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| What Should YOUR Strategy Be With Social Networking? |
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Many people jump into the river of social media and networking without having a plan. Plans in the current virtual social world are crucial to help in knowing whether you’re succeeding in connecting with your market, or just wasting time with building content.
Here are six key steps to take in order to make sure your social networking efforts obtain success:
1) Determine where your market is.
Just because “everyone” is joining or telling you to create a presence on a particular social networking site doesn’t necessarily mean that YOUR AUDIENCE is there. Is your audience young, or artistic based? Then maybe you should consider Myspace instead of putting time and energy into Facebook that consistently has a growing older crowd. Is your market Latino, or is most of your audience based in Central or South America? Then maybe you should look at establishing a presence on Hi5 and focus your efforts there.
Knowing where your audience is, what their age range, and other key components that make up YOUR markets’ unique DEMOGRAPHICS are CRITICAL in targeting them with SUCCESSFUL results.
2) Create content that best fits your market.
Just because YOU like something, DOESN’T MEAN that you should POST IT. Many people doing updates, or posts for talent, or corporations I’ve noticed will post personal pictures (their horses, or cat in the living room, etc.). If you’re trying to establish a corporate image on a fan page for a BBQ sauce manufacturer, then showing your pro-PETA t-shirt off in a post may not be the best way to establish credibility with your audience. THINK about what you’re GOING TO POST, and ask yourself, “Is THIS going to HELP in connecting or gaining SUPPORT from my AUDIENCE?”
3) What are you going to share?
In the same way that content relevance is crucial, sharing information can mean the difference between GAINING “fans or friends,” and LOOSING viewers. If you’re using twitter to connect, don’t just re-tweet something because it sounds like a good idea to you, or gives YOU the chance to win something. Make sure you VALUE THE EYES of your viewers, and keep that in your content “filtering process” ALL THE TIME. Having discussions about topics relating to your products, or about a press release are great ways to establish a personal connection with your audience. Timing these immediately after a scheduled announcement, and then taking time to dialogue with your viewers will help in BOOSTING your followers, and fan numbers. Just randomly posting things that you deem “shareable” will only WASTE YOUR TIME, prove that you have a serious lack of consistency, and never give you the traffic to your relevant pieces of content.
