Blog by Runway Digital Capt’n, Samantha Bell.
This week I’m writing about strategic social media – namely alliances and partnerships and how they can help you grow your audience.
So, let’s get into it…
Have a think about these questions:
Where are your potential customers online?
What sites are they using?
What are they engaging with online – what information, videos, conversations?
Who are your potential customers influenced by (companies, individuals, associations, media)?
* Is it a online newspaper or magazine? What organisations or brands do they follow?
* What associations are they part of?
* Which celebrities or experts do they listen to?
* What activities do they do and is there an club that is promotes this?
Which of these influencers have hundreds or thousands of your potential customers? Think of who has groups of 500 of your customers or a thousand or thousands. Where do your customers congregate?
Go for it – create a list.
Get online, search around, find these organisations and groups that influence those people you wish to reach.
Make a note of which of these organisations would be great to get in contact with (send them an email or tweet them or connect via LinkedIn or Facebook or phone!).
Work out what you would like these organisations to do for you online. Work our what you can offer these organisations in exchange for them promoting what you do (e.g. commission on products, promotion of their site, vouchers, …). Get in touch with them. (If there’s many, prioritise who you want to contact first.)
One tweet or Facebook update from someone who influences your potential customers can create a lot of attention for you and have you quickly connect with who you want to.
Here’s an example:
If our potential customers are aeroplane travellers, we’d think of where they are online: e.g. online travel sites such as Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor, blogs where people exchange their favourite travel locations, they’d be tweeting about their next trip. From this thinking we may consider getting in contact with Lonely Planet and travel bloggers with the largest audience (found through doing a google search on this topic). We may also research via google those travel blogs about specific subjects and contact bloggers in these subject areas with audiences of at least active 5,000 readers per month. From there, we prioritise, get in touch with those on our list, hone our thinking about our audience, and get more informed about how to reach our audience and what works.
Just in case this seems like a lot of work, remember this can save a lot of time!
Enjoy!
Remember we’re here to see you lift-off online. Engage with us on Twitter or Facebook or other sites to ask us questions and give us insight to your success. We love to hear.
Photo: Red Bull clever example on Instagram.
We’re interested to hear from you via Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn. Here’s to your lift-off!
Click through to our Pinterest board to see great examples of people and companies who have digitally lifted-off.
