Oftentimes, people tend to mix up the term “content marketing” with “social media marketing”. They believe that brands publishing content is the same as social media management. However, the act of managing a social media platform and developing the content for it is two completely different things.
Yes, content marketing heavily involves social media. And, yes, marketers use content to get their messages and mission statement across. However, there is is a huge difference between content creation and social media management. Each involves different focal points, end goals and processes. To help clear the confusion, let’s look at the major ways in which they differ from one another.
Social Media Management
In social media management, the overall marketing initiative takes place within the platforms themselves. When marketers operate campaigns, they are working within Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, Google+, etc. As content becomes produced, the content then becomes published on these platforms. Social networks are vital to the success of content marketing efforts.
Social media management is the process of analyzing your audience and developing a strategy that is tailored specifically to them. This includes the distribution of content. And, this content ranges from images, videos, Reels, stories highlights, ads, to much more. The overall purpose of SM marketing is to make your platform the perfect tool and a successful mechanism for delivery of all the content that you create. Take a look at two of our blog posts to have a more clear understanding of Instagram metrics that measure performance and Facebook metrics that measure performance.
Content Creation
On the other hand, content creation is the process of actually creating the content that you are going to post on your platform. Content creation is the process of conducting research, generating strategic ideas, crafting those ideas into high-value collateral and then publishing those pieces to a target audience on a platform, or on a website. Along with this, there are a multitude of platforms that people use to find, develop and produce content. To name a few, there’s Canva, Adobe Illustrator, Pexels, Facebook Creator Studio, UNUM, SuperStock, and much more.
Here at Digital Task Force, we create brand guides and social media templates that tailor to your specific company. And, we use these guides and templates to create content such as images and videos to post on your platform. Now remember, content creation doesn’t only consist of creating the actual content, but it also consists of creating the captions and appropriate hashtags to go along with each post.
Types Of Content:
- Written Content: Blogs, SEO articles, white papers, eBooks, emails, static feed posts.
- Imagery: Infographics, GIFs.
- Audio: Podcasts, audiobooks.
- Video: Animations, webinars, talking heads.
Digital Task Force SM Feed
Red Hanger Brand Guide
Red Hanger SM Templates
Marketing Objectives
While people use both social media management and content creation for a multitude of purposes, social media management generally tends to focus on two main objectives. First, it’s used for brand awareness — generating activity and discussion around the brand with target consumers. Secondly, it’s used for customer retention/ satisfaction. Brands can use these channels as an open forum for direct dialogues with customers, often around issues or questions that consumers have about a given product or service. On the other hand, as quality content brings prospects to a brand’s media platform or website, brands can develop a relationship with the prospects and nurture them towards a lead conversion or purchase.
Social media marketing is the natural first step in this process. Having easy access to target customers is direct (users spend tons of time on social networks). And, content creation is the second step in the process. Creating high-quality content is essential to gaining brand awareness. But the rewards and results are, arguably, more powerful and more important. Brands can engage more deeply with their customers through the creation of valuable content. And, by driving consumers to its own website, the brand has a greater opportunity to gain leads and move them down the conversion funnel.
If you’re interested in learning more information about our social media management service, or our content creations service, feel free to reach out to us. We’re here to help make your online platforms shine!
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Also, click here to learn more about our content creation service. And, feel free to read through our Social Media Strategy page to learn more about this service.