Business owners — I see you and I feel you.

It’s a bit of a weird time at the moment, right? It can be tricky navigating business when everything is so up in the air. It’s probably safe to assume that while you’re making alternative business arrangements and looking out for your team, the last thing you want to worry about is social media content. Comms are important of course — customers and stakeholders need to be kept in the loop, but other than a “the team is working remotely, we’re here for you” or a “our doors are closed at the moment, see you when we see you” social media post, where do you go from there? Should you share photos of your team in their bubbles baking the 2021 version of banana bread (which is cinnamon scrolls by the way!)? Should you carry on with the original content plan? Should you put a halt to social media posting altogether?

There is a right answer… it comes in two parts.

Who are you really adding value to when interacting with your audience?

Note here, how I didn't write; "who are you talking to when speaking to your audience?"

Key point here being 'adding value' and 'interacting'.

When looking at our audiences it's easy to simply describe the audience as;

25-45 Year Old, Female, Young Family, Suburban, Health and Fitness Lover (yes, I'm describing myself!).

Truth is, we want to dive deeper by asking these simple questions:

• Who are your customers? Are they; wholesalers? B2B? consumers?
• Where does your audience hang out? Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Offline, Family, Events, Location?
• What are their information sources? Google, Books, YouTube, Friends, Family?
• What do they look like? Actions? Trends? i.e. 32 year old female who works out, has a young family and likes to eat healthy food.
• How do they speak? Formal, informal, corporate, friendly?
• Preferred form of communication? Email, text message, letter, video, telephone?
• What marketing channels do they hang out on? Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Offline, Messenger, Offline, YouTube?
• Would you name them? Sometimes it can be helpful to give your customer group a name, i.e. Mrs Jones which the internal company uses.

Now, having answered these questions, write a paragraph about your audience covering all of these items above. Does it give you a better picture?

For example;

Our business to business audience primarily hangs out on LinkedIn and at industry events. Information sources include Google, industry related friends and network. Traditionally fairly formal language as the industry is 'serious' with industry experts.. There are two forms of preferred communication; the older end of the audience spectrum prefer phone calls, where as the younger audience prefers email.

Further understanding allows us to make communication decisions to suit the business and audience. It's now possible to decide where the interaction is going to happen and how we can easily target.

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"I used to post social media posts, and hear radio silence, or, even worse, I didn't know what to post, so just wouldn't post at all".

Turns out I'm not the only one.

"Buy our XYZ product"

"We are the best"

It. Was. Such. A. Waste.

That is EXACTLY how everyone else runs their online marketing.

Either posting terrible content (sorry!)

Or too scared to post at all!

I realised there had to be more to it than this,

So, I went out and curated a way for my brand message to cut through the noise,

For people to stand up and notice,

For people to nod their head in agreement upon interacting with our brand saying; "that's me!!, I need this XYZ product"

For people to say, wow, I NEED this product NOW, it's going to solve all my pains/problems/desires/fears.

To read more Click Here

I look forward to sharing more soon,

Christine Westbury.