Obviously, there is not one answer for everybody. All businesses are different. So, we need a strategy to find your answer and to do this let’s forget about the internet.
Let me introduce you to the town of Johnsville. Whatever business you have, we are going to choose the l0cation for a shop. If your business does not work as a shop, then you can choose another business for this exercise.
I will describe each possible location, and you can score it out of ten, till, at the end, you should have a winner.
Location: Local.
In a small parade of shops as part of a recent housing development. Next to the community centre. Low rent.
Location: Trading.
On a trading estate, new building and on the corner of the main access road. Reasonable rent.
Location: Town centre.
One vacancy by the main supermarket. Going to be very busy here, hence a higher rent wanted.
Location: Edge of Town Centre
Just round the corner, so not so visible, but on the school run route. cheaper than the town centre. You notice the competition just up the road from here
STOP HERE
So, stop here and choose your location and then read on…
Which did you choose? – I am really not interested in your choice, I am interested in the reasons behind your choice.
My reasons were around these questions.
- Cost of being there
- How busy in the street?
- Is the area where I expect customers to live or work or commute past?
Social Media is the same.
- Don’t just use what you and your friends use unless your friends are the ideal customer?
- What types of social media do you potential customer use? Best to target where they are.
- Where are your competitors posting? –
- Check how many posts and how regularly they are posting
- Is there any evidence is it working for them? – do they get comments etc?
- Use their experience to give you a give as to whether it is worth it for you. If they have stopped posting then draw your conclusions.
- When looking at Facebook, check for Facebook business pages and Facebook groups.
- Some companies find Facebook groups are much more effective for them than pages.
- It was against Facebook rules but some companies have member-only groups.
- What sort of content could you make? – which platform would it look best on?
- Reviews can be written, or video, or audio
- Product shots can be images or video
- News can be written or audio or video.
- Are there reviewers or celebrities that you could ride on the back of?
- sometimes you can hijack an issue if it works with your product.
- Will they use or review your product?
- Do you have a website you want to link up with?
- Create great content on your website and you could easily share that with Twitter.
- Facebook would prefer you to take that content and put it on your business page, but that would be ok, as you just used the same content twice!
- Google will love your content for Google search but a Google mybusiness page can have content posted to it.
- Don’t be drawn by hype.
- People with a million followers does not mean a million buyers
- Any get rich quick plan works once for one person, if ever, and then fails a million times for others.
- One viral post is luck. If the viral content has nothing to do with what you sell, it is irrelevant.
- Whatever social media you choose, you need to use it regularly over a long time and keep to a similar message. it may seem free, but it still takes your valuable time to create and post.
- You should not try any kind of major paid advertising until you have identified where your audience is, and whether they will purchase. However, it is ok, to test advertise $10 here and there.
