Last week, CNN published an interesting article about a maintenance man working at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport. He suggested drawing a house fly on urinals to give men something to aim at. The quantity of misdirected urine fell by about 80% overnight, according to the airport.
So what does this have to do with social media marketing?
Successful execution of a social media strategy requires an understanding of your target audience and creatively influencing their behavior. This has less to do with who they are than what they do and understanding their behavior online over time.
You must ask yourself two important questions.
What Are They Searching For?
Searcher behavior and keywords must act as a cheat sheet. There are many tools that businesses can use to uncover this information, such as:
- Google Analytics: To give you insights into what drives traffic to your website.
- Adwords: A deeper look into actual search terms.
- Google Trends: To give you insights into trending keyword themes.
Insights from these tools can help marketers develop more comprehensive keyword lists, better optimize paid search campaigns and achieve greater value from search engine optimization initiatives.
What Are They Saying?
Social media presents us with an always-accessible group of consumers who have experienced your brand or product and have something to say about it. It is absolutely crucial to monitor the conversation around your brand and to engage with your target.
Great tools that to help you listen to your target audience include:
- Google Alerts: E-mail updates that are sent to you for whatever keyword or phrase you want.
- Twitter Search: Use this to track real time news and discover trends with hashtags.
- Hootsuite: The ultimate Twitter toolbox - save searches into tabs to monitor keywords and phrases.
Understanding what people are saying and how they perceive you is crucial to developing your online marketing strategy. This may impact your overall goals and you may find out that you need to change perception or choose new keywords.
Finding out what your audience wants and needs is challenging, but when you take the time to understand your audience and use that knowledge to create relevant content that grabs people's attention, you will inspire them to connect and engage with your band.
Are you engaging and delighting your audience? Find out today by requesting more information on our Social Audit.