That’s a broad question if there ever was one, but an important one at that. Before you embark on your business driven merry go round of social media mayhem, it might be worth first asking yourself a few simple questions.
1. Is my product interesting enough?
This might seem like a confronting question, but on a scale of likability to necessity, where do you think your product fits? If your product sits closer to the ‘likable’ side of the scale, it’s likely that your audience will react favourably, at a lesser cost. If your product sits closer the ‘necessity’ side of the scale, it will likely be harder and less cost effective to invoke a positive response from your audience. Just think, are you more inclined to interact with an Oscar winning actor, or a local dentist on social media? Ponder that question for a minute.
2. Who is my audience? How easy will it be to reach them?
If you think your product is interesting enough to thrust in front of an audience, you need to first actually identify an audience. You need to ask yourself, how old is my target audience? Where does my target audience live? What is my target audience interested in? How educated is my target audience? What industry does my target audience work within? Matching your message to the correct audience is key. Your product is only ‘boring’ because you aren’t reaching the right people. As a rule of thumb, there will always be a group of people interested in what you have to say, although as to how big this group will be, I ask how long is a piece of string?
When we develop a social media marketing plan we don’t initially focus on bringing in ‘phone calls’ or ‘web clicks’ or even ‘sales’. We focus on driving engagement via content marketing and providing an audience with actual ‘value’. People will read things of genuine interest to them, it’s as simple as that. We will discuss this topic more over the coming days, showing you how to grow an audience, generate engagement, then leverage response.
Hopefully these questions have helped you determine whether or not your message is a good fit for social media, or whether the majority of your budget should be allocated to pay per click platforms such as Google Ads. You’ve been told many times that your business ‘must’ be on social media, although some businesses simply aren’t a good fit.
