What tools are you utilizing to connect, educate and engage with your target audience? Today we have the telephone, voicemail, direct mail, email, text messages, video, social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and many others.
Where do you start? How do you utilize and integrate all of these tools to communicate your message? The task can seem overwhelming at times if you don't have a plan.
Recently I was consulting with someone who wanted to learn more about the different tools available to connect with his audience. He told me he wanted to communicate his message with video, a podcast, and a blog and then he threw in for good measure, Twitter and Facebook. I asked him, “Why?” He said, “To get my message out there.” It seemed like a good enough reason to me. So I began to drill down and dig deeper. I asked him the following questions.
- Who is your target audience?
- Where do they hang out? Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
- How do they like to receive communication?
- How often do you plan on posting to your website and other social sites?
- How are you planning on producing this content?
- Who is going to shoot the video?
- Who is going to record the podcast?
- Who is going to take care of all of the administrative tasks?
- Have you put together a budget?
- What is your time frame?
With each question I asked, I could see a glaze start to appear over his eyes. He seemed overwhelmed. There were so many things he had not thought about. I told him to hold on a minute and I went I got my tripod and iPhone 5. I set it up in front of him, adjusted the lighting in my living room and hit record and told him to give me a simple message he wanted to communicate.
After two minutes I stopped the video. I showed him the recording and he was blown away. I shared with him how simple it is to edit with iMovie and with only a press of a button it's on YouTube. He sat there amazed.
Now in all fairness to him, when I started out exploring social media and the web in 2009, I had not thought about some of those questions either. I really didn't have a plan. So I started with Twitter and from there I moved to YouTube. Then I built my website and started blogging. I built my online presence one platform at a time and I am still building and expanding my community and reach.
What is your plan to reach your audience?
Would love to hear your thoughts below.