Web Secret #194: The 10 Commandments of Social Media Content Marketing

There's a reason I have been reading Jeff Bulla's blog since 2008.

He writes fabulous posts on social media marketing. The 10 Commandments of Social Media Content Marketing is a case in point.

Jeff quotes Eric Schmidt, (then CEO of Google,) who stated in 2010: “Every two days, we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003”.

• 48 hours of videos uploaded to YouTube every minute
  
• YouTube receives 3 billion views per day
  
• 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day
  
• Twitter – 200 million tweets per day
  
• more than 300 billion emails a day
  
• Text Messages in 2011 – more than 7 trillion

What about your marketing message? How does it get heard?

1. Get Focused
Who are you speaking to? Provide content that communicates with your customers and prospects in a language they understand.

2. Create Goals for your Content
What are you trying to achieve? Capture emails, provide leads, nurture prospects or improve your visibility to search engines?

3. Become a Publisher
You no longer have to wait for your local printer to print off 10,000 marketing brochures and then mail them out. Now you can write a blog post, email it to your subscribers, tweet the link to your Twitter followers, and promote it on Facebook.

4. Solve Problems
Write content that shows people how to fix a problem in a way that is relevant to your industry and market.

5. Include Calls to Action
Don’t forget to include calls to action with your content. It could be to "subscribe", "buy", "make an appointment" or "register".

6. Talk like a Human
Being “Authentic” is the new black.

7. Show What Works
Case studies that “show” how your product/services are used are much more effective than “telling“.

8. Have some Fun
Not always, but sometimes, it helps enormously to present yourself as having a sense of humor.

9. Publish Everywhere
Make your content ubiquitous – place it everywhere from your blog or website to the outposts on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc., where your customers hangout.

10. Create Multi-Media
If relevant to your clients, publish your content in several different formats and media types. This may includes videos, podcasts, photos, whitepapers, info-graphics and eBooks.

That's it. That's all you have to do.