Introduction
Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing are terms that people often confuse with each other. To make it simple, it can be said that social media marketing means marketing on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and many more, whereas content marketing includes specifically providing the exact content for a particular purpose. Social Media Marketing and content marketing are both concepts of digital marketing, and both include the marketing of content, yet they are different from each other. The detailed definition of social media marketing is that products and services of a business are marketed on various social media platforms organically or inorganically, which means through content or paid ads.
The content can include image posts and video posts. Content marketing, however can be defined as producing the right type of content as per the client’s requirements. So, the primary difference between the two is that social media marketing is the marketing of content only on social media platforms, but content marketing, unlike social media marketing, is not limited to any platform.
Social Media Marketing vs. Content Marketing
The primary difference between social media marketing and content marketing is that content marketing does not include specific marketing on social media platforms and extends to all types of platforms, be it online or offline. It just includes providing valuable and quality content to the clients and is specifically focused on marketing content. Social media marketing, as the name implies, has to be done on social media platforms in the form of organic content or inorganic paid ads. Organic content in social media marketing involves text in the form of captions along with images and videos, and other than these, no other type of content can be posted on social media platforms. This kind of marketing does not extend beyond social media, so it is specifically called by that name. Moreover, social media marketing not only includes marketing on social media but also improving the efficiency of a business's social media presence.
Difference Between Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing in Tabular Form
| Parameters of Comparison | Social Media Marketing | Content Marketing |
| Meaning | Social media marketing involves marketing products and services of a business through the use of social media platforms. | Content marketing involves the marketing of valuable and engaging content across all platforms. |
| Aim | Social Media Marketing mainly focuses on promoting content across social platforms to increase the website traffic of a particular brand. | Content marketing not only aims to promote content but also distributes enriching and valuable content to customers across all platforms. |
| Promoting Mediums | Social Media Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. | Content marketing can be done not only on social media channels but also through websites, emails, eBooks, and podcasts. |
| Content Format | In social media, there are limited choices for marketing content such as image or video posts, live streams, and stories. | Content marketing involves a variety of formats for marketing content such as images, videos, blog posts, articles, reports, podcasts, eBooks, and infographics. |
| Ownership | Content marketing in social media has to follow certain rules and regulations because businesses don’t own the social platforms that are being used for marketing. | Here the brand or the business is the owner of the content because their platforms are used for this kind of marketing. |
| Content Life | Social media marketing content is temporary such as paid ads or livestreams. | Content that is marketed on the business' marketing channels has a long-term living period. |
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing, in literal terms, means marketing content across various social media channels either in the form of organic content or in the form of inorganic content or paid ads. The primary focus of social media marketing is promoting a brand's content on social media to drive conversions to the brand's website and improving the efficiency of social media profiles for more better and efficient marketing. Promoting content on social media also leads to brand awareness for a particular brand. The marketing channels used for social media marketing are social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Moreover, the content formats that are available for marketing on social media include small posts with captions in the form of images, videos, live streams, and stories.
Content marketing is a huge concept under which social media marketing is just a marketing strategy. Content is marketed under both concepts. Social media marketing is also marketing content only, but the only difference is that marketing here takes place only across social media channels. Moreover, social media marketing also has to follow certain rules and regulations according to the social media platform where the content is marketed. For example, in some social platforms, there may be word limits of the captions given or limited use of hashtags or a certain number of posts can be posted on a particular day. This is because brand owners are not the owners of social media platforms. It is also to be remembered that posts posted on social media may not remain there for a lifetime such as stories on Instagram disappear after 24 hours or social platforms may themselves remove a post due to certain reasons. Social media marketing can be done by anyone, whether their business mode is online or offline. Website owners posting blogs, and articles on their websites, offline retail shop owners, and online brands, everyone can use social media marketing to market their products and services.
Social Media Marketing comes with various benefits which are: -
- Increases Brand Awareness
- Results can be Tracked
- Increases Conversion Rates
Increases Brand Awareness
There are thousands of people active in social media in today's world, and life without social media cannot be imagined just like life without the internet is impossible to imagine today. Social media has become a part of daily life. So, brands should not miss out on this opportunity. Business has become very competitive these days, and when it is said that social media has become a part of everyday life, the field of business also comes there. So, to survive in this competition and to stand out, businesses need to build up strong and efficient social media profiles through which they will be able to reach thousands of social media users. Social media helps in improving brand awareness of a particular brand, and businesses should use this opportunity to improve their brand awareness by providing engaging content on social media that is bound to attract thousands of users.
Results can be Tracked
Social media marketing is a type of digital marketing. Digital marketing, unlike traditional marketing, comes with the facility of tracking and measuring results. So, in social media marketing, there is the feature of tracking and measuring the efficiency of each social media marketing campaign. Facebook ad manager is a feature of Facebook that enables marketers to create both organic and inorganic posts or advertisements and manage them from here. The efficiency of ad campaigns, like how many users have seen the content or the rate of website traffic, everything can be tracked from here.
