Running a business or writing a blog is most beneficial when you can connect well to your particular audience.
The main way to do this is by producing great content (or great product/service in the case of a business). But another very important way to do this is by figuring out how to get that content (or product/service) in front of your audience. Thats marketing, really, and its quite important.
But what do you do? What is the best way? Well, it all depends on the content, product, service, and audience. Take my blog, for instance. There are countless distribution channels to share my content, but some are more effective than others. I’ve chosen six to focus on:
LinkedIn, Quora, Reddit, Twitter, Hacker News, and Google Plus.
I’ve chosen those six because I think they are the most likely to reach an audience that is interested in the content I am creating. Will all six be effective? I’m secretly hoping they won’t all be, because then I’ll have to keep up with all six! But time and metrics will be able to tell me which are effective, so I’ll consistently use these distribution channels and then focus on the ones that are most effective – hopefully I can narrow the list down to two or three.
What about a business? Well, let me give you an example: I have been talking to a business that is looking for a social media marketing manager. They feel the need to get out there on Youtube and Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, etc, etc. But the problem is that all of these channels won’t be effective. Some will, but not all. It is important that every business find the channel that is most effective at reaching their target audience.
For example: a B2B company is probably not going to find as much success rom a big push on Facebook and Pinterest. Facebook and Pinterest are mostly B2C and C2C focused. But a B2B company will probably find mores success on LinkedIn and Twitter because both of those are a bit more B2B focused than Facebook and Pinterest are.
Its important to think of who the key influencers are. If your company is meant to serve a particular type of company in a particular industry, then think about which people at those companies are going to be looking for solutions to the problems that your company can solve. If its the marketing manager, find out where the marketing manager would find solutions to his companies problems. If he reads articles, then write articles. If he browses Twitter, then be an active community member on Twitter. If he regularly checks LinkedIn and reads articles there, then make sure you are posting your content on LinkedIn.
Of course, it can be tough to find the right channel. But don’t get stuck trying to figure it out in the beginning. Instead, take a while (but not too long) researching or thinking about where your target audience and key influencers are and what they are interested in. Then get out there are begin reaching out on a variety of channels. Keep track of what works and what doesn’t, then focus more of your time on the things that work. Over time you’ll learn more about your target audience and will be able to more effectively reach out to them. And the more effective you are at that, the better things will go for your blog or business.