For many of you, the obvious platform when we say ‘Social Media’ is Facebook, but is this the best or the only place that you should be investing your precious marketing time & spend?

To fulfill the marketing promise of social media you need to be doing the right things in the right places. Your industry, your product or service & your marketing strategy are all determining factors that lead you to the answer of the best place or places for you to create your online presence.

For generating brand awareness and offering exceptional customer support—not to mention helping your bottom line—you first need to figure out where your customers hang out online.

Here’re 5 ways to figure out where your customers, and potential customers are hanging out online.

 

1. Ask your current Customers

The simplest and most direct way to get an answer on where your current customers spend their time online is to come right out and ask them. Set up a simple survey (SurveyMonkey is a great tool for this) then funnel them to it via email. Or call a few of your top customers using the good old telephone.

If you have a store, ask them in person or create a basic survey they can complete at the counter. You’ll want them to rate which social media platforms they use the most, broken out for business and private use. What do they like about each of them? How do they respond to the marketing approaches?

If you’ve asked the right questions in the right way, and gotten enough responses to reach some meaningful solutions, you should have a pretty good idea of where to focus your social media efforts for your current customers.

Now you need to cast the net more broadly to capture potential customers, too.

 

2. Look over your previous social network data

If you’ve been actively posting content to your Facebook/Instagram/Blog, you already have some data you can use to help focus your social media efforts. Look over your share counts & interactions and check which platforms are getting the most. If no one is sharing your content on Instagram you don’t need to go there.

Zone in on the top handful—maybe just two or three—of the platforms where your company content is being shared the most.

 

3. Find out where your competitor content is getting shared

Chances are, your competitors are also putting out content on social media, and some better than others. All you have to do is find out where. That’s one of the tasks a tool like Buzzsumo was designed to perform. It shows you where your competitor content is being shared: on which social media platforms.

The people and platforms sharing content from your competitors content are people and platforms that will likely be highly receptive to content from you.

 

4. Do your basic keyword research

Every good social media marketing plan begins with basic keyword research. Buzzsumo comes to the rescue again. Type in a keyword phrase that’s big in your industry, like maybe “custom manufacturing”. Buzzsumo returns:

  • a list of the most shared content on that topic, and

  • how many shares it got on each platform

Keyword research not only yields insight on where folks interested in your type of content are spending their time online. It also shows what type of content—e.g., articles, infographics, video, lists, etc.—they tend to share most often.

 

5. Hire a Professional!

Social Media is constantly changing and new services and methods mean that you must keep up no matter where your online presence.

If you don’t have the time to invest into your Marketing Strategy & keeping your Social Media  accounts updated then invest your time into looking after your customers and invest your marketing budget into a Professional who will ensure you get the best return for your business.

I would love to hear your thoughts and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Email me at fleur@marketmycompany.co.nz or visit www.marketmycompany.co.nz to learn more.

 

Take care
Fleur
021 045 6275