Member-only story
Social Media Marketing Trends
In an earlier post, I shared my view that the lack of trust is affecting the future of social media marketing as people have become less trusting of what they read online. While this is a good thing — to check manipulation by those with nefarious intents — it inevitability impacts the ability of social media marketers.
So, what can social media marketers do?
To me, brand journalism is the future. Brand journalism isn’t just a fancy name for content marketing. There is a slight, but fundamental difference, between the two.
While both content marketing and brand journalism are about producing content, content marketing is all about selling and moving the target audience along the sales funnel. Content that is produced is always about the product or service. While content marketing also delivers relevant and useful content, content marketing openly and directly sells to the audience. This is evidenced by the inclusion of calls to action like filling out an appointment form or clicking to buy. In content marketing, the target audience gets the feeling that they are being sold to.
This is where brand journalism differs. Brand journalism does not sell, at least not directly. In fact, similar to traditional journalism…
