Content Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing: Key Differences

For about the past year, whenever we browse blogs, forums, or marketing news sites, it’s easy to run into headlines about Content Marketing (CM). The crowd started talking about CM a lot while Social Media Marketing (SMM)– a concept that isn’t old yet isn’t necessarily understood correctly either – was still fairly “hot.” This is also when misconceptions (mis-conception) about these two concepts began to appear.

Last week, a young professional working in Marketing Communication asked a question in the Facebook group Digital Marketing in Vietnam. It went like this:

It’s not just this person. Quite a few Marketers working at large marketing service companies or in Agencies also mix up these two concepts.

So, what is the simplest way to tell SMM and CM apart?

First, Get the Concepts Right

We can easily find definitions of Content Marketing (using content to market) and Social Media Marketing (using social media channels to market) that let us distinguish the nature of these two activities:

Definition of Social Media Marketing According to Mashable

“Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites. Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks.”

Wikipedia’s definition of Content Marketing

“Content marketing is any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, etc.”

From these two clear and simple definitions, we can analyze the goals, content formats, and underlying nature of SMM and CM in more depth:

Ultimate Goal

1. Social Media Marketing is the marketing method used when Brands want to build or increase brand awareness on the social networks where customers talk with one another, by talking with them. In addition, some other goals relate mainly to brand reputation and consumer retention, such as: improving the quality of customer service by responding to, advising, and supporting customers right on social networks, and increasing the level and number of loyal customers through regular exchanges of information with them… In short, a Brand uses SMM to talk with consumers, listen to them, and understand their reactions to the brand so it can change for the better, while also making customers happier and fonder of the brand. The nature of this process is the exchange of content between brand and customers, in which the brand deliberately seeks out or starts a conversation with a purpose, rather than being the one who decides the content of that conversation.

2. Content Marketing is, for brands, “brand storytelling.” A Brand’s goal in using CM is to attract customers and target customers to the brand by producing content that is valuable to them. This content (the brand story) must deliver what customers need and want and, going further, create added value for them. The content can be the answer to a problem customers are trying to solve, or a beautiful image that matches a customer’s personal taste, for example: a household tip for whitening clothes without using laundry detergent… The Brand is entirely in control of this content.

Content Format

1. With SMM, content is only a secondary factor, determined by: (1) the features of the platform/channel chosen for the strategy/campaign (for example, whether you use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr… or all of them) and (2) your customers’ behavior on social networks (social behaviors).

2. For a CM strategy, content is the deciding factor. The brand story and the brand’s long-term strategy determine the content the brand delivers to its target audience. In turn, this content determines how it is presented, and even which platforms are chosen or combined to deliver it.

In short, to tell SMM and CM apart, you only need to understand the reason and the problem a Brand is trying to solve when it chooses SMM or CM. Specifically:

• Social Media Marketing

Consumers have shifted where they receive information and interact to Social Networks, creating the Social Media channel. On social media, customers mention, review, and share information about Brands within their own conversations. So Brands run SMM strategies/campaigns to join these conversations and, going further, to take charge of them and steer them toward the goal of increasing and maintaining brand reputation. As a result, content in SMM is content created to spark two-way discussion with customers, using Brand-directed content in the tone of voice of the target audience

• Content Marketing

When a Brand has a vision for a Content Marketing strategy with long-term value and, ideally, a brand story, it will use Content MKT in its overall Marketing activities. At that point, the Brand becomes a Content publisher. Based on customer research, the Brand produces content that both creates emotional value for itself and delivers added value for customers, consistently tied to the “thread” of the Brand story. A Content Marketing strategy typically uses owned and earned media channels (social media, website, letters, email, eBooks, white papers…). Within this mix, social media is just one channel that is both owned and earned media. The Content Marketing strategy also determines how the content of the Brand story is presented, and planners then choose the suitable platforms or channels to carry it out.

Ultimately, understanding and telling apart Marketing concepts will help you build strategies and tactics for carrying out your Marketing plan more effectively. However, a deep understanding of the Brand’s core value (product/service) and of consumers is the most important factor before you start any Marketing activity; because in the end, the goal of Marketing is to win customers over.

Source: Brandsvietnam

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