The Difference Between Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing

Like anything these days, the world of marketing is full of a myriad of terms and jargon. To the uninitiated it can all get very confusing.  There’s social media marketing, email marketing and content marketing. Then you’ve got remarketing, content creation and content curation.

We could go on and on, but one of the FAQs we hear the most is: what’s the difference between content marketing and social media marketing?

Type the question into Google Search and you can kiss goodbye to the next 7 hours (or even 7 days) as you sift through countless definitions, articles and essays on the subject.

Here we’ll try and nail it in just 500 words or so, in plain and simple English.

Why does it matter?

Many have tried to distil the difference between content marketing and social media marketing into a handy tagline or catchy phrase. Some work, some don’t. One of the better ones is this: ‘Social media is the new telephone. Content marketing is the new brochure,’ but even that doesn’t quite capture it.

In short, the two are different but they overlap. You could argue that you can’t have one without the other.

And every business needs to do both. That’s why you need to understand the difference between the two.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is all about the creation, curation and distribution of relevant and valuable content. It’s a way for brands to educate, inform and entertain potential and existing customers. Content marketing promotes the products or services that a brand has in its offering – but not through endless sales pitches. Instead, content marketing aims to build credibility, trust, loyalty and relationships with customers by emphasising the integrity and authenticity of a brand.

If selling is all about you (the business), content marketing is all about them (the customer). The content itself can be anything from blog posts or podcasts to ebooks or livestream video content. It doesn’t even have to all be content that you have created yourself. Content curation – the business of sourcing and sharing content from elsewhere that your audience will find helpful and valuable – can be equally effective.

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is all about making use of social platforms to engage with existing and potential customers. It is a method of marketing the products or services of a brand, but – just like content marketing – it is done well not by selling directly all the time, but by building relationships and trust with customers. Therein lies the overlap between these two types of marketing, content and social media.

Social media content can be a strand of a brand’s content marketing in itself. It can also be a method of distributing or promoting content, such as blog posts or podcasts, that are elements of a brand’s wider content marketing strategy.

So, you can’t really have one without the other if you want to market your business successfully in 2019.

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