In order for your social media activities to be successful you need to make sure you are targeting the right audience and building a targeted community.
What is a targeted audience and community – The people who are interested in your subject, product and service. An audience who you can a build know like and trust with.
Many people build an audience of people who are not targeted and interested in what they are talking about, and this is why people find social media not working. They do this just to build their numbers on their followings.
Buying likes, followers and Google + circles is going the wrong way in building your audience. It’s not all about the numbers. It’s about the quality of the people following you. If you build a community of targeted followers they will notice your messages, share your content and tell people about you.
The first step you should take before even considering what social media platforms you are going to use is to think about who your target audience are.
Once you know who they are, you can then go and find them on the social media platforms and engage with them.
If you do not carry out this task then you may be interacting on a social media platform where your target audience are not hanging out!
Firstly you need to brainstorm who your target audience are? Think about their age, gender, location, what their interests are, TV programmes they watch, and radio they listen too. Also think about the key people in the industry they are already listening to and following.
Facebook graph search now helps you find the interests and likes of your target audience. I recommend you look at this when considering building your audience on Facebook. I will explain Facebook graph search in a future blog post.
After breaking down your target audience its then that you can go on the social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google + etc. and see whether your target audience are engaging and active on there.
You can also research to see if you competitors are actively engaging and building an audience on the platforms as well. This will give you a good indicator as to whether it’s worth you spending the time and resources to post and work on that particular social media platform.
Once you have then established that your target audience are on those social media platforms its then that you can set up your company pages and start posting engaging posts, information and news.
Make sure you join in on conversations with your audience, build that know like and trust factor with them. Nurture your community and share your best content. If you share your best content your audience will share with their followers and audience which will increase your reach and company brand.