Social Media Marketing and Valuable Content

With past research regarding effectively using social media and creating valuable content, etc. I stumbled across a vairety of blogs and helpful articles. And as some of you may have experienced,  being relatively new to delving into these social media waters, I am finding the more that I read, the more that I need to learn. 

In one of my favorite posts by Social Medai Examiner,  “How to Integrate Social Media with Traditional Media” , they discuss how many marketing professionals or businesses are asking the wrong question about How to  integrate social media into their traditional marketing efforts, instead of asking for a framework!  I found myself enthusiastically shaking my head when Mr. Martin compared consumers to bacteria stating “Just as bacteria can evolve and eventually grow resistant to antibiotics, so too can consumers grow resistant to current forms of marketing, including social media marketing”.  It’s a brilliant statement, and one that demonstrates the pitfalls that different marketing campaigns have fallen into when they just try to replicate a strategy or campaign that may have worked for someone else, but failed for them because it was no longer a new/different approach.  The discussion in this blog post will definitely be one that I revisit when developing marketing strategies.

Another great post that then me to a valuable content resource, was “How Content and Social Media Equal Marketing Success” where they interviewed Joe Pullizi regarding the importance of developing a content strategy before having a social media strategy, knowing your customers and where they are online.  All of the topics he pointed out seem so common sense, but yet I see it time and time again in my  experience in the professional marketing world, that all too often companies are so focused on selling themselves online (or other marketing mediums) that we forget we need to focus on having valuable content that really interests our customers.  This is something as I move forward in my career that I will repeatedly have to remind myself & others of, especially when it comes to writing valuable content  for websites, Facebook & twitter posts, etc.  Providing this valuable content using keywords nad information that actually speaks to our audience instead of speaking about ourselves,  will help create natural links an relationships, draw more consumers to our websites or social media outlets, and make us more successful businesses reputation wise and financially!