and paid search engine listings (or Paid Search Advertising – PSA).

Both SEO and PPC are part of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which is one of the tools you can use as part of your overall Internet Marketing campaign.

I will try to explain the other major differences between the two by using the following parameters: position in search results, cost, traffic potential, conversion and ease of use.

Organic Traffic vs. Paid Search Advertising

Position in Search Results

As you can see from the screenshot above you can expect to find PPC Ads above the organic results and on the sidebar.  Where exactly your ad will appear depends on a number of factors (i.e. the keywords you are targeting, keywords in your ad copy, keywords in your landing page and many more) but it’s either on top, on the sidebar or below the organic results.

Organic results can only appear in the middle of the page. Whether your listing will appear in the top positions or first pages this depends on how optimized your web site is both in terms of on-site and off-site SEO.

SEO: You can get first page positions if your web site is optimized for search engines

PPC: You can get your ad on the first page by paying a higher cost per click (CPC)

Cost

I have mentioned above that SEO traffic is free and PPC is paid and while this is absolutely true, you should understand that it needs a lot of effort and hard work to get free traffic from search engines. The competition is high for almost every keyword you can search and you really need to have a high quality web site and a great SEO plan to get one of the top 5 positions. There are no shortcuts despite what some “SEO” companies are trying to sell you.  If you are not familiar how search engines work or don’t know anything about SEO then the best way to get search engine traffic is to hire a SEO expert to do the work you.

On the other hand, Pay Per Click cost depends on a number of other factors. If we take for example the cost per click of advertising with the most popular PPC system, Google Adwords, then it depends on the popularity of the keyword, on the number of advertisers who want to use the particular keyword, the number of related web sites that have ad positions for the particular keyword and many more. If it sounds a bit complicated then it probably is despite the efforts made by Google to make the whole system easier to use.

The good news with PPC is that you only pay for the clicks your ad receives and not for the views. In addition, you can determine in advance your daily budget and pay no more than that and you can calculate an estimate of what is the average cost per click for the keywords you want to target. As you can see from the screenshot below the Google Keyword tool (which is part of Google Adwords) gives you an estimate for the CPC (cost per click) for each keyword.

SEO: Cost of SEO is indirect. You cannot pay to get to the first page but you may have to pay for SEO services if you cannot do SEO yourself.

PPC:  You pay only when people click on your ad.  You can use the Google keyword tool to calculate how much you can pay.

Traffic potential

Which method can bring more traffic to your web site, SEO or PPC? SEO (organic traffic) is more than PPC traffic so if you can manage to rank your web site for the keywords you want, you will get much more traffic than paying for those keywords. This is because when you are in one of the top 5 positions (according to statistics the majority of search traffic visits one of the top 5 web sites) you can expect to have a continuous flow of traffic 24×7 without having to pay anything (the actual volume of traffic depends on how popular a keyword is).

So, if you compare traffic and cost of first page positions for SEO traffic and PPC traffic, organic traffic is better. There are some studies suggesting that PPC ads get more clicks than organic but this also translates to a bigger cost.

If on the other hand it is very difficult to get first page positions for a keyword then paying for traffic may be your only option since second and third page positions will probably bring 0 or very little traffic.

SEO: Organic traffic is continuous as long as you are ranking in one of the top positions.

PPC: PPC ads can get more clicks but this means that you pay more.

Conversion

Which visitor is more likely to convert (i.e. make a purchase, register to a newsletter and in general response to call for action), someone coming from PPC Ads or from organic search? If your ads are highly targeted and optimized then a visitor from PPC is more likely to convert than a visitor coming from search.

The reason is that a web page can rank for different keywords (other than those initially intended) so the search visitor may not be looking exactly for the content (or product) presented in the particular page. On the other hand if you run a successful PPC campaign then you will only get clicks from visitors who are interested 100% in your content or products.

SEO: SEO traffic is better than other forms of traffic (i.e. social media) but in terms of conversion is not as good as PPC traffic.

