6 Elements of Your Social Media Strategy: #1

Social media tends to be overwhelming to small business owners, so the first step I take when meeting with a client is to ask questions and listen carefully. The biggest hurdle any entrepreneur has in hiring an outside consultant to do social media is this: do they understand your business? That takes time, and many social media experts (and web developers who claim to be experts) don’t take enough time to learn about what you do. Without that, they will never be able to develop, implement, or maintain a proper social media strategy for you, and you’re wasting your time and money with them.

Whether you decide to tackle social media yourself or by hiring someone, you will need to identify six crucial elements of your campaign. Over the next two weeks I’ll be blogging about each step and providing a chart in a .PDF so you can answer these questions yourself.

Today we’ll tackle the first element: who is your audience?

You would be surprised at the number of entrepreneurs don’t know the answer to this question. Or, if they do, they are often too vague. Be obsessively specific here. While we all would love to think everyone will want our products, it just isn’t so.  Identify your potential buyers down to their:

• age
• sex
• education level
• income level
• what publications they read
• what websites they visit
• what their budget is
• are they local or nationwide

Even when you think you’ve identified buyers as much as possible, go further.

If this step is difficult for you, try it this way: who wouldn’t be interested in your product, and why? Sometimes identifying the negatives is easier than pinning down the positives, and it helps to further narrow down your audience.

Here are the links to all of the posts in this series:

6 Elements of Your Social Media Strategy:  #1 – Who are your customers?

6 Elements of Your Social Media Strategy:  #2 – What are you selling?

6 Elements of Your Social Media Strategy: #3: – Where are your customers?

6 Elements of Your Social Media Strategy: #4: – Why should your customers choose you?

6 Elements of Your Social Media Strategy: #5: – When/how often do you plan to reach your customers?

6 Elements of Your Social Media Strategy: #6: – How do you plan to engage your audience?

6 Elements of Your Social Media Strategy Slideshow & INFOGRAPHIC