Content and social: seamlessly joined at the hip

How should brands best approach social content, and what are the rules to follow and the traps to avoid? The CMA’s Clare Hill investigates.

There’s a lot of noise surrounding social media – and rightly so. According to Ofcom’s latest report, seven in 10 UK adults have a social media profile (and a higher proportion for those just approaching adulthood), while in March, the UK collectively spent 50 billion minutes on Facebook.

Hardly a week goes by without a new platform (Beme anyone?) or some new bells and whistles from the major players, like Twitter’s addition of video or brand-oriented data packages such as that between Facebook and Nielsen. But for content marketers (indeed, for any marketers), it’s a complex world.

Of course, we know that content and social go hand in hand together. Many brands already demonstrate this live, every day.

We surveyed our members and a number of brand owners on the topic of social media and to explore the relationship between the medium and content marketing. The results showed that nearly 70% said social is important to content marketing, while 79% will spend more on it next year (of which 47% will increase their spend and will spend up to 50% more).

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The survey further demonstrated why social matters, with 57% of respondents listing amplification as its main purpose, followed by use for building a fan-base, customer acquisition, and retention. It is also seen as a very consumer-first approach, with over 40% agreeing that consumers have the most control over driving a social content marketing strategy, ahead of the client (31%).

But how do content and social work best? Which platforms work best for which brand purpose? How should brands best approach social content? What are the rules to follow and the traps to avoid?

The individual articles written by contributors which follow on from our first report earlier this year – Content Marketing and Data Intelligence – help broaden our understanding of social media. The pieces are all written by our varied membership and full of great insight and useful and timely case histories from brands such as Club 18-30, Hyundai, Evian, Vue Cinemas and ASOS.

If anything, the coming together of social and content demonstrates, above all, the requirement for both a properly thought-through content strategy and a close relationship between brand and content specialist.

Content marketers believe social media is vital to their strategies, with 69% calling it ‘very important’ and nearly 90% agreeing that the growth of social has had a positive influence on content marketing strategies.

There are other clear lessons too. One is that social is pre-eminently a content-demanding channel. As many in the industry will agree – “there’s only one thing worse than not being on social media and that’s being inactive on social media.” In a nutshell, if you’re on social, you need content – and lots of it, regularly.

And if social is always-on, then your content must be too. This means running a newsroom-style operation or co-opting customers to generate User Generated Content – or both.

Either way, content in social needs to be topical and authentic, two forces that put pressure on traditional brand attitudes towards control. As one respondent to our survey put it: “That’s what makes social exciting. It isn’t dished up on a plate and it’s mostly a bottom-up phenomenon.”

One standout point we’ve seen is that social media is no longer a cheap or free channel. Organic reach has declined and essays from MEC and ITN in our report focus on the use of paid social. This is echoed by our survey: nearly 60% of the respondents currently invest in paid social media, and of those that don’t, nearly half (42%) will in the next six months.

The articles also demonstrate how the key social media platforms are tackling their Achilles heel: proof of effectiveness. Perhaps the rise of paid social and the need for platforms to show proof of effectiveness are linked.

These will help build the confidence of brands in social, but it’s clear from some of the verbatim responses to our survey that the analytics need to be improved. “We need more work on attribution to justify further investment to ROI-centric senior execs,” says one.

The industry is divided over the issue of social media measurement; 28% are confident in their ability to accurately measure its return on investment (ROI), however 42% are unsure if this is possible.

It is important to take note of this, and part of our mantra is effectiveness and we both encourage and push for anything that helps content marketers prove that what they do works. The pace at which social media is growing in power and influence is remarkable, and that there are many opportunities for brands to use this to their advantage to make their voices heard.

Clare Hill is managing director of the CMA.