When I introduce myself as a social media strategist, the second most common question people ask me is “How do I know if social media would help my business?” (the most common is “what exactly does that mean you do?”).
The truth is that social media is not the best strategy for every company in the world. But it can be useful in a surprisingly large number of businesses.
Why? Because the web is a long tail of niche markets, and owning that niche effectively can be as powerful as being the most well-known store in town.
There are three important questions you can ask about your business to find out if using social media makes sense for you. Let’s look at an example.
Are your customers online?
My uncle works with Bob Lee Archery to sell bow hunting equipment and custom longbows. Most people who are into bow hunting are probably not leading members of the web 2.0 scene. But assuming the community doesn’t exist online is a bad idea.
If we do some quick keyword research to see how often some bow hunting related terms are searched for, we can see that there is indeed some active online interest in bow hunting:
The number on the far right is the approximate number of searches per day on each of those terms. If you add these up, there’s about 4,000 searches per day on only this 13 terms. Dive down the list, and that number multiplies quickly.
Not only do these terms indicate a strong community interested in archery, these are also people who are going online and looking for equipment. People want:
- supplies
- bows
- equipment
These searchers are an ideal, pre-qualified set of leads for a company selling bows and accessories.
Do they naturally form a community?
Social media is all about community. Community is all about excluding people. Do a litmus test on your customers - is your product niche enough to create a strong community.
People who drive VW Bugs make a community. People who drive cars do not.
Vegans form a community. People who eat food do not.
People who use roller-luggage when they travel form a community. People who use luggage when they travel do not. People who travel without luggage make a community.
Think about the people using your product. Are you serving a hobby? Do most of them stand out from mainstream society in some way?
Bow hunting is a great place to find community. A specific and skilled subset of hunting, there are plenty of reasons why bow hunters might want to find and meet others who share their passion, review equipment, or post tips on good hunting locations or strategies.
What online community tools already exist?
“Using social media” is both simple and hopelessly complex. Like breathing, it is an entirely natural process, but if you swap the lungs out for an incorrect component, the whole system is unlikely to work very well.
Picking the right social media tools to engage with your customers is the single most important factor in how successful your efforts will be.
Step one is to figure out if there are already any successful communities where your customers are gathering. It’s far easier to find your audience and engage with them on their turf than it is to entice them to rebuild the community on your land.
Some Google searching turns up an MSN group and a few archery organizations, but no significant online community.
In other words, it’s an open field for Bob Lee Archery. If they want to make a more significant investment, they could serve the community well by providing the tools to connect online. It’s the digital equipment of getting everyone to play tag in your back yard - when it’s snack time, you’re the one providing the lemonade.
So is social media the right way to go?
In the end, employing social media strategies is about making a judgement call on the ROI. Somewhere above 4,000 targeted searches per day is a great start, but it’s probably not worth trying to build a social network.
Social media can clearly help Bob Lee Archery improve their sales. If they convert only 10% of those searchers per month, which is not unreasonable, that’s 400 new paying customers.
Based on the fact that many of the searches seem to be focused on buying or maintaining equipment, it might make sense to focus on developing social ratings tools for the products that Bob Lee sells online. Allowing people to rank products as good or bad could be a low-cost way build some social user activity into their site, and boost buyer confidence as well.
So yes, I’d say some social media engagement is the right way to go. Is it right for your business?
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