PPC: Highly optimized keywords will generate more conversions but will cost more

Ease of use

Neither SEO nor PPC is easy to do if you don’t have the necessary knowledge and experience.  SEO is a process that takes a lot of time and effort. It may take months or even years to rank for specific terms or not rank at all!

On the hand, in order to get some good results with PPC and Adwords you either have to take a course or hire a PPC expert to help you or you will lose a few hundred dollars before you understand how it works.

The bottom line: PPC first and then SEO

The bottom line is that you need to use both PPC and SEO as part of your Internet Marketing campaign. PPC can bring you faster results so you can run a PPC campaign and test which keywords convert better and then try with SEO to rank for those keywords.

Use PPC when you have a high converting product and use SEO when you have a limited budget to spend on advertising.

SEO may take time but the results are (under some conditions) long lasting while with PPC when you stop paying for clicks, traffic will also stop.

What is the difference between SEO and SEM?

The difference between SEO and SEM is simply that Search Engine Optimization is part of Search engine marketing or Search marketing as it is widely known. Both processes aim in increasing visibility in search engines. SEO is about optimizing the web property to get better rankings in the search results while SEM goes beyond SEO. It involves other methods as well which can get you more search engine visitors like PPC advertising.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

I have explained before what is SEO and why is it important and I have also outlined what in my opinion are the most important SEO tips. For the purpose of doing a comparison between SEO and SEM I will re-state the definition of SEO so that it is clear for everybody what the difference between the two is.

What is SEO?

SEO is the process of optimizing your web site for the purpose of getting free traffic from search engines. An optimized web site is more easily understood by Search engine crawlers, so there are more chances of ranking higher in SERPS.

On-Site and Off-site SEO

There are 2 main pillars of SEO, what is called on-site SEO and off-site SEO. On-Site SEO are rules you can apply on your web site or blog so that it’s more search engine friendly. For example you need to use proper titles, good descriptions, well formatted URLs, correct use of H1, H2 and images and many more. You can read my version of the 15 on-site seo tips for beginners to get a good idea of how you can optimize your web site for search engines.

Off-site SEO refers to the process of getting votes from other web sites for the purpose of increasing your web site’s trust in the eyes of search engines. For beginners this may be confusing but try to think about it like a ranking system where the web site who has the most votes ranks higher. Votes in our case are links coming from other web sites to your site. That is also the reason why off-site SEO is referring to as link building.

To avoid any misunderstandings it’s not only a matter of how many links you have pointing to your website but also from where these links are coming and a number of other factors I am not going to cover now.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing is over and above SEO but it’s only a subset of your overall Internet Marketing Strategy. The diagram below shows the relationship between Internet Marketing, SEM and SEO. As you can see there are many more ways to increase your web site’s traffic besides SEM and SEO.

What is SEM?

So, SEM is the marketing process with a goal of getting more visibility in search engines either by getting more free traffic (SEO) or paid traffic (Paid search advertising).

Through paid search advertising you essentially buy advertising space in the search engine results. So instead of trying to rank higher and get free traffic you pay to appear in front of the searches.

The most well-known advertising agency for PSA is Google Adwords. Through Google adwords you can get your ads appear in the Google search results and you pay only for the clicks on your ads. This is also the reason why the whole process is called Pay-per-click or PPC. Bing and Yahoo have a similar system but it not so successful and widely known as Adwords.

Importance of SEM Traffic

SEM traffic is considered the most important source of Internet traffic because it is targeted. It is widely accepted that people use the search engines to find a solution to a problem, an answer to their question or to learn how to do something. So when searches click on a web site from the search results or click on an ad, they are more likely to convert. The relevancy of the displayed web sites and ads makes SEM traffic more valuable than any of the other sources. Facebook and twitter are trying to optimize their advertising platforms to utilize targeted traffic but still traffic coming directly from search engines has a better ROI.