- A preexisting association
- A common interest, or
- An alliance
Social Media Network Marketing is about community. Social communities are fellowships with others as a result of common interest, alliances, or association. As a business, it is your job to deliver to your social community answers, solutions, recommendations, and mind numbing content. This will not happen over night, and it’s not a linear process either. Instead, it’s about patience, imagination, and becoming creative.
One thing to always remember is that you don’t own your social community. It’s a community owned by community. This means you have to listen, and think before you participate. Customer relationships are no easy task to foster, and building strong lasting relationships takes time. You have to build trust as trust is not a given. It is earned. This is done though listening, and engaging with your customers across social communities. In other words, where are your customers socially hanging out and having conversations? It’s very simple to learn. All you have to do is ask them.
Once you have a list, sub categorize your customers under each of the social networks. What I mean by subcategorize is, group them by age. If you don’t know their ages, try and determine it yourself. What this will do is allow you to recognize interests. This will help you think about how you can solve or provide solutions for them. Categorized age groups more than likely will contain several silos of psychographic profiles as well. Content is then highly customized for its intended community members. For instance, someone who is a Baby Boomer is not going to associate with your business if you only adapt content to Generation Xers or Millennials. You have to find creative ways to adapt to your social community, and learn how to put into action their ideas as solutions that add value. This is not to say you cannot reach across generations. According to Nielsen, 70% of all disposable income will be controlled by Baby Boomers. Facebook has some 28M people over 55 according to Forrester Research, and Boomers account for 41% of all people who buy Apple according to Nielsen. What does this mean for you and social media network marketing? It means that your listening and solution communication needs to resonate across the generations not just for anyone particular generation. Don’t fall trap to Kettle One’s mistake that repelled instead of attracting by creating advertising content that only met the demands of one social category. Grey Goose on the flip coin understood its broader community, and presents a message that stimulates interests while pulling everyone in.
Let’s say you learned that your customers use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Yelp, and Ello. Should you become social in all these networks? Yes, but it does not have to be all at once. Look at how many known are sub categorized under each network. Wherever you have the majority, start your dive-in there. Diving into all at once is not for everyone, and listening is the key to success. Don’t worry though, social media networking will keep you warm and fuzzy because you’re wanting to build trust. Additionally, it’s important to intermingle in real life too. When you speak with people in real life, it launches a form of personal connection that can transfer over into your social community as a preexisting association.
Building common social interest is then accomplished by listening and providing solutions across and within social networks. You cannot fake real. As an alternative, enjoy engaging, answering and providing solutions. This builds up those interrelationships, and pulls more people into your social network. I call this getting into your social sweet spot zone.
