Developing Your Social Media Strategy: Where is Your Audience Hanging Out? (Part 4)

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This is the fourth part of a series of posts about developing your social media strategy. Here, we will discuss finding your audience online.

Can you find your audience, or are they hiding too?

Can you find your audience, or are they hiding? (Photo credit: Dan Zen) 

WHERE is Your Audience Hanging Out?

Are they on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr or somewhere else? How many platforms you can actively participate in depends on your budget. By actively participating, I mean pushing out useful content, soliciting feedback, and engaging in a dialogue.

However, you can still maintain a presence on other platforms, even if you are only able to update it once every two weeks. Of course, if you can, it would be best to monitor it every day just for any questions that need an immediate response, but that should not take too much time.

It’s important to have that presence to reserve the url for your business or nonprofit, but you also want to let people know that you’re out there. It can take a long time to build up a following, so if you decide you’re not going to be that active on Google+ yet, you can set up an account for that time when things may change. Then you will have the customized url you need, plus some followers.

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Developing Your Social Media Strategy: What Platforms Are You Already Using? (Part 3)

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This is the third in a series of posts about developing your social media strategy. Here, we will look at how to assess your online presence.

How do you currently communicate with your audience online?

How do you currently communicate with your audience online? (Photo credit: Brian Solis)

WHAT Platforms Are You Already Using?

How do you currently communicate with your audience online? It could be through your website, email, press releases, blogs, or social media. Make a list and include the basics in one document. Assessing what you currently have will help you figure out where you can go, and where you should go (covered in more detail later in the HOW section).

While this post is about developing your social media strategy, it is important to keep in mind what other information your organization is pushing out online as well. If you work in a small organization, you may be putting all of this information online yourself. But if you work in a larger organization, this may be divided between several people or departments. In developing your plan and process moving forward, make sure you keep things as integrated as possible.

Most likely, you will be pulling information from your website or email to re-use on social media. So it’s good to know exactly what is being communicated. It will also help you to better respond to your audience. They might ask questions about what’s on the website, or what’s in a press release.

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Developing Your Social Media Strategy: Why Do You Need Goals? (Part 2)

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This is the second in a series of posts about how to develop your social media strategy. Here, we will discuss why you should use social media, by helping you figure out your goals.

Stand out from the crowd.

You have the potential to reach more of your audience if you can stand out from the crowd. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

WHY Do You Need Goals?

Yes, it’s all about reaching your audience, which is something organizations have been doing for centuries whether it’s through traveling sales people — who tell you great stories about the miracle cure or cleaning products they hope to sell you — snail mail, or other advertising.

The only difference is that we’re now doing this in an online environment where the whole world could potentially be watching. So, in some ways it’s scarier, but you have the potential to reach more of your audience if you can effectively break through that barrage of information people see online every day.

But first, you need to figure out what what goals you want to accomplish. These goals should help you meet your organization’s goals. Here are a few examples, which should be further tailored to your organization.

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