Got Audience?

There’s a simple social media rule I’d like to get across today: Before starting any social media program, make sure that your customers have not already assembled themselves on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. in support of your brand. If they have, DROP every thing else you are doing and go talk to them.

Let’s take a look at Facebook, for instance. There are major brands with consumer-generated pages with literally thousands upon thousands of fans, and the companies themselves have yet to even give a word of thanks, encouragement or acknowledgement.

In the real world, this is akin to your customers spontaneously filling up an arena to cheer your brand, and you fail to show up.  Guess what?  After a while, they may start to think of your company as an arrogant rock star who’s just too busy to come to his own show.

This isn’t rocket science but for some reason people have a difficult time grasping this important concept. When you’ve got 20,000 rabid fans of your brand congregating online, you really can drop the traditional focus groups, doorknob-hanger program, 4-color direct mail marketing piece, the grand brand strategy - and go talk directly with your customers.

What should you say?  Thanking them for coming would be a start.  Ask them in a survey or something less formal about what drew them to the page and what they would like to hear from the company. Start responding to their questions on a consistent basis. Engage with them.

Then, sit back and think of the wealth of riches these customers are presenting you. On Facebook, the average user has 120 friends.  If you could come up with an interesting poll, quiz, video or other shareable item, you could instantly reach 1.2 million people if 10,000 of your fans share the item with their friends.

You may also look into owning the site by contacting the originator.  Often they are more than happy to let the company take over and run with it - they are true fans and they want good things to happen for the company.  If the original owner is unresponsive, you can contact Twitter and Facebook and they will generally give over ownership to the company. 

After Starbucks secured ownership of a consumer-generated Facebook fan page in October 2008 and started delivering content on a regular basis, the number of fans grew from 200,000 to nearly 4 million, one of the largest groups on Facebook today.

One of the best aspects of social media is that it can minimize all the gyrations - not to mention big bucks — companies go through to reach their audiences.  That’s even truer for organizations whose customers have already built a meeting place for their brand online. 

So, do you know if you have audiences online, and are you engaging with them or ignoring them?

Photo credit: Matthew Field

Tags: audience, engage, Facebook, maples, social media, social media marketing, Starbucks