Something in every marketing blog, whitepaper or case study is being where your audience is and then dominating the space so they interact with you. This works, in a forceful, not too friendly, kind of way.
Or, you could listen for a while and find things you never knew existed.
For instance, a previous project involved managing the social media outlets for a building code company. They created all of the building codes for the U.S. and a few other countries. They had several legacy organizations combined into one giant memberships organization. They also had an idea of where and what their members liked and listened to, LinkedIn, Facebook, a newsletter, an online membership magazine and their website.
So, posting content began by putting it throughout their various social media outlets. Some items here, some items there, a little bit everywhere. Coverage mostly pertained to the big three social media channels at the time, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
Twitter was one of the outlets where the content posted was not increasing growth and connections.
Content from all sectors of the business were posted to the Twitter account; building code hearing schedules, releases of new products, other announcements and news items. However, posting all the various amounts of content was not the issue.
We took a step back and began to monitor the conversations occurring with their followers and also monitored the followers and their content, something surprising occurred.
This organization with legacy members, who (more often than not) liked things the way they were and were not open to a lot of quick changes, were totally digging content about green and sustainability building codes. At this time, green and sustainability building codes were fairly forward thinking for their audience.
Upon further digging, we found more surprising information. The users who were engaging with the green and sustainability content weren't their regular legacy members. They were architects or younger industry professionals. A whole new audience had appeared who was not necessarily being reached through the other communication outlets.
The lesson learned was not be to frustrated by a lack of growth of outlets but to make sure, that with monitoring and listening to the outlets we were offering content our users were wanting.
The communication strategy changed to accommodate the new audience and they posted green and sustainable content mostly through Twitter while leveraging their various other outlets for other news, updates or notifications for a successful integrated communication strategy.