Marketing and Social Media: Love Your Niche

There are thousands of people online dying to talk about and read about your product. Probably tens of thousands. Maybe millions…

Early pioneers have built online reputations by being highly relevant to a specific group of people about a specific topic. They’ll refer lovingly to their niche, and they’ve discovered that there are so many people online, even a tiny slice of that readership represents a thriving community.

Consider Let’s Polka, a site about accordions. Or Dwarf Puffers, a site about dwarf puffer fish. How many people would you think are interested in a little 1 inch long puffer fish? At last count, their forums held over 20,000 unique posts, full of care and feeding information, pictures and more. (I had a tank full of them for awhile, but that’s another post.)

Business and technical communities are thriving as well, and the same ideas apply to any corporate marketing initiative. Participating with your specific niche has both short and long term benefits that you can’t get any other way. Consumers and businesses have learned to utilize and trust blog and community content – and they’ll trust you, if your content is right.

Carefully planned and honestly applied, a social marketing initiative cuts through cynical marketing filters, and can act to:

• Educate analysts, influencers and future prospects
• Establish your company as a thought leader in your industry
• Reinforce your brand with both prospects and customers
• Help hot prospects through the research and decision cycle
• Add value to your products – information and education

Creating your Community

A few things to keep in mind. First off, be honest! Wal-Mart attempted to build a community, paying a couple to travel from Wal-Mart to Wal-Mart and create a pro-Wal-Mart Travel blog that was highly offensive to most bloggers. Not necessarily because they paid for content, but because the blog authors, professional journalists, represented themselves as average consumers.

Not too unexpected, considering Wal-Mart’s PR firm, Edelman, created it via their manufactured organization “Working Families for Wal-Mart.” Never pretend to be someone you’re not.

After being honest, the most important factor to consider is the value you are really bringing to your audience. Generally, people don’t care what your VP of Something said in the latest press release, or what the specs are of your latest product release. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes, and consider the kind of human interest stories and high value information they’ll find useful. A great gut check is to read your content and see if sounds like someone wrote it. Good community content has voice, personality. Contrast that to a press release or marketing piece, where voice is erased by committee in favor of efficiently communicating details.

There’s a lot more to consider – messaging, moderation, metrics and more. Community building is definitely another step beyond any standard Website you’ve built before. But the benefits are enormous – you can connect to your prospects and customers in a way no other marketing vehicle allows for.