We read about it every day. New technology that has been developed to support overarching business strategies merely through social media data. Businesses with the right tools know how to use social data to answer critical strategic marketing questions such as:

• Do people like our products/services?
• Do people view us differently online vs. brick and mortar?
• How did our audience receive our last campaign? Did they react positively?

Social listening helps identify critical data about your customers, content preferences and industry trends. These attributes as stand alone metrics are valuable but can become critical factors to add context to your content marketing strategy.

Context is king, and it’ll be more prevalent in 2015. The bigger idea is that B2B or B2C have evolved into what I like to call H2H (human-to-human).

If businesses want to create successful relationships with customers through marketing, they need use data to tailor content that resonates with their audiences and compels them to take action. So whether this content sparks a connection with a warm lead or gets a customer, it all starts with context.

3 Ways to Add Your Content Marketing with Social Data

1. Review Your Facebook Audience

Context is your compass to new leads. Content marketing is all about speaking directly to the demands or interest of your audience. Ed Gillespie, recent Republican Senate candidate crunched the data from his Facebook fans and recognized Buffalo Wild Wings was the second most common Facebook “like” for conservative-leaning independents within his social network— the same kinds of people whom Gillespie desperately needed to get to the polls.

So to add context the Gillespie campaign posted a Facebook picture of the under-dog candidate at Buffalo Wild Wings sitting among fans, enjoying the Redskins game.

It’s about delivering a specific message to the right people at the most optimal time. Social data gives us a fantastic way to develop context about a situation and even alter advertising or other campaigns based on the success of previous campaigns.

Think about using data as a way to develop a successful context marketing strategy, which in turn allows you to reach prospective customers, turn them into leads, then qualified leads, and so on, and all in a hyper-relevant approach that drives new business without driving them away.

2. Create Content Tailored to Segmented Audiences

It’s time to dig deeper into the data of your web visitors. Facebook and Twitter have both provided advertising pixels that allow marketers to “tag” website visitors as a custom audience. To add context to your content marketing, you can create specific social posts related to each page or audience from your website.

This type of segmentation will ensure your promoted content is relevant to the needs or interests of your audience. This will give your team insights that are useful and actionable. Once you plan your customer audience segments your strategy will have a more comprehensive approach, your team will be able to create personalized and relevant marketing that people love.

3. Use LinkedIn Keyword Modifiers to Find Relevant Prospects

This one is for the sales people who need an icebreaker. It’s time to leverage your most recent case study and LinkedIn Search to get that next sales meeting. If you use Lead Builder and Premium Search, then you already know how effective they are for sales prospecting. To make use of your client success story and find a new customer, we’re going to search LinkedIn for “Past Employees” who have the same “Title” as your client, at a different “Company”

For example, if your most recent case study was with Social Strategy1 and your client was the marketing director, you could simply add context to your InMail pitch by suggesting your relevant industry experience with a relevant company. You can add modifiers like “AND” “OR” “NOT” in the “Title” search if you are unsure of the relevant corporate title. Boom! Prospecting with context.

Context is the main supplement to building solid relationships through content marketing

What is more exciting than getting to know customers on a deeper level? When developing content that’s targeted at a person’s point of need, it’s much more powerful than those ancient misaligned ads that irritate people or catch them at the wrong point in time.

There is always an opportune time, especially in business. For instance, let’s say you have a B2B lead who downloaded a case study from your site, signed up for your e-newsletter a couple weeks ago, and even frequently visits a handful of pages on your website 1-2 times a week.

Given this individual’s proactive interest, you may have already thought about sending targeted content that meet their needs — which is both personal and resourceful! This not only validates my point that there are gainful benefits to reading further into your data, but this is also an example of applying context to a lead nurturing scenario that will likely increase the chances of conversion.

About the author

A designer, entrepreneur and angel investor; Martin was co-founder of nclud, an internationally recognized and award-winning design agency. After a successful acquisition by Twitter in early 2012, Martin joined Twitter as Design Manager, with a primary focus on designing the design team. Most recently Martin was selected as a 2013 Presidential Innovation Fellow, working directly with the Executive Office of the President to tackle some of the governments largest problems.

Martin has extensive experience building and managing creative teams within start-ups, in-house and agency cultures. With an academic background in Advertising and Design; Martin brings with him a business-oriented design approach that aligns visual communication strategy with brand, product and user experience objectives. Martin studied Business Management at Columbia Business School and Yale School of Management.

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