Social Media
Blogging to your Target Customers
Blogging can help build your visibility online. When you write a blog post, you want to speak to your target customer and need make the content relevant for them.
If your market is attracted to your blog, as they read and follow your new posts – they will learn more about your services and products. You want to have a content guideline so that you stay focused and on target with your content.
To stay on track it’s important that you first consider your target customers before proceeding with the series of content that you would like to post. Without proper thought, you might miss the real purpose of your blog, which is to catch the attention of your prospective customers. It’s okay to have blog posts interspersed that are not fully on target with the content, but overall you want to keep the focus to keep speaking to your target customers.
Web surfers are very diverse and they have different backgrounds, preferences, and lifestyle. Therefore, market segmentation is very important. Your target market will depend much on the products or services that you are selling, and you better know your products very well. It is your products that determine the demographic profile of your customers. Before deciding on the theme of your blog, it would be better if you have a definite profile of your ideal customer in mind.
This profile will represent your target market segment. The basic demographic profile includes age, gender, and social or economic status. The categories under each profile are as follows:
- Age. Does your target market consist of children, teenagers, adults, or senior citizens?
- Gender. Are your target customers male, female, or transgender?
- Economic Status. Do they belong in low income, middle income, affluent, or rich group?
- Location or address.
These profile or sets of traits should match the characteristics or features of the products or services that you are offering. Remember, however, that these classifications are still relatively broad and apply only to basic commodities where product differentiation by consumers is still not so distinct. Examples are medicines or medical services, foods, educational services, and others. Items everyone needs regardless of demographics.
For stricter market segmentation, you can differentiate your target markets or narrow them further according to customer temperaments, needs, goals, and fears. Specifically, you can distinguish them according to:
- Needs – sense of accomplishments, sense of belonging, self actualization • Goals – productivity, efficiency, savings, safety
- Temperaments – serious, happy go lucky, complacent
- Fears – old age, poverty, ill health, rejection
There are still more categories to further narrow your market segment such as educational attainment, lifestyle, mindset, family size, political views, etc. These are relevant if the products or services that you are offering are highly specialized or customized such as travel or vacation packages, luxury cars, high tech gadgets, and other such items.
Having a clear picture of the common characteristics of your target market when blogging for business will help you decide what theme or blog design to use, the appropriate mode or tone of your article, and the right images that you need to use.
These details may overwhelm you at first. But, you should realize that your purpose for blogging is to attract web users who are more likely to use your products or services and to influence them to buy and patronize what you offer. Keep this in mind as well that customers now are more discriminating, especially if the products are quite expensive. They scrutinize details and compare them with competing brands.
So to make your blog more effective, know your products well and create a profile of your target market based on your products’ characteristics and features. Then, post blog content that will appeal to your target market.
Remember, your business blog is created to ultimately generate sales; first having gained the trust of the blog readers. Keeping your focus will help you stop reduce wasted time and effort when blogging for business.
Do you think about your target customer when you write or oplan your blog content?
Get Real! Online Networking has its Rewards
Having worked with many social media clients in the past few years, it’s been interesting to note a pattern that has emerged. Clients who are more accepting of the need for them to use their social networks and post a good portion of their own tweets and updates, are the ones having more success.
Why? It comes down to being authentic and personable. Taking an real interest in listening to others and joining in the conversation. Think of it as a business networking event. Except you are not in a room at a local business, you are online. You can talk with people all over, and connections can be made. From these connections, many things can develop.
You only have a sentence or two in which to do this, so really time is not a big factor. When you read other people’s updates / tweets; think of it as the person having said the same thing to you at a networking event. How would you respond? Type it out in 140 characters or less and now you’ve started social networking – online. Initiate conversations yourself. You would never go to a networking event and never talk to anyone – Twitter and Facebook can help your business in the same way. Reach out to people and network.
What’s the point? Most times I tell clients…
“Because you never know where it can lead.”
Last year, I alerted someone that her BIO on twitter had some weird and inappropriate symbols and curse words in it. She was thankful I took the minute to send her an email to let her know. Never sure how it happened, she was nonetheless grateful and invited me to write an article on a website she owns; one geared to entrepreneurs (my target client).
Another client came to me by alerting someone to the fact that they had a link not working. When I emailed her, she saw my signature and happened to be looking for a Virtual Assistant. She replied with her thanks and also asked me about my business, soon I was looking after the project she needed done.
Mine are not the only stories out there… many people are experiencing the same things and most come from talking to others and providing value; whether a tidbit of information or a few kind words of support or noting something out of place that if not caught could have lost them connections and sales.
Be yourself and don’t be scared to connect with others just because you can’t reach out and touch them – Online friendships and business connections can be as rewarding as in-person ones. They can also lead to more business as people engage you and get to know you.
What tips do you have for ‘being real’ online? Please share your ideas in the comments below 
Blogging Topics to help you Write
Hello, my name is Kathy. I am addicted to Twitter
Pitfalls to Avoid in Social Media Marketing
No one likes being pitched to all the time? How do you feel about telemarketers calling to sell you a new service? What about your neighbor who talks about how great he is all the time? If you are like most people, you are turned off by these behaviours. The same is true for social media!
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Friends, Connections and Followers are People Too!
Value their time just as you value yours. Just because they are on Twitter does not mean they are right for your target market or that you are for them. You will have much greater success connecting with like minded people.
If someone adds you to their network, check them out. Is there a relevant reason they may be interested in you and your business? Check out their profile. Many people have a rule that they do not follow anyone who doesn’t include a photo in their profile. Over time, you’ll have to set some boundaries about who you follow and who you let follow you. These boundaries will allow you to form greater, more meaningful connections with those you want to do business with.
For instance, if your business is centered around creating products that help parents keep their kids away from non-kid friendly sites online, then you obviously don’t want to be talking with (or associated with for that matter) someone who owns an adult-only website. Yes, that’s a bit extreme, but you get the point. You really should pay attention to (or hire someone who can monitor) who follows you and who you follow in return.
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Social Media is about connections NOT sales.
One of the surest ways, short of posting completely inappropriate content, to lose all credibility is to use your social media for selling yourself and your services exclusively. No one wants to be chased at a store by a sales clerk any more than they want to follow someone who is constantly selling something. It is okay to tell people about your products and services but this has to be a part of your interaction, not your only interaction.
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Having unrealistic expectations
Please don’t expect that you are going to create a new account, start posting great content and immediately see your sales and traffic increase. It will happen, but it takes some time and effort. One of the amazing things about social media is that your efforts are multiplied over and over when people who you are connecting with share your content. Social media is very powerful and can and will benefit your business, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will a list of thousands of followers all ready to purchase from you. Based on my experience with more than 50 clients, you can expect to take 3 to 6 months to build a presence which you can then use to build your business.
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Letting your social media involvement become a time drain
It is easy to lose track of time with your social media networks and unless you keep on task, it can become a time waster. You need to learn how to make it work efficiently; read about how to do this here.
There is no right or wrong way to work social media into your schedule, but it is essential to find a system that works for you. Be aware of your time and make plans on how and when to use social media to help market your business.
Hopefully these 4 tips will help you stay on track with your social media marketing. Feel free to ask us how we can help on our facebook page, or simply post a comment here – We’d love to hear some of your tips and pitfalls to avoid.
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