Content Marketing vs. Inbound Marketing: The Winner? CONTENT!

take take take take enjoyment. Welcome to Social Business unplugged, helping you understand in plain English how to best leverage social media for your business. And now, here's the founder of windmill networking. Neal Schaffer. Greetings everybody this is Neal Schaffer from windmill networking and welcome to another episode of social business unplugged. Today I want to talk about the role of content in your social media marketing. You know, whenever I speak on social media content obviously plays a central role in how you engage in social media on whatever social network it might be, or whatever community you're trying to reach out to, in recently, within windmill networking, and this great cast of contributors and thought leaders that we have as bloggers, the never ending debate over the difference between content marketing, and inbound marketing came up. And it's funny, because when I present on social media, I use both terms, I believe, and just to set the record straight, and I think Bob Geller, who is our contributing blogger on content marketing, who helped set me straight, and he actually has a great blog post about content marketing trends in 2012 2013, sort of clearing up the confusion that you should definitely check out. But basically, the thinking about content marketing, inbound marketing, first of all before inbound marketing, and I should say that inbound marketing is the name of a book, the book is one of the classic sort of social media slash internet marketing books that are out there. And it was made by the founders of HubSpot. So you could consider inbound marketing a brand. And content marketing is a discipline that was founded by Joe Pulizzi, otherwise known as Hunter Joe and his Content Marketing Institute. And if you just do a search for content marketing versus inbound marketing, you're just going to find a ton of content about it. But visa vie social media, social media was made for people. So as brands, as companies, as institutions and organizations, you need to have conversations with people don't you. And depending on what your objective is, or obviously what your target demographic is, who the stakeholders are out there in the public content is one way in which you engage. And I have a very, very broad definition of content when it comes to social media. I'm not just talking about blog posts, or videos, or podcasts or posting links content could be in the form of a campaign in the form of an event in the form of a question in the form of a fill in the blank in the form of just a status update in the form of a discussion, like what you'd see at LinkedIn groups. So the conversation itself is content. And while some of that content may be directly related to your products and services in your company, sometimes that content is curated from third party sources. Sometimes that content is just for the sake of engagement. And through engagement, we increase our EdgeRank we deepen our relationship with the community and our followers, what have you. So content is really used across a lot of different levels and social media and content marketing. And although it has the word marketing behind it is really the use of content to help your customers and potential customers from you know, every single way through the marketing funnel, from, you know, creating awareness for your company, all the way to providing content as a service to your current customers to help support them. So if you compare that with inbound marketing in its raw form, if you read the book, you know what I think I actually have my copy of the book nearby, and I want to bring it out. But the idea of inbound marketing and like I said, I wish I had the book in front of me right now was really about how to get found online social media, SEO, blogging, what have you. And therefore getting found is more of what we would call brand awareness. It doesn't really go as far into the fuller definition of content marketing. From my perspective, you know, content is sort of one of the key drivers of what businesses do and social media, because that's how you engage. That's how you share. That's how you communicate in one way or another through content. So social media marketing, content marketing, absolutely not. And I don't think it's worthy of debate, you know, whether you want to use content marketing, whether you want to use inbound marketing, just knowing that the use of content is going to be critical to your social media marketing, which is another reason why the best way to be effective in social media marketing is to be able to provide that content in house and last podcast that talked a little bit about the insourcing of content. It's really all the stories that you have of the people in your company of how you've helped clients, customer service, inquiries, anecdotes that you hear from clients and what have you. There is just so much content that can be repurposed and shared as blog posts or as any of these other types of contents and social media that I mentioned. I should also point out that my view on content is very much shaped by my experience as a b2b sales slash biz dev slash marketing executive where, you know, in a b2b perspective, when I was trying to sell, whether it be semiconductors, whether it be embedded software or IPTV middleware, and some of these words are above a lot of your heads, if you're not an engineer, but really that from a b2b perspective, that buyers prospective buyers base their decisions on information. And it's not like a business to consumer cell, where you have reviews on Amazon, or on Yelp, or on all these different sites b2b, a lot of these, especially in the technology industry, these are very, very niche products, markets, that there aren't a lot of companies that use the products for, and therefore there really is no review community out there, it's based on how much information you can get an analyze, and therefore, I always made it my objective, when I met with a customer to always provide them a new piece of information. Now, this is before the era of social media. It was really before the era of content marketing, you know, we're talking about the internet at an earlier age where there just wasn't that much information available about products and services as you have now, but by providing that content, that in essence, was the engaging factor. So whenever I visited clients, I always wanted to make sure that I had something new a new piece of information to provide that client. And by making sure that I had that I knew that the client would always want to see me we'd be expecting me and anticipation. And that content, that resource for information that I could provide them whether it was based on my own company's new products or services, how our clients were using them or industry information. That was the key to my engagement with that customer and building a deeper relationship, which at the end of the day lead to more trust, and more business for me and my company. And that my friends and listeners really is what I see as the role of content and social media marketing is doing that exact same thing on a global scale now from one to many instead of a one to one closed environment of having to physically go and meet someone like we had to do in the old days. So hopefully I didn't age myself with this podcast. But thank you again for listening. And I welcome and appreciate all comments that you might have appreciate your ratings on iTunes. Feel free to engage with me on social media and make it a great rest of your day. Neal Schaffer signing out Bye Bye, everybody. You've been listening to social business unplugged with Neal Schaffer, social media author, consultant, speaker and university professor. If you'd like any specific topics covered on future episodes, or if you'd like to be interviewed for this podcast, please connect with me by email. Neal at windmill networking.com on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/neal Schaffer and on Twitter at Neal Schaffer. Please also visit windmill networking.com for daily Social Media for Business updates. Thanks for listening and make it a great day.