While it's true sites like Facebook and Twitter have millions of members, there are also dozens of others which may prove to be of greater marketing value to your business. It's a matter, first, of knowing who your potential customer is. Then determining where they hang out.
While knowing who your clients are seems the most sensible info to have, a great number of entrepreneurial, small, and medium companies have little more than a basic idea of their ideal or actual customer. Or how to reach them in this socially oriented world.
To reach your best clients, through social media marketing and social networking, you must first pinpoint their wants and needs; to flesh them out as individuals with their own unique lifestyles. And this allows you to find the right social venue they prefer to spend their time on.
Here's just a few examples of what you need to know about potential clients:
* What type of life they likely live * Salary and amount of disposable income * Married with kids, single. * Where and how they live. Including city or burbs, home or apartment dwellers. * Type of job, whether they're a biz owner. * Buying Habits
Actually knowing who needs and buys your products and services helps you get off to a fast start. Saving you time and expense by leading you to sites potential clients are highly likely to socialize on. And helping you eliminate others quickly. Not to worry. There are dozens of top companies armed with customer research you can tap into.
Here's the lowdown on some top social sites to consider:
As you probably know, LinkedIn is the top site for businesses. Whether small, medium, large or entrepreneurial, LinkedIn stats show about 147+ million members spread over dozens of countries.
If you're looking for owners and top level decision makers, LinkedIn is the place to find them. Here's stats from LinkedIn Estimated Target Audience 2/12:
Users: Males - 57.9% ages 25-54 - Females - 42.1% 58.5 million users USA High Tech - 14% Finance - 12.4% Manufacturing - 10.1% Engineering - 6.7% Info Technology - 6.1% Service 2.3% Legal - 1.9% Approximately 10.8% are Entrepreneurs. 9.5% in Sales. 8.3% in Operations 39% are Managers, Directors, VP's, Chief Officers, owners Approx - 68% are company decision makers of some type.
Bottom line - if your product or service requires a decision maker, you can email them through LinkedIn InMail. Or find contact info on their profile page. Since you can personally contact them, you will likely avoid most gatekeepers. Giving you the perfect opportunity to connect on a more level playing field. To confidently, and clearly, present your product or service.
Pinterest is a social networking platform with millions of members. In fact a recent comscore.com study reports they are the fastest growing website ever. With over 10 million unique monthly visitors.
The site is set up so members create their own photo 'pin boards'. These boards can be made up of photos and info about anything that interests them. Members gather photos of items they love, want, or are interested in. Then post the photos to their pin boards for others to see and/or repin. They're also encouraged to follow others.
According to a recent report from Modea.com: 68.2% are female users. Aged 24 to 44. 50% of these women have children and a median household income of $100K.
Further, if your products include lingerie, baby products, fashion, food, recipes, wedding associated items, home decor, personal services, for example, you're in luck. You'll likely find a huge market here.
According to Inside Network's AppData tracking service, "over 1/5th of Printerest's users use Pinterest each day. At the start of 2012 the daily user count was just 810,000, but now its at 2 million according to AppData."
Pinterest is becoming an obsession for tons of enthusiastic women who sing its praises. And they're not afraid to post, repin and share what they like. Which gives you more free marketing and PR. A greater opportunity to brand your biz.
FourSquare
Have a local business selling physical products or services? Foursquare may be for you.
Current stats show they've grown tremendously. Over 25 million people use Foursquare to connect with places. Over 1 million businesses currently are promoting their biz on Foursquare. Alexa stats show this audience an active 18-34, some college and postgraduate work. With an almost equal number of male and female users.
While visitors can check their site via desktop, mobile is the top way people check in. And Foursquare offers a free app to help people connect to their system.
Visitors can share and save their experiences at places visited. Plus offered personalized recommendations for places to go. Visitors search by location, service, product or type. From burgers and movie theaters to pizza parlors, customers can easily locate it using FourSquare's app.
Here's a few more social networks, which may be new to you, but are thriving:
Buzznet - 10 million users - Music and Pop culture Cafe Mom 1.25 million active users - Pregnancy, Babies, Home Life Classmates.com - 50 million - school, college, work, military Flixter - Movie sharing - 63 million users
Once you've developed a bio, on your target customer, then search for social sites where they're known to engage. And while the numbers for that network may be large, this doesn't necessarily mean you'll receive a great response. Discover how and why they socialize on that particular site. Before taking time to join and reach out.
By researching and considering groups in addition to, or other than, Facebook and Twitter, you can better determine where to expend your efforts. Plus you'll find it easier to organize a marketing plan which presents your message in a way that's readily accepted by potential clients using the channels you choose.
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