What exact­ly can you do to inte­grate your social mar­ket­ing with the rest of your con­tent pro­gram? To bor­row a cliche, think syn­er­gy. By think­ing strate­gi­cal­ly and using one pro­gram to feed the oth­er, you can stoke high­er the fires of buy­er inter­est and cre­ate an even more engaged and loy­al online cus­tomer base.

So, you’ve done every­thing right – your brand is on all of the pop­u­lar social media sites, and you’re crank­ing out the con­tent. But, have you con­sid­ered how aligned your social pres­ence is with your greater sales and mar­ket­ing goals? You’d be sur­prised how many brands fal­ter when it comes to this impor­tant step.

The cause of this gap isn’t much of a mys­tery – many brands still man­age their social media mar­ket­ing in a silo, often hand­ing the reins over to a social coor­di­na­tor or intern who isn’t famil­iar with depart­ment and com­pa­ny goals.

The result of this approach is a social pres­ence that lacks impact and doesn’t dri­ve the brand for­ward. While the con­tent may be engag­ing or cool, the dis­con­nect with the oth­er mar­ket­ing pro­grams make it a wast­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty to tru­ly fur­ther goals.

Here are a few key prac­tices to devel­op and exe­cute as part of an inte­grat­ed and syn­er­gis­tic social pro­gram.

Pick Platforms Where Your Customers Live

Just because Face­book has over a bil­lion users doesn’t mean it’s nec­es­sar­i­ly the best place for your brand. Face it, in this ever-con­nect­ed world, your audi­ence is active on any num­ber of social plat­forms.

It doesn’t pay to spread your­self thin, to sim­ply have a token pres­ence on every net­work avail­able. 

Instead, focus on social plat­forms that allow your brand’s per­son­al­i­ty and style to shine through. This ensures that your con­tent is more like­ly to be found by read­ers and view­ers who will engage with­out much prompt­ing.

Align With Marketing Goals

As with any oth­er asset, be sure your social activ­i­ty is con­nect­ed to a spe­cif­ic pur­pose, such as mov­ing the buy­er through the fun­nel or gen­er­at­ing prod­uct aware­ness. Pro-tip: make sure your social media team has some­one sit­ting in on key strat­e­gy and goal-set­ting meet­ings so they are in the loop and aligned with the same objec­tives and can exe­cute them.

Promote Existing Content

Whether it’s a SlideShare, white paper, webi­nar, or video, be sure to tap into your fol­low­ers and clue them into the great con­tent that lives on your oth­er sites.

Remem­ber, social is all about inter­ac­tion. Don’t sim­ply drop a link to these oth­er assets; give a sneak peek or present a chal­leng­ing thought and ask for feed­back.

Turn Conversations Into Momentum

Too often, mar­keters will use social media to announce a con­test or pro­mote a sale or event – then fail to ever fol­low up. Do this and you’re going to lose your leads.

Be sure to keep dri­ving the momen­tum for­ward by ask­ing for event feed­back, announc­ing con­test win­ners, or cre­at­ing a spe­cial hash­tag that lets users dis­cuss the sale or event.

Integrate Your Social With Email Marketing

Don’t for­get about your email list! Link to your social con­tent in emails and ask read­ers to take a poll, enter a con­test, or sim­ply leave feed­back and com­ments.

For instance, you might ask your email data­base to vote on a selec­tion of prod­uct names when you have a new prod­uct line com­ing out. Face­book allows polls, while Twit­ter fol­low­ers can vote by response.

The key here is to make sure you’re an active par­tic­i­pant. Don’t just yell into your cor­po­rate bull­horn

An Example: The Social/Content Marketing Loop In Action

Let’s say you’re plan­ning to hold a webi­nar. Your first step is pro­mot­ing the webi­nar on all your social media accounts and call­ing out any speak­ers or influ­encers involved in it.

But that’s where a lot of com­pa­nies will stop. Instead, keep the momen­tum going by tweet­ing a few quotes from the webi­nar and link­ing to the record­ed ver­sion.

After that, write a blog post about the webi­nar and tie-in the top­ic to a thought-pro­vok­ing ques­tion or sur­pris­ing fact from the live event. Then send out an email to your list, link­ing to the blog post and invit­ing com­ments. The blog post should con­tain links to oth­er rel­e­vant social con­tent as well.

From a sin­gle event, you’ve cre­at­ed a loop of engage­ment that involves every­one on your email list, all webi­nar atten­dees and reg­is­trants, your social fol­low­ers and any fol­low­ers of the influ­encers involved in the webi­nar.

Inte­grat­ing social sell­ing with your con­tent and email mar­ket­ing offers many advan­tages for your team. Just remem­ber to keep the con­ver­sa­tion aligned with your goals and always keep momen­tum strong – and you’ll soon see new fol­low­ers, deep­er engage­ment and stronger rela­tion­ships with your buy­ers.

Is your social pres­ence aligned with your greater sales and mar­ket­ing goals?