What channel are you on?

The importance of picking the right channel

In one of the first posts of this year, I talked about the importance of defining your customer and knowing your target market.  In order to get started in the social media landscape you will have to know about your customer because once you define your target,  that information will allow you to determine where they are hanging out – which online channels.

To give you a prime example of this, every year Doritos has a video (create a commercial) contest that they do every year for the Superbowl.  Doritos target customer is ages 18-24, and for this contest it is heavily promoted online.  In 2009 they received over 4000 entries, with the winner of the contest being aired during the Superbowl and also getting $25,000.  In the same year, Jim Beam decided to a similar contest to solicit a video remake contest, with heavy promotion online and the winner receiving $25,000.  The target customer for Jim Beam is Male age 50-55.   The number of entries that Jim Beam received was around the 300 mark.

So what does that tell you, besides the fact that I wish I would have made a video for the Jim Beam contest since the odds were so much better then the Doritos.  There are obviously more of Doritos target market online and into video contests then the target for Jim Beam.   This same mentality should be used when you are thinking about channels on the Internet. You will yield much better results when you are in the channels where your customers are hanging out.

When you are trying to plan out your channel strategy, remember that it isn’t necessary to enter every channel at first.  It is more important to pick the right channel and devote the attention needed to that channel to build and engage your audience.  The more channels you get into at first, the more you spread yourself.  Check out the demographics of social media sites on Pingdom, a social monitoring site does an excellent job with breaking out all the specifics.

The four channels that I would recommend that you start with, if the demographics match your target are – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.   I will get into content strategies and how to manage your social media presence in some of the next posts.

Start gathering info on your target customers and analyzing channel info.  Thanks for visiting The Sales Plan