Stop that Blogging up there!

 Who should blog?

Social media, Facebook, blogging, tweeting:  All deceptively easy to get the word out about your product.  Right?

Actually, yes.  But who is your audience and what exactly are they looking for from you- the CEO/small business owner/seller of  A La Widgets Galore?

If your audience is looking to you for indications that the company is in the able, competent hands of a leader, you may need to be a little more thoughtful about your posts. It may be tempting to blog about folksy, familiar, familial topics but be careful that you draw a line between folksy and downright next-door-neighborly.  Your potential clients may not be motivated by your gardening tips if financial planning is why they subscribe to your posts.

When readers research companies on line- will they look to the blogger with a consistent message of leadership and motivation or one who randomly slips into philosophical prose about the blue tulips in his yard or the rushing waves he battled on his sail boat last Saturday?  I guess it depends on the product.  If you are selling Baltic Yachts waxing poetic about sailing may be a nice departure from the nuts and bolts of running a sailboat factory.  If, however, you are investing the retirement savings of bio-engineers it may be wise to stay away from flowery chit chat about your hybrid tulips.

Patricio Robles said,

...it's probably safe to say that consumers are not going to jump for joy at the opportunity to tweet with Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon Mobil, or to poke Vikram Pandit, the CEO of Bank of America. No, all most of them care about is the availability of gas when they go to fill up the tank and the safety of the money they've deposited at their local bank...

One of the primary reasons to stay in front of your target market with blogs, tweets and a professional Facebook  presence is to keep them confident that you know what you are doing running your company.

Find your Customers

Looking for the Forest through the Trees
-Using Target Intelligence to find your customers:

It does not seem logical that having a practically infinite audience sitting in front of your message is an ineffective way to market your wares.  Information technology has advanced to a level that allows billions of prospects to see your message, your product, your click-here-for-more-info button.

Target Intelligence is the tool used by savvy online marketers, most of whom got into the online marketing game early.  Understanding that your message can set idle in front of those billions of online eyeballs, or, it can reach the hundreds-of-thousands of people who are actually your customers is the difference between effective marketers and those just lost in the cyber masses.

Mark Schaefer recently wrote:

Become a beefy marketer.  An ability to navigate Facebook or YouTube might be enough to get you an entry level job at some places but to really build a career you should become proficient at the fundamentals of marketing.  Star performers will be able to apply their love of the social web to marketing research, consumer behavior, product development, personal selling, and brand-building.   Get a degree if you can. If that’s not possible, join the American Marketing Association and immerse yourself in their journals and webinars. Read all you can, attend free webinars every day of your job search, create an effective RSS feed for yourself.

Done correctly, target intelligence allows marketers to take the data, click ratios, sales figures, and demographics and put the information into contextual format, allowing you to market your product to the people who are most likely your customers and not the billions of others who are by and large, ignoring your message anyway.  Why waste valuable resources when the technology is available to you to get in front of only those who are looking for you?

The recent emergence of online media such as Facebook, Twitter and possibly the pioneer in massive online communication, Myspace, although, it is now very specialized for the music industry, have made the possibilities for businesses to get in front of unlimited numbers of prospects a bit dizzying.

On one hand, the platform is there- the audience is there- the marketing budget is there.  But then there is that.. other hand.  It is a bit too massive.  Target intelligence is the only way to cut through the mind-boggling numbers of people online- and find the ones looking for you.