Here are some questions to ask before you begin your social marketing campaign:
- Who is likely to be most interested in my content?
- Who do I want to communicate with and why?
- What kind of audience does this social community have?
- What are people currently saying about my website or business?
- Which type of person is likely to purchase my product or service?
- What tools or online services do my target audience use?
- Which websites does my target audience frequent on the net?
- What do my target audience have in common with each other?
You can send some of these questions to a few friends or colleagues and compile their answers. Each individual has a unique perspective and different ways of using the web and their answers will give you a good general idea of your potential online customers and their preferences . After determining your social media objectives, you need to define your actual target audience. If your website or business has been around for a while, you should already have a rough idea of who you need to reach.
In the context of social media marketing, the goals you’ve chosen will partially determine your target audience as well. For instance, if you’re looking to increase overall sales conversions, you want a social media demographic that is profitable and potentially interested in your product or offer. If you’re trying to build links, your target audience should be people with the ability to link or influence links. (e.g. bloggers, social media users). While your social media goals may partially determine the crowd to target, your business model is also an important factor to consider. What are you selling and who is likely to be interested?
Sometimes your target audience crosses many demographic segments. If you run a general technology blog your audience profile may be quite varied. You will have programmers, marketers and both male and female tech enthusiasts of all ages.
Some business models have in-built audience profile. Women’s magazines have a more defined audience which can be broken down by gender, age or even geographic location. The communities you target should have users of this mold. Social media channels can certainly get you traffic, attention and links but keep in mind that a big part of your potential customers/readers may not know about or use these social websites. This is certainly the case for geo-specific small businesses. The marketing equation and strategy for small businesses goes something like this: social media visibility = brand awareness + word of mouth = new customer.
This is an indirect method to increase sales and your customer base. While extremely powerful as a tool to spread brand awareness, social media marketing should be integrated alongside traditional search marketing goals; you should always try to improve the visibility of your website in the search engine result pages.
Done correctly, social media marketing will get you more customers and increased sales. The results will not be immediate but with persistance and a never give up attitude , succes will come sooner than you think.
