ISLAMABAD ( Qamar Ali Khan GUEST WRITER )
Marketing has evolved. Older forms of advertising such as television ads, yellow page ads, and other print 
Today’s consumers are now interested to know what benefits they can derive from a product or offer. So, businesses and companies have realized they need to change the ways they reach out to their customers. The bombardment of product-based advertisements has become less effective. Companies are adopting ways and means to keep and enhance their customers’ and prospects’ interest level. They are engaging their audience by crafting content that highlights the things that mean more to their audience.
Content Marketing is the ongoing process of creating content that includes material to keep the target audience or customers’ interest and engagement level high. According to Content Marketing Institute:
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Content marketing has become the most effective way to reach an audience and to generate, maintain, and enhance their engagement and interest levels into your content and your business. For content marketing to be most effective, it is necessary to continue its stream and pitch it through a medium that is most suitable for your specific industry. The most suitable medium is the one where your target audience frequents and where your content fits according to the environment of that medium.
Why Content Marketing Through Social Media
Many consider social media to be the most suitable and the quickest way to disseminate your company’s content to your specific audience. There are reasons as to why social media should have the most important role in your content marketing program.
1. Huge Exposure:
Social marketing is far reaching globally. Facebook has almost 1.5 billion users, Twitter almost 1 billion, Google Plus 540 million active users (out of 2.2 billion+ signups), LinkedIn 350 million+, Instagram 300 million+, Pinterest 75 million+, and the list goes on. Your content receives huge exposure if shared through social media. So, social media is the source to spread your message irrespective of the size and geographical considerations of your target market(s).
2. Instant Pitch and Reach:
Social media is the quickest way to broadcast your brand story. You can share your content all around the world with just a click of your mouse or button.
3. Multiple Options:
Social media has a number of varieties, allowing you to decide the best platform to broadcast your content to your specific audience. For example, if you want to draw the attention of your audience by telling them something in detail and thus drawing their followership, LinkedIn is the perfect place to update your company page or to tell the story in a long form post. LinkedIn is also the most suitable medium if your contents are directed toward a B2B market. Facebook is a platform where you can engage your audience in more unconventional and informal ways by providing short updates via your business page and by engaging in direct or indirect conversation with your audience. Facebook is more suitable if you are engaged in B2C marketing. On Twitter, your message limit is 140 characters. You have to bring everything in a very short but powerful message. Your message either is independent and engaging to attract the required attention or it has the contents creating interest of the reader to click the attached link.
4. Cost Saving:
Content marketing through social media is cost effective, compared to other media. If you place ads in the print media or on electronic media, you will need larger budgets. It is also very difficult to track down the results of your efforts through other media. There are many ways and means available to help you to track your content performance on social media. So, content marketing through social marketing may provide a higher ROI on your marketing investments than any other medium.
5. Easy Tracking:
As indicated above, comparing to other means, tracking your activities and their feedback is easy on social media content marketing. There is a variety of applications available to keep you updated about very current and past performance of your content. This immediate and accurate feedback enables you to weigh the effectiveness of your contents against the desired performance and to take in-time required actions to manage the content more efficiently, whenever required.
6. Convenient Content Management:
You can very conveniently manage your contents on social media. You can change, alter, modify, or re-design your content whenever you want. If you observe your content is not doing accordingly or the response rate from the audience is not as expected, you can modify your content based off real-time data! This convenience in digital content management is not possible if you use other media for your content marketing, like a print ad in a newspaper.
7. Greater Clarity of the Target Market:
Your continuous content marketing through social media and its regular feedback from customers enables you to better understand your target market and their characteristics. Sometimes you, even, have to re-define your target market. This target market evaluation is quick, accurate, and reliable than any other source.
It is established that social media is the perfect place to launch your contents. Today’s era is not the one to “Force the people to watch the ads”. Because of the mega change in consumers’ perception level, you have to craft something to “Compel the customers or audience to love to engage with”. You need to develop friendship, not business, with your customers; and content marketing through social media is the right strategy you would have to adopt. For maximum impact, you need to choose the right content, the right medium, and the right time to launch your content.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-social-media-essential-your-content-marketing-qamar-ali-khan