Happy 2009. Okay. Now that we got that over with.. Let’s dive into something of more importance… Social Media Marketing for your Small Business! YAY!

Jason Baer has a great post over at Convince and Convert called the 7 Critical Elements of Your Social Media Strategy. The post is brilliant for the small business owner wanting to get more involved in social media.

Why is his post brilliant?

It talks more about the internal business development than what TOOLS you should be using.

I am all for using Twitter, Plaxo, Myspace, Facebook, and LinkedIN but if you don’t have the traditional elements of your company connected… you are going to fail.

In the post he lists the third step in the seven step process as: Where is the Audience Cyclically? This explains that there are four different relationship patterns inherent in the promotion of your company.

Awareness: Maybe heard of you.

Interest: Heard of you. Visited your Site. No Purchases

Action: Made a single purchase

Advocacy: Raving Brand Lunatics. (Jackpot)

I decided to re-name them and go over how they fit into the overall social media marketing strategy.

Jason suggested that you should only pick two of the 4 Customer Profiles listed above when you are planning your social media strategy. I can agree with the fact that two is more than enough but I would suggest picking only one for your social media marketing strategy.

Why Pick Only One?

If you have planned your SM strategy correctly it is a part of your overall marketing strategy. You only have a limited amount of time and resources to fully promote your business. If you can use SM marketing to only target ONE of the groups… the strategy will be stronger and more effective.

This is especially true for beginners in the world of social media. One is enough for now.

Next up we will be talking about how to target each of the groups.

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Derek McClain

January 2nd 2009, 6:44 am

Good stuff. I like the lunatic name. I agree that it is much better to do one thing very well than to do two things kinda well. I think the key is relationship building. Not just looking for the sale today, but building the relationships so that when they think of a particular service you are at Top of Mind Awareness. All about TOMA.

Jason Baer

January 2nd 2009, 8:35 am

Kyle –

Thank you so much for the kind words and the link. I love what you’ve done in expanding my post. Awesome. In terms of picking two audiences instead of one, I’ll add that if you pick two they have to be adjacent. The reason I use two is that in practice, it’s difficult to isolate any one group – except for current customers. Thus, because tactics will inevitably reach at least two audience types, and because clients are more comfortable thinking a little broader in the strategy phase, I go for two.

Looking forward to your next post. Thanks again.

1 of 4 Customer Types of Social Media: The-Lost | Kyle Lacy, Social Media – Indianapolis

January 7th 2009, 3:43 pm

[…] had a post a couple of days ago talking about the four customer types of social media which was a piggy back post off of Jason Baer’s 7 Critical Elements of your Social […]