Social media starts with people
Social media presents us with a set of tools and rules that enable us to communicate in a different way. It’s important which tools you use to deliver your message to your target audience. However, let’s forget about these tools for a minute and think about the basics of any communication.
What’s your product?
What are its strengths and weaknesses? What’s the problem that your product solve? For example, a cold soft drink on a hot summer day solves a problem of thirst. So, when we sell soft drinks we sell thirst quenchers. So, when selling widgets, think about what problems those widgets solve and think of your product in terms of solutions it creates.
Who’s your audience?
What’s the demographics we are talking about? What do they do at work, in their spare time? Knowing who they are and what they do will help you figuring out the process they use to find solutions to their problems. A notion of personas comes in handy. Here’s a few resources to learn more:
What’s the decision process?
Given your product solves a problem, how does your audience go about solving it? Usually it’s a 5 stage process (problem identification, search for solutions, evaluation of alternatives, making the decision, evaluating the decision). But depending on your industry and / or product the process may be slightly different.
What tools / websites do they use?
Knowing who they are and what they do helps you to understand where they are online. Google AdPlanner is a great tool to find which sites / communities have your target audience’s interest. only then choose appropriate message, tools, and process. Marketing Charts is a great resource to get graphs and stats about online behaviours of your target audience.
Only after answering these questions you should look into picking social networks to join. A lot of people start the other way around and, I believe, this is the primary cause of confusion about social media. I hope that helps a bit. Good luck and let’s discuss!
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