Increases Conversion Rates
It has been found through research that an individual spends nearly two and a half hours on social media every day, which is quite a large amount of time. So, if a brand utilizes this opportunity and provides engaging and appealing social media content for marketing then that content will be viewed by a wide number of people. If that content turns out to be efficient, then there is the chance of generating a huge number of leads, and maybe users may also turn into customers if they find the content attractive.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing consists of marketing valuable and engaging content. It falls under the category of digital marketing. Content marketing is a huge concept, and social media marketing is just a method of marketing content across social media platforms, which is why it comes right under content marketing. Content marketing is the marketing of content, and content can be of various types. Website owners provide articles, blogs, and other educational content on their websites, brands provide content in the form of products and services. So, if website owners want to bring more visitors to their website and businesses want to attract more customers then, they have to opt for content marketing. Content marketing not only aims to promote content but also to provide enriching and valuable content to clients to attract more customers and retain them. It focuses more on providing quality content.
Content marketing has no restriction regarding the platforms on which it is marketed, and it can be marketed across all platforms. Moreover, there are a variety of formats for content marketing such as content in the form of images, videos, podcasts, infographics, blogs, articles, eBooks, and many more. Companies, through content marketing, can raise awareness about their brand by promoting their products or services, which is basically their content, and hence shape public perception about their brand. There are several benefits of content marketing, like social media marketing, which are: -
- Increase in Website Traffic
- Builds Trust Easily
- Cost Effective
Increase in Website Traffic
Content marketing is the marketing of content that can be done across all platforms. It is specifically beneficial for website owners who publish blogs and articles on their websites and brands with websites. So, for content marketing, enriching and engaging content has to be published consistently on the websites to attract more and more customers to the website and increase the traffic. Moreover, increasing the quantity is not enough, and quality should be preferred over quantity as even if an individual publishes many posts in one week, the quality should also be good. This is because SEO helps in the growth of websites that provide quality content. After all, after all, customers also desire quality over quantity.
Builds Trust Easily
Content marketing does not focus much on ads and is more into organic marketing. So quality is a factor here. Website owners providing quality educational content consistently on their websites have a greater chance of retaining loyal site visitors who will prefer their sites over others. This is because good customer service and experience lead to the building up of a community of trust among the customers. Moreover, this trust is long-term trust only if quality is maintained.
Cost Effective
Content marketing is more cost-effective than traditional types of marketing. It is a form of digital marketing and focuses more on organic marketing. It has been found through research that the cost of content marketing is about 62% less than outbound marketing and with 3 times more leads than any other marketing tactic.
Main Difference Between Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing in Points
- Social media marketing and content marketing are terms that people often confuse with each other. The only thing that is common between them is that content is marketed in both of them; otherwise, even if they sound the same, they are significantly very different. Social media marketing is primarily marketing content across various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and many more. Content marketing, on the other hand, is mainly the concept of marketing content across various platforms. The difference between them lies in the fact that social media marketing is also a form of content marketing because, after all, a brand's products or services are promoted there, but this marketing is only limited to social media platforms. On the other hand, social media marketing is just a type of content marketing that is being done on the platform of social media. The main purpose of social media marketing is to promote brand awareness of a particular brand on social media by promoting its content on social media and improving its social media presence. In content marketing, on the other hand, the primary focus is put upon providing enriching and engaging content to customers to increase the brand value of a particular brand.
- The content formats that are available in social media marketing are small posts in the form of images, videos, live streams, and stories whereas there is a wide range of content formats in content marketing such as images, videos, blogs, articles, podcasts, infographics, and eBooks. Moreover, content marketing also provides independence to marketers as they do not have to follow many rules because they are the owners of their websites. But social media marketing comes with a lot of rules and regulations in word limits, limited use of hashtags, and other community guidelines that marketers have to follow. It is also a fact that posts on social media do not stay for a long time and are temporary. Suppose a story is posted on Instagram; it stays on Instagram for 24 hours, after which it gets deleted unless it is saved. It can also happen in the case of normal posts if the social media platform decides to change its rules and regulations.
Conclusion
Hence, it can be said that social media marketing and content marketing might sound the same, but they are very different. Content marketing is a huge concept, and social media marketing is like a part of content marketing only with the difference that social media marketing is done only on social media platforms. Content marketing is general marketing of content that can be done on any platform. It is a much more effective means of marketing than social media marketing because it mainly focuses on organic marketing and is much more cost-effective whereas social media marketing is highly costly mainly due to advertisements. Moreover, content marketing prefers quality over anything to retain loyal customers, so marketers prefer it more than social media marketing.
