Whom Are You Looking for on Social Media?

Clients and potential clients start conversations with me frequently by declaring that they want a following on social media.

This is followed normally by the question, “Who should be in their community?”

In this article, I’ll talk about who should be in your social media community and how to find them.

There are three (3) major categories of people who should be in your social media community:

1. Influencers -these are the important people in your industry or discipline whom every listens to, having them in your community indicates that you a certain stature that’s catching their attention.  Within this category there are there (3) sub-groups:
   1. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
   2. Thought leaders
   3. Content creators
2. Clients
   1. Existing
   2. Potential
3. Everybody else – don’t laugh, people who are interested enough in you to follow you could someday lead to referrals. (Yes, not all followers are worthwhile, just ignore the ones that aren’t.)

How do you attract the attention of people like this and get them interested enough to follow you?

I find there are three (3) levels of activity in this stage.

The first is when you enter social media initially and begin to approach all those whom you’ve met so far in your life and career.

How long this takes will depend on old you and how good your pre-social media record keeping has been.

After a while, the law of diminishing returns kicks in and you’re going to have to look for new sources of followers.

This next stage is where you begin to seriously look at influencers and clients.

You’ll share their content, comment on their content, send them your content, and ask to connect eventually.

In a moment, I’ll talk about how you target these groups.

The end state is Nirvana.

This is where you have executed the first two stages so well that people are now reaching out to connect with you.

When requests to connect from others begin to outnumber your own requests then you know that you’ve arrived!

Now back to whom do you target in that second stage.

This is where you’ll develop your ideal client personas.

What are the demographics of your best clients?

How many different categories of them do you have?

Once you’ve identified your ideal client personas then where might you find others?

If you’ve developed your personas correctly then you’ll know where in the following three (3) categories you can find them:

1. Professional
2. Social
3. Community

Finding clients just like your existing ones is great but there’s more!

What other types of clients might find value in your offerings whom you don’t currently do business with?

Once you’ve determined the value that you can bring to these prospects (Note I said value and not products!) then the following three (3) activities (Yes, I do like that number!) will help you identify them:

1. Research
2. Referrals from members of your existing community
3. Informational interviews with key members of your industry or discipline

Finding your community on social media is all about determining whom you want to target.

Then planning how to do this!

You must be disciplined and relentless!

Measure your progress!

Otherwise, you’ll never know if you’re gaining traction!

Don’t forget that this is all part of your overall social media program!

That’s it for now!

In the meantime, thank you for following and reading my blog!

I look forward to any and all comments that you may have.  I will reply to any comments made to this blog post as promptly as I can.

Remember!

I do this for a living and if I can be of any assistance to either you or your organization, please feel free to call on me.  Our initial discussion will be of no charge to you.

I can also be reached at conpsweeney@someddi.com.

My Twitter handle is @conpsweeney.

Stay well!