Get to Know Your Audience

One of the most amazing elements of social media tools such Twitter and Facebook is that they serve up free information about our audiences, if we take the time to roll up our sleeves and poke around. So put on your research hat and take a hard look at your followers, those you follow, friends, and the chatter in which they engage. The findings of this valuable research enable us to build the profile of our social customer. With an accurate profile, we can fine-tune our message and the timing of its delivery.
 

Social Media Examiner recently covered the 4 Ways to Discover More About Your Audience With Social Media in its blog. I’m giving it a quick summary. The short post is worth a read for all of its great tips and some of the specialized tools available if you want to take your analysis to the next level.
 
The bios of your followers often describe what is important to them, where their passions lie. While some people don’t take their bios seriously, most take considerable time to come up with the perfect abbreviated description of their social media persona. These bios can reveal useful information which, in turn, can be applied to fine-tuning our marketing messages.
 
Knowing when people are reading our content is a key component to delivering our message in a timely fashion. Check the timing of your followers’ posts. Try to tailor your posting schedule to their activity schedules to avoid your posts getting lost in their news feeds while they are off-line. For example, if you are trying to reach young mothers, they are most likely to be socially active in the early mornings and after 8pm. If social media is a large part of your following’s day, posting during regular business hours will most likely hit them while they are paying attention. Monitor the timing of the chatter for a while to get a sense of the best time(s) to try to engage your audience.
 
Twitter and Facebook give us the opportunity to connect with the top influencers in our respective niche businesses. Take advantage of it by following the gurus in your industry. Learn from their social expertise and mistakes. Engage them and you may find you catch their eye, leading to increases in your own traffic.
 
The social sites our audiences frequent can help us develop our content. Understand our audiences’ interests and we can post content that will draw them to us.
 
Take the time to learn from your audience, whether it is large or still building to a respectable level. There will be surprising discoveries as well as expected trends.  Twitter and Facebook are handing this information to us! We should get as much out of it as we can.

Find Your Core

Identifying and conveying the heart and soul of your small business is critical to the success of your social media strategy. Author and social media guru, Jay Baer calls this your “One Thing.” Identify your “One Thing” and it will affect every content and posting decision you make. In Social Media Examiner’s blog, Amy Porterfield highlights Jay’s approach. With some easily recognized examples, mixed with two examples of small businesses with which I have been working, here is how we find the heart and soul of your brand.

Take off your marketing hat and ask yourself, what does my business actually do? What is at the core? If you have initiated a social media strategy and begun to build a fan base, it is important to ask yourself, what do my fans say when they are happy? The answers to these questions bring you to your “One Thing.”

Jay’s examples of the “One Thing” include Disney = magic and Apple = innovation. Your goal is to make the same simple equation for your small business.

Pipal Leaf Yoga Studio competes with a number of yoga studios as well as health clubs offering yoga, not to mention the other types of exercise which also appeal to the yoga crowd. What does Pipal Leaf Yoga actually do? It offers authentic yoga without heat and hype. The fundamental principles of yoga practice are at its core, rather than weight loss. The combined health of mind, body and spirit surround the core.

The architect who has hung his own shingle simply identifies his core as the design of buildings. He has other initiatives such as sustainability, value and timeliness. But his “One Thing” is simply, building design.

Take this “One Thing” and make it the voice of your strategy across every network.

Pipal Leaf Yoga can post content defending yoga when the practice is criticized in mainstream publications by steering the conversation back to the healing nature of a practice performed correctly – aimed at the health of the whole person. She can broaden her content beyond yoga by speaking to her audience’s soft spots with organic recipes, book and music recommendations, and a variety of topics such as how our bodies and spirits are affected by the phases of the moon. 

The architect can engage his audience by posting beautiful photos of buildings he admires but had nothing to do with, and support them with content on how those beautiful designs influence his daily work. He can blog about local legislation and its impact on the future architectural make-up of the town.

It all comes back the core - the heart and soul of your business.

Have you defined your small business’ core? How do you apply it in your content?