Businesses are scampering to get their social marketing plans up and running and while overall advertising and marketing budgets are dropping with every month, social marketing is becoming a focus area of choice for many. Whether it’s spending on community social software platforms, hiring social networking superstars, community managers or roping in influential Twitter users when it comes to social marketing budgets, few expenses are spared. Yet, it’s not uncommon to find businesses with massive marketing and advertising budgets look for free content writers or post advertisements seeking content writers at 5$ a blog post and 20$ to do a website copy. Even with the most enigmatic online personality who can build followings on social sites quickly and the most advanced social software technology, a social marketing effort is only going be as effective as the content it’s efforts are based on.

Perhaps best said by Joe Pulizzi of the Junta42 blog in a post he published in July this year:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, social media doesn’t work without relevant, valuable and consistent content. Success in social media relies on a web content strategy that works for the brand and especially for the brand’s advocates.

Running a community, sharing links on Twitter, blogging, search marketing, inbound marketing, online marketing promotions or landing pages all rely on having great content to generate that conversation or value that draws the right people. That “content creation” is a core component of all subsequent social marketing and online marketing activity and needs to be accounted for by businesses.

What needs to be considered about content?:

• It’s a core component of social media and a lot of other activity is built around it and relies on it
• Creating content involves considerable investment in terms of time, effort or money. Even a one man business running a daily blog to create awareness needs the owner to spend considerable time daily to keep posts fresh.
• It’s a constant requirement not a one time purchase. As long as you need to improve search traffic results, deliver something engaging to your audiences or keep a social marketing program running, you need a supply of content.
• It needs to be accounted for in marketing budgets and feature separately for any online marketing plans to really measure true costs of online marketing and accurately track progress.

Good social marketing campaigns are fueled by a great supply of quality content. Just take a look around:

Successful software product company 37Signals much loved blog Signal Vs Noise and ebooks like Getting Real have fueled a huge online fan following for the business who will generate massive marketing for anything they do.

Inbound marketing company Hubspot’s exceptional content in the form of blog posts, videos, comics, podcasts, Slideshare presentations and online TV show is behind the huge buzz they have generated online around their business and drew a large customer base in a relatively short time.

The evidence is consistent with every sucessful social marketing effort. They are all backed by great content and to build a supply of great content, a dedicated effort is needed. One that clearly addresses content creation and content marketing as a core part of the overall social marketing strategy. Do you have your consistent supply of online content figured out?