The Perfect Marketing Trio: Blogging, Email Marketing and Social Media

There are so many options when it comes to marketing your small business. Digital marketing can be especially confusing for those who have limited experience and don’t know where to start. If you’re just starting your digital marketing efforts, there are three activities in particular that can really make an impact online. Learn more about the perfect marketing trio:  blogging, email marketing and social media, and how the three marketing tactics together can be a real powerhouse in elevating your brand.

Why marketing efforts need to work together

Depending on how many people handle your marketing, you may have one person managing your social media, another crafting your email marketing efforts, and a third that creates all the content for your blogs. If those three groups aren’t effectively coordinating with one another, you’re creating silo marketing. What is silo marketing?  Silo marketing is isolated, disconnected or an incomplete integration of all channels and functions of marketing online. In digital marketing, that can completely undermine your online presence.  In business, the silo metaphor is applied to businesses with departments, units and functions that lack the means or motivation to work together. Unfortunately, a common departmental silo, particularly among small businesses, is marketing. Silo marketing can reduce the efficiency of a company’s communications. Sheer volume leaves each channel competing for consumers’ attention. Thus, the impact of each channel’s message drowns in the collective roar. Considering that most small businesses have limited resources in the first place, silo marketing is not conducive to success.

Why blogging works for small businesses

Blogging helps you showcase your business to customers and prospect, even potential vendors and business partners. Search Engine Journal said blogging helps to:

• Draw online traffic to your website.
• Nurture and convert customers for your business.
• Keep your current customers engaged.
• Differentiate you from other similar businesses.
• Grow demand and interest in your products or services.

It provides direct communication with you and the outside world, allowing you as a small business to share your expertise. Of course, once you create this fantastic content, you need a way to share it, which leads us to….

Why social media works for small businesses

Interacting with prospects, current customers and past customers on social media is an important marketing strategy for small businesses. Using social media helps you build brand awareness, increase your customer base, and connect with current and past customers to build better relationships. In fact, one study revealed 90% of marketers say social media is important to their business. Social media can also be one of the most affordable yet effective strategies for small business. Though you can pay for some advertising features, social media is free.

Blogging efforts create content that can be shared on social channels, further spreading your sphere of influence. Social media and content marketing such as blogging are made for each other! Social media is the prime vehicle on the Internet that drives your content to the correct destination, most likely your website. Social media can engage your targeted audience, give you a far-reaching publishing platform and reach out to a broad audience for brand awareness. It is critical for your small business to align it to social media to make your blogging efforts success. Social media is not the only way to share your content, however, which is why small businesses need to look at email marketing as well.

Why email marketing works for small businesses

Email marketing remains one of the most important communication tools in today’s small business world. Lyfe Marketing said it best in their article about email marketing being a no-brainer for small business. The article lists the following reasons why email marketing works for small businesses:

• Consumers prefer email
• Email reaches more mobile customers
• Email marketing is affordable
• Businesses get high ROI from email marketing
• Email integrates well with other marketing tactics, such as social media and blogging

How to best leverage blogging, email marketing and social media

While the three tactics work perfectly together, you need a small business marketing strategy to ensure you’re getting all you can out of the three, separately as well as a marketing trio. Basically, here is how each tactic can support the other two:

Blogging

Blogging provides the content needed to share on social media and in email marketing blasts. While it’s always a good idea to vary the kind of content you share on both social media and email marketing, blogging is ideal as its original content created by your small business that showcases your expertise, educates your customers, and provides value overall that will drive business to your site and generate leads. Of course, you can also link to your social accounts within a blog post as appropriate, or encourage people to subscribe to your blog so it is proactively emailed to your audience.

Social media

Social media is one of the most important platforms to promote your blog posts. According to CMI 93% of B2B marketers list social media as one of the top five content marketing tactics. You can share your blog pots on social media. You can also promote your online blog as a valuable resource for industry information. For email marketing, Facebook allows you to connect your email marketing platforms to your Facebook company page so people can sign up for your email list right from Facebook.

Email marketing

Image by https://blogs.oracle.com/marketingcloud/5-email-marketing-charts

Email marketing is another vehicle to share your blog posts. You can also promote your social media pages in your email blasts (most platforms have features where you can add follow and share buttons for all your social media channels).

Blogging, social media and email marketing really are the perfect marketing trio! Coordinate the efforts of these three tactics, cross promote and leverage all three to get the most out of your small business marketing. Not sure how best to coordinate these three tactics?  Engage the services of a company that specializes in small business marketing that can help you put together an effective and affordable plan.