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.
James Noble recently instagrammed this photo of a great ‘upcycled’ takeaway coffee carrier.
I re-grammed it (repeated it on Instagram) and tweeted it, with effusive excitement about recycling, reduced waste and innovation. I cc’d various cafes who may be interested to use this carrier.
Your organisation can have this ‘agility’ too: an interest in listening to customers, systems setup so that staff check and reply in real-time, and a fun, upbeat style that engages.
How?
It involves training your people in using online sites (preferably sites they’re interested in – such as Instagram and Twitter – and that your market / customers are using), setting up processes with times that people are listening (or perhaps your employees are often online checking as Jackson is), and defining the style and tone you wish to use for your business. As your people use online more, the style and process will be natural extension of every day business.
Contact us by clicking here. We’d love to co-design an easy, fun and agile system that suits you and your people.
This week at Runway Digital, we’re excited to give you content planning insight (templates, guidance and clever tips) via Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn. Tune in on your favourite channel to Lift Off!
We think simply about content (tweets, Facebook posts etc) – combining both spontaneous and automatic.
Spontaneous: you want to share there and then in the moment. It may be very time-relevant. (Often the easiest and what people and companies do when they start publishing on Social Media.)
Automatic: plan ahead campaigns that will engage, entertain, teach and provide value to your audience. Schedule using Buffer.
Planning content starts with thinking about what your audience loves and needs. What can you provide. Plus, how you can provide to save them time. (Your audience reading and watching lots online may delay them doing what they need to.)
Now’s the time to think about topics you want to publish through the year and how often. A good start is month by month. What do you want to publish in January and February? Do you want to post once a week or once a weekday?
Then – if you have the time – get into more detail. Think about topics that you want for a few days / weeks – sometimes referred to as a campaign. Perhaps there’s a topic that is important and one around a product you have for your audience. Think about how it’s best distributed – via a combination of Facebook offers, tweets, Facebook posts and would a Pinterest board be useful. What time is it best to send each of these posts and how could you get influencers in your market to be involved? Is there a way to include also in your physical marketing – e.g. brochures, signage.
We’ve been busily recrafting two of our unique sessions to an online format. We will be running two sessions 8 – 9 PM Melbourne time (EDT), Tuesdays 29 November, 2011 and 6 December, 2011.
Come along!
The sessions will cover:
1. Online Content Planning (creating months of non-time-dependent tweets and Facebook updates that are highly valued by your customers), and
2. Twitter Audience Building (finding and connecting with relevant customers and advocates – and doing so in a way where you can reach many people quickly).
These sessions will show how to use the Internet for the results you seek (such as: online sales, reaching your customers, etc) and how to have a Social Media system that gives you the most from the time you have available.
Samantha Bell will be running these sessions. Sam is the Managing Director of Runway Digital and has run this Social Media consultancy since 2006. She has refined the systems presented through thousands of hours of use and working with hundreds of clients. Information on Sam and Runway Digital is here.
Both workshops will include time for you to ask questions so that you gain a lot that is relevant to your business. Specifics on each session is below.
For those who have trained with Runway Digital in the past 6 months, these sessions cover ideas you have heard and remind you of specifics to reiterate what you have heard. Others who have trained with us a lot longer ago, we will update you on our favourite online tools and clever practices to improve Twitter, Facebook and other sites.
Join the discussion to enhance your online system! The price of these sessions may be recouped through your next sale via Twitter and your highly valued online content.
This session covers how to publish consistent and regular information online so that your audience is engaged. We will have fun with PostIt notes and show you how to develop months of non-time-dependent Facebook and Twitter updates. We will cover how to improve Twitter and other sites, content planning, scheduling, time management and automation tools used to publish updates. Also covered: other ways of gaining content and relevant sites – as well as an open discussion about what works for others.
To complement the valuable content you are publishing online, in this session we will show how to strategically analyse your audience and rapidly grow it on Twitter. (Increasing numbers by 500 a month is very possible.) Examples of tools to automate to quickly grow the number of people who know about you that are relevant to your business. Also covered: recommendations of great services for Facebook audience building.
Yesterday, Jen Sheahan of FB Ads Lab was on stage at James Schramko’s Fast Web Formula 3 conference. She has had many businesspeople approach her saying they “Don’t get Facebook”.
We have had similar experiences hearing businesspeople saying they “Don’t get Twitter” or “Twitter isn’t for me and my business.”
This motivated Samantha Bell to prepare this Twitter presentation outlining our formula, developed over the last few years to improve Twitter and learn how to make the most out of this great social media site.
