by 
Every time I go to a social media conference or listen to an online webinar about social media, I always hear the phrase,
You must know where your audience is at on social media before you can effectively begin using social media.
Where is your audience on social media?
When people ask me where my audience is at and who I talk to I tell them that I can find my clients on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and GooglePlus. It’s reality check time. People are online and talking. You are either in the game or not in the game.
Staggering Statistic: The average smart phone user checks their phone every 6.5 minutes or 150 times a day. Source: “How smartphones are on the verge of taking over the world”
This is your audience! Your audience is online and you need to find them and connect them. The only way to do that is to start having an active presence online.
The best way to do this is to create content on your website or blog site. If you are not doing this, you aren’t even close to being in the game. The best part about creating content is that it is always out there, it does not go away.
The Social Media Plan Trap
Too many people are still getting caught up in having a plan first before even trying to have an online presence. Think about it..You do the research and figure out where some of your clients are residing: lets say twitter. You come up with a plan on what you are going to talk about and how many times a day you are going to tweet. You are going to track your follower count numbers and see if people find out more about your company. You finally get ready to implement this plan and after a few weeks, or months you do not see results. You go back and come up with a different plan and the same poor results occur.
Your Audience is Online | Start Networking
The only way I learned about the tools was by rolling up my sleeves and spending time online. I would recommend a personal account and company account. Two Reasons:
You will make mistakes and possibly connect with questionable people or questionable discussions. Make sure these occur on your personal id and not the company id.
You can hit different audiences. If you want to learn more about social media, start growing personally and professionally. With your company id, start looking for key people in your industry. Search for advocates that are excited about your company and content.
These principles apply to those of you who do not have large marketing teams to perform these activities. In addition, you will see eventually CEOs and Higher Management wanting to be a part of the discussion and if you can make this happen, you will see staggering results.
Get going today and create your plan as you get more comfortable with the sites. The key part is to become more active online.
Image courtesy of Carlos Porter / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
