Marketing to Your Audience
“The way we used to connect with people is over, because people connected are far more influential than you and your business,” said Brian Solis of the Altimeter Group and author of the book “The End of Business as Usual.”
A good example of this, as Solis pointed out, was the failure of Netflix’s Qwikster announcement. They thought by the sheer will of their own communications they could force people to accept the new pricing and the split of their business. Unfortunately for Netflix, that didn’t happen. Through a much louder and stronger form of peer-to-peer communications, their audience rejected Netflix’s new business models.
“People can connect with one another when they have a common mission in mind,” said Solis. In this case it was to show how pissed off they were with Netflix.
At Ragan’s 5th Annual Social Media for PR and Corporate Communications Conference in Las Vegas, I spoke with keynote speaker Brian Solis.
The end of the “Like”
“You can’t measure engagement by likes, views, or retweets,” said Solis. “You have to measure what happens after that, and design around that.”
Because what you’re really looking to reach is your audience’s audience. You’ve already got your audience. What you don’t have is their audience, and the way you reach them is to talk “through” your current audience. What can you create that can resonate with your audience, asked Solis.
What brought your audience to you?
Looking at social media streams to see people talk about you is a great ego boost, but it doesn’t give you any insight into their desires and interests. If you know that kind of information, then you’ll have the ammunition to create content that could resonate with that audience. To prove his point, Solis used a service called Research.ly to investigate the interest graph of all of Starbucks’ followers on Twitter. What connects these people beyond the fact that they’re all following Starbucks?
By just researching the tweets of Starbucks’ followers, Solis discovered basic things about the audience such as their interest in music, love, and family. Also surprising to discover was Starbucks’ top Twitter audience were students. Read the entire report on Solis’ site.
Creating content that’s worthy of sharing
“If I can’t give you something that’s not worth it to you to share, then what’s the point of saying it,” asks Solis. If you understand your audience’s interest graph, then you have the knowledge to create something that they want to share.
Everyday people are now personal media networks that influence consumer behavior. In aggregate, they are far more powerful than your organization or any journalist you could potentially influence.
“Don’t care about what your followers say about you, but rather care about what they’re saying overall,” said Solis. “Others will tell your story if you make your story worth telling.”
It’s not “content” that’s king. It’s “context,” said Solis. Can you be the architect of a meaningful experience?
