Over 88% of companies use at least one social media channel, and over 70% use some of the key components of content marketing: onsite articles, newsletters, blogs and videos. As content marketing spend continues to rise, with 60% of B2C marketers expecting to increase their content budget over the next year, it's essential to make sure that return on investment is maximized.
Yet many businesses and organizations are still using their social media accounts simply to publish, amplify and distribute content, but not to source ideas and help them understand their audience.
Social media is your content marketing anchor
"If you're not using social media to inform content strategy and creation then you're missing out on what could be some of the juiciest content - and your customers could be missing out on the pieces that would be most interesting and useful for them," says Jane Cronin, content marketing executive at Jellyfish, an international digital marketing agency.
This isn't just the case for medium and large businesses either; smaller companies and even microbusinesses can benefit just as much, and possibly even more so, as they often need to make the most of any time and money invested in marketing.
"You need to consistently create quality content people actually want to read, and coming up with relevant and useful topics is a big part of that. Looking at and participating in communities to see what people are concerned about and need help with has been a hugely helpful source of blogging inspiration for me," says Michelle Nickolaisen, a freelance writer who also runs a business helping entrepreneurs to be more productive.
Whether you're a multinational or a solotrepreneur, there are a few simple ways you maximize how you use social to discover the best ideas.
One of the simplest and best ways to source content ideas is to ask the existing following, although you need to do a little research first. Asking people what they'd generally like to see or know about will generate responses, but they might lack focus, not fit in with your brand or be otherwise impractical to implement. Instead, asking people more focused questions gets more usable responses.
"For example, if you're marketing a restaurant group and you know that recipes are popular, a good tip would be to ask which recipe your Facebook fans would like to see," says Cronin. "Or for a travel brand, run a poll asking people to select which cities they most want to visit and create content around that.
"Alternatively let your audience create your content for you. Ask a relevant question and curate the most interesting and useful content into a blog post. Not only is this a way to enhance traction on social media but contributors are genuinely delighted to be featured on the website of one of their favorite brands."
To get the most out of this ensure that you know where your customers are most active. Don't limit your prospecting to just your own social channels either. Communities can be a rich source of inspiration:
"Join groups - whether that's Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, G+ communities, or Twitter chats - and actively participate," says Nickolaisen. "When someone asks a question and you find yourself writing a long response, and coming back to the question later to add more responses, you've got a potential blog post."
Utilize tools and data for maximum impact
Tools further support your research, not only giving you fresh ideas but also providing a way to see which socially-inspired content pieces are performing well, creating a virtuous cycle of research, implementation and feedback.
There are some excellent free tools around to assist, and one of the best for content marketers is Facebook Insights. It provides an easy way to build up a long-term picture of the content your most engaged customers like and interact with the most.
Sharetally show the appreciation level of individual content pieces across the main social channels and, usefully, you can use this for content on sites you don't own. You can use these to underpin content strategies that have blogs, infographics or videos which are strongly focused around your ideal customer's likes and interests.
Sometimes, however, you need to look beyond assessing how effective and popular existing content is, to discovering new areas.
"The main tool we use for this is Brandwatch," says Cronin. "It allows us to easily find out the interests of people who are following a company or using key terms, so we can create content tailored to their interests. So if we saw that followers of a finance brand tended to be more interested in parenting topics than environmental ones, it's a no-brainer to create family-focused content."
Why the smart content marketers start with social
Using social media as the starting point for your content marketing campaigns gives you a head start in several respects.
"If you're using social to when prospecting for ideas or creating content, it makes your social channels much more vibrant, helps build relationships with your customers and gives them a sense of investment in the company and your content," says Cronin.
It mitigates the risk of managing a social platforms that simply blasts links at users with little real interaction. When a potential follower reaches your Facebook page or Twitter feed, they can see that this is a business which values the opinions and ideas of its customers - a good first impression and one that encourages people to click the 'Like' or 'Follow' button.
"When you come to share content which was either generated by your social followers or inspired by their requests, it looks a lot less self-promotional as you are serving your customers and giving them a voice," says Cronin.
It's the results which ultimately convince professional marketers and business owners alike. Blogs which have some sort of social basis often perform better - sometimes getting over 100% more interaction than comparable pieces on the same site.
This is something Nickolaisen echoes. She followed up a conversation on Facebook group about how to fill your sales funnel if you're a freelancer whose main skill set isn't sales with a blog post on the same subject.
"That post was shared on Twitter 53% more than the average for my posts and shared on Facebook 77% more than average. It's my theory that content created from actual questions is more likely to 'hit the target', as it were, and resonate with people, which of course, results in more shares." she says.
As 33% of consumers say that they use social channels to find out about new brands, these social shares could prove vital to long-term growth.
How have you used social interactions and data to inform your content marketing? If not, is it something you're considering, and what's obstacles do you face? If you are, what sort of results have you seen?