Don’t Take My Word For It: An Informal Social Media for Your Business Investigation

Everyone has been yapping to you about Social Media Marketing.  I’ve even been yapping to you about Social Media Marketing. The real question is:  Who hasn’t been yapping to you about it?

I want to take a break from the Getting Started on Social Media for Business series for a moment even though this goes right along with it.  The uncertainty in the Small Business realm with regard to Social Media (SM) and using it to your business benefit is still too often overlooked.

“I own an {insert obscure business niche here} shop – how could I possibly use {SocialMediaSite}.com for that?!”

Well, it’s time to stop listening to me.  This is not a “get social media / a blog / connected or get left behind” post that we see so much of in the blogosphere (Guilty!) as much as it is an “I’m tired of telling you, see for yourself” post.

Below I’ve provided you with search results from specific SM platforms for a specific niche. Nothing too fancy or techy, just some good old fashion search material.  You can stop taking my word for it and decide for yourself.

Start by labeling your niche: Adolescent Fitness, Affluent Travel, Rubber Pants, Not-For Profit Doorstoppers – whatever.   If your niche is not really a niche (shame on you), apply a broader category like: Retail, Arts, Crafts, Technology etc…  Now the fun begins.  Now you search for others on the different Social Media Platforms.

In this example, we’ll say Model Airplanes is your business.  I’m going to start by finding out who blogs about Model Airplanes.  Surely NO ONE, right?  I’ve done a Google Search for you:

Blog Model Airplane

WOW!  There really is someone blogging about Model Airplanes.  A few actually.  If my business is Model Airplanes, I might want to take notice here.  I might read what’s being said, make a comment on a post including contact info or a link back to my website.  Wouldn’t hurt, right?  So there’s your blogosphere representation.

Note: Some of you will ask “Why didn’t you use Google Blog Search?”  Simple:  I don’t love it.  Try it out, if you like it by all means use it instead.

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What about Facebook?  Sure, there may be specific individuals that enjoy Model Airplanes as a hobby (which by itself is a great reason to join if I’m in that business!), but are there actual profiles, groups or pages dedicated to it?

Facebook Model Airplane

Holy Cow, there are!  In fact, pages of Model Airplane Results.  The group R/C Model Airplanes alone has 254 members at the time of this post.  It’s easy to see more than 5 groups dedicated to the Model Airplane market on the first results page.  That’s a bunch of folks practically begging for more information on your business.  What say you?!

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Next, let’s try MySpace. MySpace sometimes gets a bad name for being primarily kids, rock bands and general riff-raff.  That’s not entirely true, there are some very popular and mature profiles.  In fact, let’s see if our Model Airplanes are represented here:

MySpace Model Airplane

Would you look at that?  Model Airplanes on Myspace.  I know what you’re thinking, “Wow, 2 whole groups with a total of 27 members.”  Fine, there’s not a HUGE representation of Model Airplanes on MySpace, but I wouldn’t mind reaching out to those 27 potential customers.  They’ve joined that group for a reason, to interact with people that also enjoy their hobby.  Speak to these people!

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We move on to LinkedIn.  LinkedIn is a professional networking site and I thought I might have trouble finding something specifically associated with model airplanes.  I was right.  A specific search on Model Airplanes returned nothing of value, so I broadened the search to Arts and Crafts.  This is what I found:

LinkedIn Arts and Crafts

(Note: if the link to the search results doesn’t work, type Arts and Crafts into the “Search Groups” Box in the upper right hand. It appears LinkedIn uses a dynamic URL for the searches)

Can’t win ‘em all, but this is not a total loss.  As a Model Airplane business owner, these are still people I can connect with, share thoughts, ideas and good arts and crafts times!

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Let’s try Digg.  For those that aren’t familiar with Digg, it’s a collection of user-rated articles and content.  Users “digg” something they find on the net, other users check it out and “digg” it too.  After an article has been “dugg” so many times, it ranks high on the site and the originating website gets somewhere around a gajillion views.  How does this help you as a Model Airplane Entrepreneur?  First, you’re able to see what people are saying in the industry.  Many times you can leave comments with your contact info for people you KNOW are interested in Model Airplanes.  Next, if you have a website or blog, you can write something so awesome that’s so full of rich content that you get “dugg” many times.  Then you say welcome to the gajillion potential customers to your blog or website, bringing you even closer to converting them from visitor to patron.

Digg Model Airplane

There you have it – Model Airplanes on Digg.  Keep in mind, where you see the number of “diggs” down the left hand side that that’s not the number of people who have viewed the article, it’s how many dugg it.  Views could actually be in the tens of thousands or more.   Would you like to speak to that many potential customers all at once?  I thought so.

All you have to do now is plug in your niche to a few of these sites to see your market’s representation on SM outlets.

This is by no means the end-all, be-all for determining your Social Media arrival, but it’s a good start.  It gives you a good idea about who is talking about your product or service, what they’re saying and possibly where you fit in.

On the rare occasion you find no representation of your type of business in SM, maybe that’s a sign too (find another business!).  You decide.

Just remember this: By you not connecting on SM outlets, you’ve provided businesses in your niche that are connecting a free pass to (openly and without interference) speak with your past, present and future customers.   Why don’t you just mail them your client list while you’re at it? (ok, I went too far, you get the picture)

Do you have any other tools in your arsenal for checking on your niche in the Social Media world?  If so, let us know!

If you enjoy talking small business online marketing, go ahead and subscribe to us.  It’s free, it’s easy and we’d love to have you along for the ride.

Related Posts:

• Getting Started on Social Media For Business (pt3)
• Getting Started on Social Media For Business (pt2)
• Getting Started on Social Media for Business: Beginners
• Testing a New Mashup

Tags: business tools, small business, social media, Social Networking   Posted in Social Networking, marketing strategy