A Social Network Means Your Business Audience Is Someone Else’s
The more you pin your hopes purely on social media channels as the best way to build your business audience means that you have given control to someone else.
Whilst it would be great to take the email addresses of those in your community from Twitter and Facebook and target independently, you simple cannot do this in the flick of a button. The only way you can do this is to create your own platforms, such as a blog or draw your business audience to your website where the information is relevant that they will sign-up to be part of your community.
Whilst it’s easy to think that Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn has changed our ways to communicate with others, we also have to remember that these are not social businesses aimed at educating and informing, but here to make money from us all. We use these services for free, but we are all quick to supply our personal details and all content is public and forever shareable. A social network means you can’t have privacy in a digital world.
Can you remember back to the good old days (about 12 months ago) when Facebook shown what’s going on from the people you were connected to? Now we are awash with more adverts on our screens and more notifications from Candy Crush, all in the attempt for Facebook to gain more members.
We all have to accept that the social media platforms we use basically mean that we are not in charge and certainly not in control. Even LinkedIn approaches bloggers to write unique content for LinkedIn with the promise of a new audience and creating a voice that others will begin to flock to. Naturally, taking away the opportunity to see on your own platform first.
To achieve control and in complete charge, over time you can build your own social network, to achieve influence. You can do this by creating your own channel by having a business audience who will follow you via your blog, your website, even to more personal interactions by having a platform to speak at events and workshops. What needs to be straightforward is the ease for others to become part of your community (from sharing relevant information to sign-up forms).
This also means that you achieve a sense of privacy whereby those within your community feel part of something rather than their information being shared and used by other companies so that their data can be monetised.
Achieving control can be achieved, the answer is to be personalised, relevant and knowing your audience to target.
Image: Courtesy Flickr – RhinoInk.ca
