I gave a couple tips for finding the social media sites your target audience is using.  If you follow those tips, you’ll probably find many places where prospective customers are talking about your industry.

The temptation is too join all those sites.  However, this is usually a bad idea.

Less is More

For the majority of business bloggers, participating on 1-3 social media sites is enough.  You don’t want to overextend your social media efforts.

1. Social media marketing takes more time than you probably realize.

If you join a social voting site, it takes time to round up votes.  Also, you’ll need to submit content that’s not your own.  (This keeps you from looking like a spammer. )  Finding content takes time.

If you join a forum, it takes time to respond to other forum members.

Plus, unexpected opportunities will come up, but you’ll need to spend extra time to take advantage of them.  For example, you meet someone with whom you can create a profitable partnership.  But it will take time to send the emails/private messages/IMs to make the partnership a reality.

Social media marketing can easily become a full-time job if you focus on too many sites.  But as business bloggers, we can’t spend all that time.  We still have blog posts to write and a business to run.

2. It takes time to understand a community.

We’ve all met someone and had an initial impression about them.  But as we got to know them, we’ve often been wrong on our impression.

This type of experience also happens with social media.  You may think you understand the members of a social media site.  However, as you participate on the site, you’ll learn many new things about the members and the culture they’ve created.

Much of the benefit in social media marketing is knowing a community well.  This knowledge allows you to promote your business in such a way that appeals to them.

The more time you spend on a social media site, the faster you will understand that community’s culture.  Therefore, participate on fewer sites.  This lets you spend more time on each site.

3. It takes time to build a reputation.

Building your business’ reputation (or brand, in traditional marketing terms) is very important on the internet.

To improve your reputation with a community, you’ll need to earn their trust.  Trust, like in real life, takes time to earn.

On forums, it’s the members that have hundreds – maybe even thousands of posts – that wield a lot of influence.  On social voting sites, it’s members that make thousands of votes and hundreds of submissions that drive a lot of traffic.  On blogs, it’s the commenters that comment regularly that get click-throughs to their site.

You will need to be a prolific participant to become an influential member.  This means adding value consistently to the community for a significant time period – at least a couple of months.

With consistent participation being an important part to building your reputation, it makes sense to participate in a few social media sites.  If you participate in too many sites, you won’t have the time to be consistent.

In the last post, I talked about the importance of finding out where your target audience is hanging out. Figuring out which social media sites your target audience is using is the crucial first step in social media marketing.

Today we’ll look at how to actually do this. Here are some practical ways to locate your target audience in the social media sphere.

Use the Search Box

Most social media sites have a search box.

I would start with these following social media sites because of their popularity.

• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Propeller
• Reddit

For each site, enter a couple keywords and/or phrases of your industry in the site’s search box.

For example, if you’re in the computer repair industry, you can type in words like:

computer repair
fix my computer
desktop repair
laptop repair
hardware problems

If you get a lot of search results, your target audience is participating on that particular site. If you don’t get many search results, you should move on to the next site.

By the way, Twitter’s search box is hard to find. Here is the URL for their search engine: search.twitter.com.

Also, if you run into a site that doesn’t have a search box, you can use Google to search the site. Type

site:socialmediasite.com your keyword

into Google and Google will search the site with your desired keyword.

Monitor the Front Page of Social Voting Sites

Sites like Reddit, Digg, Propeller, Mixx, and Yahoo Buzz have a front page that shows the most popular content.

You can monitor the front page content for a couple days to see the type of content that is popular with the site’s users. If you can create content similar to the front page content, you have a good chance of driving a lot of traffic to your blog.

Gauge the Participation Level of Blogs and Forums

Many businesses have had success promoting their site on blogs and forums.

To use this strategy effectively, find blogs and forums related to your industry. You can do this by searching and browsing through blog directories and forum directories. Also, try searching on Google using these phrases:

“your industry” blog
“your industry” forum

However, not every blog and forum is worth participating on.

For blogs, you’ll want to check the comment section. How many comments does the blog generate per post? You’ll want to comment on blogs that have at least 5+ comments per post.

There are a couple reasons to do this.

• An active comment section allows you to not only interact with the blogger but also with their commenters.
• Blogs with many comments usually have a lot of traffic.
• People using RSS readers to read blogs are more likely to check out the comment section if they know that a blog consistently gets a lot of comments. (RSS readers don’t show comments.)

For forums, the main thing to look for is how often the forum users post. Frequently updated forums attract more traffic.

For example, here is a screenshot of an active forum:

Compare that forum with this less updated one:

Ask Other Bloggers

This is one of my favorite methods because it kills two birds with one stone. You get social media sites to target and you network with other bloggers.

Basically, ask other bloggers in your industry for recommendations of social media sites. This strategy works because, for the most part, bloggers are willing to help other bloggers.

Don’t Forget Niche Social Media Sites

Niche social media sites are Digg-like sites that focus on a more specific industry. For example, BallHype is about sports and Lipstick is about celebrities.

Here are two great lists of niche social media sites:

• 10 Excellent Niche Social News Sites
• 50 Successful Social Media Sites You’ve Never Heard Of

It may be worth it to go through the list to see if your industry has its own social media site. Also, you can do a search for

“your industry” social media site

Evaluating these sites is similar to evaluating forums.  Check to see how often the site is updated.  And stay away from sites with spam on the front page.

Over To You

I’m sure there are other ways to locate your target audience on the net. What other methods would you suggest?

If you thinking of doing social media marketing for your business blog, the first thing you should do is find out where your target audience is hanging out.

You may think, that’s pretty obvious. But some business don’t do this crucial first step. They pick a social media site to participate on, but they don’t research that site first to see if their target audience actually uses that site.

An example of this is a wedding blogger trying to promote her site on Digg. Digg is a very popular site but the vast majority of Digg users are not interested in weddings.

Another example is joining a social media site because it’s the “next big thing”. Right now, Twitter is growing in popularity and some social media experts are saying you need to join Twitter or you’ll get left behind. However, much of this talk is hype. Many industries still don’t have a big presence on Twitter.

So, how can you find out where you target audience is hanging out? How can you discover which social media sites they are using?

In my next post, I’ll give some practical ways for locating your target audience on the internet. You can subscribe for free to get updated whenever I publish my next posts.