Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 2: Exploring Content Marketing Platforms

In This Chapter

• Blogging for business
• Podcasting for professionals
• Diving into video
• Using images as content
• Getting social

As we discuss in chapter 1 of this minibook, content encompasses a wide variety of platforms, and every platform is beginner-friendly. After all, we all have to start somewhere. However, you may find you're more comfortable using some platforms than others, which is perfectly normal. Your content strategy can include one platform or all of them. As you become familiar with the different options, you can determine for yourself which are best for your needs.

Not to get ahead of ourselves, though — take a look at some of the different platforms available to you:

• Blogs: Informal, conversational, articles.
• Podcasts: Audio files akin to an online radio show. Podcasts can be a single person discussing issues or ranting, or it can be interviews, music, or news updates.
• Video: Videos can be used to promote, sell, entertain, and enlighten.
• Images: Use photographs in blog posts or alone to tell a story.
• Social media: Using Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, and/or other social networking sites as content — that is, to create your own post or to share relevant content that someone else created.

In this chapter, we explore some of the available platforms and talk about ways that you can use them all as part of your content marketing strategy.

Building a Blog

Blogs, such as the one shown in Figure 2-1, are ...