Avoiding Shortcuts in Social Media

There’s an overwhelming amount of data milling about that shows a vast majority of people using the top 4 for their social media marketing efforts: Twitter, YouTube, Facebook cialis no rx and Linkedin. Duh, right? If the size of the active user base is what makes them the big 4 then it would stand to reason that most people are there.

The question is – Are your customers there?

I certainly don’t have any issues with social media marketing within the Big 4. That’s a big ocean with a lot of fish in it. You drop your hook in the water and you’re bound to pull up something. Really though, do you want to have that kind of “take whatever you can catch” model going on for your business? What you catch might be good, it might taste good. It might make a nice trophy.

It could also come up out of the water and bite your boat in half.

You don’t have to launch your small boat into that massive ocean when fishing. There’s more out there if you know where to look.

Figure this: There’s something like 23 million Americans stuffing their face at McDonalds on a daily basis. That’s a huge number, and McDonald’s is one of the bigger chains of “clog your arteries fast” food. There are still almost 110 million Americans that don’t eat at McDonald’s every day that find their food fix elsewhere.

While the Big 4 has the largest user base per social network, there are a lot more people out there either not engaging in the Big 4, or they are running a parallel social network account on a more niche-specific playground.

There are a lot of strange networks out there, and I’m not talking about the fetish communities (unless that’s your business, heh). One man’s strange social network can be another man’s goldmine in a thriving customer community. When you limit your marketing efforts to the Big 4, then you miss out on all those opportunities.

On the Ning platform alone there’s something like 2 million specialty communities. And while “Stiletto Mamas” isn’t a social community that every company would do well in it would certainly be a great target for a business that deals in specialty shoes for women… with attitude.

The whole point of social media marketing is about meeting your customers on their terms, in their homes, on their streets with their interests. Raising a bugle and sounding a general sale alert is a vestige of the old marketing.  “That’s so 90′s, dude”.  We’re moving into a new age and that should be put behind us.

That means if you’re a gun dealer, and a large part of your community hangs out at prepareforzombieapocalypse.com for fun then you can use that to your advantage. That’s where your customers are, go there – even if it means you can’t participate on Twitter.

Please understand that in no way am I saying that you should be everywhere all at once, and I’m also not saying that you’ll do better on one site over another site. Doing either would be impractical. In the rush to keep up with social media marketing, many businesses are latching onto the Big 4 like a dog in heat. They’re completely missing the point in many cases that the most social communities, the communities that carry the most weight, are those that are niche-specific and focused on singular topics.

If you’re planning that big fishing trip and you know there are Northern Pike in some floodwaters north of your camp, but you also know that if you launch out onto the big lake you might get a Pike but you’re more likely to get some Walleye (which tastes good, too)… which do you opt for?

The answer is simple: When you’re fishing for Pike, go where the Pike are.

Do you really know where your customers are in social media? Are you ready to look harder?